News Common PC Linux Mac CUCUG
The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, August 21st, 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 August 21 may well be one of our joint meetings. George Krumins will be putting his new AT&T Tilt PDA-style phone through the paces. The Tilt runs Windows Mobile 6.1.
<http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/default.mspx>
Though many will want to know how it stacks up against the iPhone, that subject will not be the main focus of the demo, unless Emil "Mr. iPhone" Cobb gets wound up. Instead, George will be focusing on the Tilt's hardware, like the tilting display and its slideout QWERTY keypad
and of course, the Windows Mobile OS, and bundled and other applications.
ToC
We'd like to welcome the newest members of our group, joining us in June: Max Curtis (iMac 20" 2GB).
We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Run across an interesting item or tidbit on the net? Just send the link to the editor. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.
ToC
By Nate Anderson | Published: July 25, 2008 - 09:13PM CT
URL: <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080725-hammer-drops-at-last-fcc-opposes-comcast-p2p-throttling.html>
Once FCC Chair Kevin Martin announced his support for sanctions against Comcast, penalties looked inevitable. The two Democrats on the Commission, long supportive of network neutrality, seemed set to vote along with Martin and punish Comcast for its P2P "delaying" techniques; late this afternoon at FCC headquarters, they did, and a majority has now spoken.
The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that commissioners Copps, Adelstein, and Martin have decided against the cable giant, paving the way for an official vote when the order is publicly voted on next Friday. US ISPs, take note: the FCC has just used its 2005 Internet Policy Statement to draw a line in the sand. Step across it at your peril. The agony, the ecstasy
Free Press, which has been behind the complaint against Comcast, must have an office awash in champagne this evening. Marvin Ammori, the group's general counsel, said in a statement sent to Ars, "This vote reflects the bipartisan support for protecting consumers' access to the free and open Internet. Comcast's blocking is a flagrant violation of the online rights established by the FCC. If adopted, this order would send a strong signal to the marketplace that arbitrarily interfering with users' online choices is not acceptable. Internet service providers do not get to decide the winners and losers online."
A Comcast spokesperson contacted Ars with a statement as well, this one clinging to the conviction that Comcast hasn't done anything wrong, shouldn't be punished, and wasn't blocking anyone, anyway.
"It is always hard to respond to rumors," said the statement, "however, we continue to assert that our network management practices were reasonable, wholly consistent with industry practices and that we did not block access to Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services. We do not believe the record supports any other conclusion."
But three FCC commissioners appear to disagree.
The initial report on the vote said nothing about which way Republican commissioners McDowell and Tate might lean. FCC watchers wouldn't be at all surprised to see both vote against the order; the really interesting moment could come if they support it.
Having four or even five commissioners support the order would send a strong bipartisan signal to ISPs that they need to take great care with any sort of discriminatory throttling based on anything more specific than a user's total bandwidth. A 3-2 vote might indicate that the issue is far more contested, and that a future FCC might be more sympathetic to arguments like those made by Comcast.
Internet Policy Statement: now with twice the potency!
In any event, the decision to penalize Comcast will provide a Mario-style power-up to the FCC's 2005 Internet Policy Statement. The four principles in that statement, which are subject to "reasonable network management," are:
- Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
- Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
- Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
- Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers
If those are important principles to you, why not drop a quick note to one or more of the commissioners? As public servants, they often spend more time listening to nonprofits, broadcasters, telcos, lobbyists, and cable companies than to the people; those who do contact them are usually 1) upset or 2) seeking a favor. In this case, a simple "thank you" might be more appropriate.
Comcast's P2P degrading techniques weren't especially egregious in the grand scheme of things. According to the company's research into P2P flows on its networks, only 6 or 7 percent of subscribers used P2P in a given week, only uploads were affected, 90 percent of P2P flows weren't even touched, and even users who were hit with TCP reset packets could "complete a P2P upload in less than one minute in 80 percent of cases."
But such traffic-specific profiling and flow throttling set the stage for ISPs to pick winners and losers on the 'Net, to do more than determine how wide someone's pipe would be - to control what they could do, and when. Thanks to the pressure from the proceeding, Comcast has already committed to protocol agnostic traffic management by the end of the year.
Will Canada follow suit?
ToC
By Craig Aaron
URL: <http://www.freepress.net/node/42722>
WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan majority of the Federal Communications Commission has reportedly voted to punish Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, for blocking consumers' access to the open Internet. According to press reports, Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein have voted with Chairman Kevin Martin for an "enforcement order" that would require Comcast to stop blocking and publicly disclose its "network management" practices. The order is adopted once all five commissioners have cast their votes. Last fall, tests by the Associated Press and others exposed that Comcast was blocking users' legal peer-to-peer traffic by sending fake signals that cut off the connection between file-sharers. The Max Planck Institute in Germany later confirmed that Comcast was blocking peer-to-peer traffic at all times of the day and night -- not just during times of peak Internet use. Today's vote follows a months-long FCC investigation, launched in response to filings by Free Press and members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, urging the federal agency to stop Comcast's harmful blocking. Since January, tens of thousands of people have filed comments with the commission, and hundreds have attended public hearings at Harvard, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities. Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press and author of the filings, made the following statement: "This vote reflects the bipartisan support for protecting consumers' access to the free and open Internet. Comcast's blocking is a flagrant violation of the online rights established by the FCC. If adopted, this order would send a strong signal to the marketplace that arbitrarily interfering with users' online choices is not acceptable. Internet service providers do not get to decide the winners and losers online. "Should Comcast finally be held accountable for its illegal practices, it will be the direct result of historic public involvement in this precedent-setting debate. We look forward to seeing the order, and commend the FCC for conducting such a thorough investigation on behalf of Internet users everywhere."
Petition for Declaratory Ruling:
- <http://www.freepress.net/docs/fp_et_al_nn_declaratory_ruling.pdf>
Comcast Complaint:
- <http://www.freepress.net/docs/fp_pk_comcast_complaint.pdf>
Related link:
FCC Rules Against Comcast for Blocking Web Access
- <http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/4/fcc_rules_against_comcast_for_blocking>
In a landmark decision, the Federal Communications Commission has ruled that cable giant Comcast violated federal policy when it blocked internet traffic for some subscribers and has ordered the company to change the way it manages its network. We speak with Craig Aaron, the communications director for Free Press, the group that helped bring the complaint to the FCC.
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URL: <http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/1/headlines>
The Washington Post reports federal border agents are now allowed to take and search a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device without any suspicion of wrongdoing. Under the Department of Homeland Security policy, officials may also share copies of the device's contents with other agencies. The policy applies to anyone entering the country, including US citizens. Senator Russ Feingold described the border policy as truly alarming. The policy covers any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form, as well as all papers and other written documentation.
Sourcing:
Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border: No Suspicion Required Under DHS
Policies
- <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080103030.html>
U.S. agents can seize travelers' laptops: report
- <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080100278.html>
URL: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#25978344>
And, number one: Laptop-gate. There has been a big change at the U.S. border, but you probably haven't heard anything about it. In the course of a border search and absent individualized suspicion, officers can review and analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, re-enter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States.
Analyze the information? Translation: they can seize your laptop as you are coming into or leaving this country. They can search through anything in it at the border site or at an off-site location. They can copy anything they find inside your laptop or just keep your laptop for a "reasonable period of time."
And even if they find nothing illegal in it, they are not required to destroy any notes they made about what they did find on your laptop. No warrant, no probable cause, no way to stop it.
Related Links:
"Hands Off My Laptop"
- <http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/288/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6239>
Electronic Frontier Foundation.
- <https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?alertId=373&pg=makeACall>
Just a reminder from the Bill of Rights:
ToCAmendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Last week, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) expressed outrage that the Chinese government could "listen to anybody and everybody's and their communications" during the Olympics. The White House is apparently also fearful of being spied on, as CBS News reports that Bush's staff "have been told to leave their BlackBerries at home":
The mobile e-mail blackout is the latest sign of U.S. concerns over Chinese cyber-spying. Sensitive presidential communications are always encrypted, but government cyber-security experts are worried about electronic eavesdropping on the BlackBerries, which are difficult to protect from snooping.
BlackBerries have been banned on other presidential foreign trips but the order underscores specific concerns about Chinese spying during the Olympics.
It's a welcome development that the White House is acknowledging the intrusiveness of government spying. Unfortunately, neither the White House or Brownback seem to notice the obvious similarities to the administration's own spy program.
ToC
Developers of new engine say it offers a more comprehensive way to search the Internet.
First Published: July 28, 2008: 6:11 AM EDT
Last Updated: July 28, 2008: 1:50 PM EDT
URL: <http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/28/technology/cuil.ap/index.htm?cnn=yes>
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.
She believes her latest invention is even more valuable - only this time it's not for sale.
Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.
The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.
Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers - Russell Power and Louis Monier - searched for better ways to search.
Now, it's boasting time.
Web index: For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion Web pages.
Patterson believes that's at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index's breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion Web pages.
Cuil won't divulge the formula it has developed to cover a wider swath of the Web with far fewer computers than Google. And Google isn't ceding the point: Spokeswoman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest.
After getting inquiries about Cuil, Google asserted on its blog Friday that it regularly scans through 1 trillion unique Web links. But Google said it doesn't index them all because they either point to similar content or would diminish the quality of its search results in some other way. The posting didn't quantify the size of Google's index.
A search index's scope is important because information, pictures and content can't be found unless they're stored in a database. But Cuil believes it will outshine Google in several other ways, including its method for identifying and displaying pertinent results.
Content analysis: Rather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Patterson says Cuil's technology drills into the actual content of a page. And Cuil's results will be presented in a more magazine-like format instead of just a vertical stack of Web links. Cuil's results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request.
Finally, Cuil is hoping to attract traffic by promising not to retain information about its users' search histories or surfing patterns - something that Google does, much to the consternation of privacy watchdogs.
Cuil is just the latest in a long line of Google challengers.
Other contenders: The list includes swaggering startups like Teoma (whose technology became the backbone of Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and, most recently, Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT, Fortune 500) this month.
Even after investing hundreds of millions of dollars on search, both Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO, Fortune 500) have been losing ground to Google (GOOG, Fortune 500). Through May, Google held a 62% share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 21% and Microsoft at 8.5%, according to comScore Inc.
Google has become so synonymous with Internet search that it may no longer matter how good Cuil or any other challenger is, said Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner.
"Search has become as much about branding as anything else," Weiner said. "I doubt [Cuil] will be keeping anyone at Google awake at night."
Google welcomed Cuil to the fray with its usual mantra about its rivals. "Having great competitors is a huge benefit to us and everyone in the search space," Watson said. "It makes us all work harder, and at the end of the day our users benefit from that."
But this will be the first time that Google has battled a general-purpose search engine created by its own alumni. It probably won't be the last time, given that Google now has nearly 20,000 employees.
Patterson joined Google in 2004 after she built and sold Recall, a search index that probed old Web sites for the Internet Archive. She and Power worked on the same team at Google.
Although he also worked for Google for a short time, Monier is best known as the former chief technology officer of AltaVista, which was considered the best search engine before Google came along in 1998. Monier also helped build the search engine on eBay's (EBAY, Fortune 500) online auction site.
The trio of former Googlers are teaming up with Patterson's husband, Costello, who built a once-promising search engine called Xift in the late 1990s. He later joined IBM Corp. (IBM, Fortune 500), where he worked on an "analytic engine" called WebFountain.
Costello's Irish heritage inspired Cuil's odd name. It was derived from a character named Finn McCuill in Celtic folklore.
Patterson enjoyed her time at Google, but became disenchanted with the company's approach to search. "Google has looked pretty much the same for 10 years now," she said, "and I can guarantee it will look the same a year from now."
ToC
Pandora is an internet radio service that allows you to create your own radio station based on songs and artists that you like. While you can't necessarily pick and choose what you'll hear on the service, you can fine-tune your radio station's tastes by giving the songs that Pandora recommends a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Pandora on the iPhone is one of the best applications for streaming music and finding new tunes. So, what will the service's 1 million plus users do if Pandora pulls its own plug?
<http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/pandora_on_the_verge_of_closing_shop.php>
ToC
AOL spammer and identity thief Michael Dolan is headed off to jail for the next seven years, to be followed by three years of additional monitoring. Dolan and his codefendants pled guilty to all charges, and received the maximum sentence allowed by law.
ToC
Written by Shaun Nichols in California
vnunet.com, 25 Jun 2008
URL: <http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2219920/adobe-issues-critical-fix>http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2219920/adobe-issues-critical-fix>
Adobe has issued fixes for a critical vulnerability being exploited by malware writers.
The flaw affects the firm's Acrobat and Adobe Reader applications on Mac OS and Windows.
Adobe recommends that users of both platforms install the security update immediately.
The vulnerability could allow an attacker to gain control of the user's system by way of malformed JavaScript code.
When exploited, the vulnerability leads to an application crash which leaves the user liable to remote control of the system and code execution from the attacker.
Such remote code execution flaws are a favourite method for covertly installing malware and are often regarded as the highest risks among software vulnerabilities.
Adobe has classified the flaw as 'critical', the highest of its four security alert levels. The company noted that there is a heightened risk as the flaw is already being used by attackers to spread malware in the wild.
Sans security researcher Jason Lam echoed Adobe's sense of urgency, recommending that users install the update as soon as possible.
"This is likely to appear in a malware spreading website near you soon given the track record of the botnet operators," he wrote.
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#940/11-Aug-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9729>
For a period of several hours on 11-Aug-08, both MobileMe Mail and Google's Gmail were both inaccessible for many users, although Gmail reportedly remained accessible for those retrieving email via IMAP and a standalone email client. MobileMe's outage was not accompanied by any acknowledgment of the problem on the status page, and after a few hours, access returned. If Apple is going to be serious about providing a status page, they should at least put the effort into updating it promptly (see "MobileMe Status Page Promises Updates, But Tone Rings Flat," 2008-07-26). We'll see if Google provides any more explanation than Apple when the dust settles.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-07/MobileMe-down.png>
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-07/Gmail-down.png>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9709>
Other MobileMe and Google services were unaffected, as far as I've seen, but it's distressing that MobileMe continues to suffer outages even after Apple claimed to have fixed the initial problems after the .Mac-to-MobileMe transition. Steve Jobs dissected the MobileMe launch in an internal email message, coming to essentially the same conclusions as Glenn Fleishman did in "Apple Claims MobileMe Mail Fully Restored" (2008-07-30).
<http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/08/05/steve-jobs-on-mobileme-the-full-e-mail>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9715>
I haven't tracked Gmail outages separately, but for the most part, I haven't heard complaints about frequent problems. Although there are no guarantees with any email service (heck, my server has been inaccessible for my few local users every so often too), people relying on email for mission-critical services would do well to maintain alternate accounts in case of trouble.
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#939/04-Aug-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9713>
Though relatively late to the mapping game, Google Maps has become one of the top sites for viewing maps, getting driving directions, and more. Now the Google geeks have added walking directions to Google Maps, eliminating the logic that routes cars the correct way down one-way streets and taking into account pedestrian-only pathways when possible.
Since we were just travelling in England, I asked for walking directions from the Old Mill Hotel (built in about 1500, where we stayed for a night in Salisbury) to the Salisbury Cathedral. When we were there, Google Maps had outlined a 1.4 mile walk that seemed somewhat excessive, and indeed, the nice people at the hotel pointed us to the Town Path, a pleasant little walkway across the water meadows that connects to the rest of the city. Alas, even Google's new walking directions knew nothing of the Town Path, and suggested a much longer route along city streets. Compare the red actual walking route to Google's suggested route in the screenshot.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-07/Google-Maps-walking-directions.png>
Similarly, when I asked Google Maps for directions from the hotel we stayed at in Portsmouth to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyards where we saw HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, and the Mary Rose, Google stuck to roads, ignoring Portsmouth's Millennium Promenade, which provides a far more enjoyable stroll along the shore.
Google is aware that there are many pedestrian walkways that they don't know about, and they're working on ways of collecting new data about them and soliciting feedback from those with their feet on the ground about the best routes. Of course, I hope that Google acknowledges that the "best" route isn't always the most efficient; walking along the Millennium Promenade in Portsmouth very well may not have been the fastest way to our destination, but it was well worth an extra 5 or 10 minutes for the ocean views, and to avoid car fumes, intersections, and worrying about whether our 9-year-old was paying sufficient attention to which direction the cars would be coming whenever we crossed a road.
<http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/07/pound-pavement.html>
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#940/11-Aug-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9728>
Our recent trip to Wales and England involved a lot of photos, taken not just by me, but also by Tristan, who, at 9, is old enough to use a real digital camera. He takes pretty good pictures too (scroll down to the end of the article for some snaps of us in castles!), and since I didn't want to share my Canon PowerShot SD870 IS, we bought him a somewhat less expensive PowerShot SD850 IS for the trip. Our choice of models was extremely intentional, because both cameras could share the same USB cable, SD cards, extra battery, and battery charger, reducing packing weight and complexity. Plus, Tristan is already familiar with the Canon interface, and image stabilization is a big help for him. The end result was extremely positive, since he was able to dash around the Welsh castles non-stop, taking pictures and telling us all about what we were seeing. He ended up with nearly 1,000 photos, even after we encouraged him to cull bad ones in the camera, and I took roughly the same number during the 10 days we were traveling.
But that's nearly 10 GB of data, and while I didn't know in advance how many photos we would take, I was pretty sure it would be a lot. In thinking about the possible problems, I decided the most important way to protect our photos was to have at least two copies of each photo in devices that were seldom, if ever, in the same physical location.
I first considered Internet backup, but after some thought, I decided - correctly, as it turned out - that it would be too troublesome to try to find Wi-Fi every day. Even when we did have Internet access, we didn't necessarily have enough time to upload hundreds of megabytes of photos. (Remember that upload throughput is often much less than download throughput.) If you were certain you could find high-speed Internet access regularly and would have time to fuss with it every day, uploading to Flickr or to a server you control could be a decent backup strategy.
I then thought about storing photos on an iPod, but none of our iPods have much free space on them normally, and although one could certainly have been wiped for the trip, it didn't seem as though it would be that easy to move photos from the cameras to the iPod. Apple's iPod Camera Connector is only $29, but it's reportedly slow, eats batteries for lunch, doesn't support raw format photos, and is compatible with only a few iPod models. (Belkin used to make two products that would enable you to store photos on an iPod, but neither appears to be available any more.) Besides, I was planning to bring my MacBook anyway, so I didn't see any particular advantage of copying photos to an iPod instead of the MacBook. If you were traveling sans laptop and with a supported iPod, it might be worth a look.
<http://store.apple.com/us/product/M9861G/C>
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2211>
What I really wanted, but was unable to find, is a very small device that would clone one SD card to another. Since SD cards are so small and inexpensive, it would be easy to have backups of each active card and to store those backups separately from the cards still in the cameras. But if such a device is available, I couldn't find it among all the services that mass-duplicate flash cards.
So I settled on a simple scheme that you can replicate as long as you bring a laptop on your trip. Every night, Tristan and I would cull the obviously bad or duplicate photos from our cameras, and then I'd connect each one in turn to my MacBook, downloading photos into individual iPhoto libraries. (Remember, hold down the Option key when launching iPhoto to create a new library or switch to a different one.) Since I'm using iPhoto '08, which has selective import and can hide already imported photos, I didn't delete the photos after importing. I'd chosen 4 GB SD cards for both our cameras, and I had another 4 GB card for mine and a secondary 2 GB card for Tristan's. Thanks to some large movies, I filled up my card about 7 days into the trip, whereas Tristan never filled up his card.
The end result was that by backing up the photos to iPhoto every night, we had one copy of every picture on the MacBook, which was usually locked in our car or hotel room during the day, and another on our cameras, which we had with us whenever we were out and about. Once my first 4 GB card filled up, I gave it to Tonya to carry in her purse, which she wore around her waist the entire time.
Had the MacBook been stolen from our car or hotel room, we wouldn't have lost any photos, and had one or both of our cameras been stolen or damaged during the day, we would have lost only the photos taken that day. The whole scheme took only a few extra minutes each night, which was extremely welcome while on vacation, and as an added bonus, it was easy to send a couple of images back to our families via email every few days using iPhoto's email capabilities.
Here are a few photos of us on the trip (Tristan took the first three; I took the fourth):
Adam and Tonya in front of the portcullis at Castell Coch
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-07/Adam-and-Tonya-at-Castell-Coch.jpg>
Tonya on the walls of the medieval town of Conwy
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-07/Tonya-at-Conwy.jpg>
Adam in the ruins of the castle at Rhuddlan (and be sure to check out our buddy Jeff Porten's Photoshop riff on it too)
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-07/Adam-at-Rhuddlan.jpg>
<http://www.jeffporten.com/?p=875>
Tristan in a doorway on the walls of Conwy
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-07/Tristan-at-Conwy.jpg>
ToC
July 18, 2008
Audio: <http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm071808d.mp3>
Text: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/07/18/04>
When the Associated Press busted a little-known website for posting excerpts from AP stories, the blogosphere responded with indignation. After all, appropriating content with a link back to its source is common practice. Media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan looks at the ongoing battle between blogs and the mainstream media.
BOB GARFIELD: A few months ago, the Associated Press busted a website called The Drudge Retort, not to be confused with the more famous Drudge Report, for doing what countless websites do, hosting short excerpts from and linking to, stories by the Associated Press.
Though reaction in the blogosphere was fast and furious, Drudge Retort owner Rogers Cadenhead did take down the posts. The AP told him that he could repost them if he made some alterations. Those weren't made public, but he declined.
That was the end of that particular skirmish, but the AP didn't announce any kind of guidelines for use of their material and the battle over copyright and fair use on the Web rages on.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity, says mainstream news organizations have largely retreated on this issue.
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: For years there have been sort of little hints that news organizations were going to take some action about this. Back in the beginning of this decade, there were a number of efforts by papers like The New York Times and The L.A. Times to sort of cleanse discussion sites of their content.
But, you know, pretty soon the lawyers for those organizations realized that they were pretty much causing more trouble than it was worth. Cash value of this behavior in an individual sense is not very much.
BOB GARFIELD: So AP, a juggernaut, takes on a website that, you know, has like 8,500 users. What's going on here?
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: You know, the AP is, I think, legitimately concerned that its clients, that pick up and pay for AP content, are perhaps being displaced by these news aggregator sites, places where one can go to find a bunch of interesting AP stories. So AP's lawyers were very interested in making an example out of this guy, carving out policy for how bloggers should actually handle copyrighted material like this.
In this case, AP is sort of standing in for the traditional news industry in general. You know, AP has a stake in the financial health of newspapers in Detroit and Tulsa and Sacramento as well as the health of Yahoo News.
BOB GARFIELD: The Internet has taken [LAUGHS] a very liberal view of what constitutes fair use. I mean, there is a body of thought that all content wants to be free, which essentially ignores ownership rights of any kind. I'm curious to know what you think a proper balance should be.
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: You know, you pick up just enough to make your point. You pick up enough text to get to the gist of the story to which you're referring. You pick up the controversial part of a statement that you want to criticize. You make sure to embed it within a larger conversation of commentary. And all of that is classic fair use.
So most bloggers in most situations are actually, whether they know it or not, behaving according to the core principles of fair use. And that's because fair use really does ultimately depend on common sense industry standards.
BOB GARFIELD: I want to ask you about AP's hard line position. I gather it has softened somewhat since the controversy originally erupted.
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: Late last month, they ended up reaching some sort of agreement through which no one will sue anybody, fortunately, and no one will therefore, you know, be out a ton of money regardless of the settlement.
But also, I think, just as importantly to everybody, no court will decide what is fair use in the blogosphere, and that, you know, that was one of those things that no side could predict the result of, so everyone's sort of relieved in that sense.
But what's really interesting is it seems from all that I've read coming out of that agreement, that what AP would really like is for bloggers to refrain from quoting the headline and the first paragraph of AP stories; in other words, that lead paragraph, in sort of Journalism 101 terms, the nut graph.
AP seems to be saying that the basic facts of the story in its simplest possible language are what is valuable of the story. But, in fact, copyright doesn't protect facts or ideas, ever, so you end up in this weird paradoxical situation where AP is trying to protect what is actually least protectable about what it does.
BOB GARFIELD: This whole issue gets to the odd symbiosis between mainstream media and the blogosphere, because the media needs the blogosphere to create more audience and the blogosphere needs the mainstream media to have the raw material upon which to aggregate, fulminate, bloviate. But in order for that to happen, the raw material has to have a business model attached to it.
Do you believe that the AP really is in jeopardy from the Drudge Retorts of the world?
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: We're starting to get a sense, at this point, 10, 12 years into the age of the World Wide Web, that there's no zero sum here; that, in fact, there are ways that your paid for, ad supported work can echo through the free media spaces and benefit you, and there certainly can be huge leaks in the system that can perhaps detract from revenue you thought you deserved at some point.
But, you know, it's not simple arithmetic, and we're still sort of feeling our way through it.
BOB GARFIELD: Okay, Siva. Thank you, as always.
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: Well, thanks for having me on again.
BOB GARFIELD: Siva Vaidhyanathan is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity, and a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia.
[Editor's Note: This story points up a very important fact, that the real work of informing the public is done by the print reporters on the street, those who have the time, resources and support to dig for however long it takes to get the story. Most television and Internet news sources are really derivative, mere echo chambers for information whose inital source came from print journalism. The attack by investors for ever more profit is a direct attack on an informed citizenry. In the story that followed this one in the July 18th edition of "On The Media," it was stated that "Most readers are settling for smaller papers, fewer reporters and less coverage. But Keith Hemstead is a newspaper reader who won't settle for less, and he's suing his paper to try and save it. ... Attorney [and former newspaper reporter] Keith Hempstead recently filed a lawsuit against his local paper, The News and Observer, and its parent company, McClatchy Newspapers, after they laid off 70 employees and announced cuts to the news pages. He says he's mad, and he's not going to take it any more. 'I'm suing because I'm upset with the state of the newspaper industry in general, and I feel like I can represent subscribers to the various McClatchy newspapers that are frankly upset with the state of the industry and how it's being run. ... The charge in this case is fraud. ... They are destroying their principle product. And if they are hoping that they will be able to adapt to the Internet age with a new business model, then they are deceiving themselves, because by the time they are able to come to a new business model, they will no longer have any reporters to actually cover the news. It boggles the mind that these great businesses are destroying themselves from within. And I realized that most of those people who work in these newspapers are afraid to speak up because their job might be next. Someone has to speak out for them.'"]
<http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/07/18/05>
<http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2008/07/18>
<http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2008/08/15>
ToC
Setting up a home server running an open-source operating system is a popular and useful activity. Useful in what ways, you may ask. You could use it to run a website, collect and send e-mail messages, store your OpenID credentials or serve your music around the home.
As you can guess, we have a great many tutorials on Webmonkey for getting the most out of that machine in your closet. But here are some guidelines for the hardware side of it.
This article is a wiki. Got extra advice? Log in and add it.
<http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Set_Up_a_Home_Server#What_you.27ll_need>
ToC
by Paul Thurrott
URL: <http://www.wininformant.com/>
Storage maker Samsung revealed this week that it is talking to Microsoft about ways to improve the performance of Windows Vista on Samsung's solid state drives (SSDs), a new type of no-moving-parts storage device that is replacing hard drives in low-capacity devices and computers. SSDs were supposed to be the holy grail of mobile computing, offering better performance and battery life, but Samsung has complained this year that Windows Vista runs poorly when installed on its drives. (Coincidentally or not, Vista runs fine on other companies' SSDs.) Samsung says it would like to help Microsoft optimize Vista for the unique characteristics of its drives, which fetch and cache data differently than traditional hard drives. Regardless of this work, SSDs remain too expensive to go mainstream just yet, and their relatively tiny storage capacities--up to 128 GB--are holding back adoption as well.
After years of false starts, and half-hearted efforts from Microsoft (like Windows XP x64), it looks like 64-bit versions of Windows are finally starting to sell in appreciable numbers. According to Microsoft, the installed base of Windows Vista x64 editions has more than tripled in the US in the last three months (i.e. the most recent quarter), and more than doubled worldwide. In June, 20 percent of all Vista PCs hitting the Windows Update service were x64 versions, up from 3 percent in March. That's a huge jump all of a sudden, given that Vista shipped concurrently in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions in November 2006. How big is that? Well, there are probably as many people using x64 versions of Windows as there are Mac users. That's how big it is. And its apparently growing at quite a clip.
And I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief at that one. At its annual analysts meeting, Microsoft execs reiterated that Windows 7 will ship "three years from general availability of Windows Vista," or in very early 2010. Put even more simply, Microsoft has yet to ever change the estimated ship date for Windows 7, even once.
Take that, iCabal: Microsoft is now selling Vista at a rate of 20 million units a month, a figure that is approximately equal to the total actual number of Mac OS X users worldwide. And they do it. Every. Single. Month. So I assume this will end all of the babbling about Vista being a failure: This thing is a mass market success of epic proportions. And it's just getting bigger.
ToC
by Kevin Hisel
When my old, tried-and-true bookmark sync program, "Bookmark Sync and Sort" went belly-up with Firefox 3 (and little hope that it will be updated soon) I went looking for an alternative. I found Foxmarks (<http://www.foxmarks.com/>).
This bookmark sync-er (like most of them) allows you to have the same exact bookmarks on any number of computers and automagically synchronizes them without pesky upload/download cycles. You can still choose the manual method but Foxmarks' strength is that it works in the background synchronizing all your computers without you having to lift a finger.
Add a bookmark and it's added to all your Firefox installations--delete a bookmark and poof it's gone from all your computers.
Another nice feature is that having your own FTP site is not a requirement (like Bookmark Sync and Sort). Foxmarks stores your bookmarks on their password-protected centralized server. That of course could be a deal killer for some privacy-oriented users so user beware but the program does allow you to use your own server if you are concerned about that.
Overall, Foxmarks is one of those perfect, little programs that does just one thing, does it well and gets the hell out of your way.
ToC
by James Kendrick
URL: <http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/07/vista-tuning-gu.html>
You have probably seen any number of articles on the web and in print magazines that tell you how to optimize or tune Windows Vista to provide better performance for providing a better user experience. Vista does a lot of things in the background and most of these articles involve turning off some of those background tasks or services as Microsoft calls them so that they are not hogging resources. Vista can be improved through this method but it is not something that the uninitiated should start doing willy-nilly as you can really hose things up in a big way by doing them incorrectly. That is why Microsoft has jumped into the tuning game and released their own Vista Performance and Tuning Guide. It is available as a download through the Microsoft site (<http://tinyurl.com/5wyq8e>) and will guide you through the most common changes you can make to Vista to get better performance, especially out of computers with borderline components such as mobile PCs. Give it a try and see how it works for your setup.
ToC
by Christopher Vendemio
URL: <http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/07/21/microsoft-releases-windows-home-server-power-pack-1>
Microsoft has just released Power Pack 1 for their Windows Home Server software. Similar to a service pack for other versions of Windows, the Power Pack includes a number of bug fixes and improvements designed to enhance the overall experience the consumer has with the software. The highlighted changes listed are as follows:
- Support for home computers that are running Windows Vista x64 editions
- Backup of Home Server shared folders
- Improvements to remote access
- More efficient power consumption
- Improved performance
Additionally, Power Pack 1 also includes for the bug described in KB Article 946676 (<http://support.microsoft. com/kb/946676/>) in which files could possibly become corrupted on a Windows Home Server computer that contains more than one hard drive.
If you have Windows Update set to "Automatic", Power Pack 1 will be downloaded automatically and installed for you. The setup file can also be manually downloaded from Microsoft's website.
Link: Description of Windows Home Server Power Pack 1:
- <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944289>
Download: Download Windows Home Server Power Pack 1:
- <http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1a6aef46-db57-401f-814f-6efa26e7a1e8&DisplayLang=en>
by Paul Thurrott
URL: <http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99893/windows-vista-they-like-it.html>
Not surprisingly, Microsoft's recent "blind taste test" of Windows Vista has yielded the kind of PR bonanza that Microsoft couldn't beg, borrow or steal just a few weeks ago. This week, the company released a slew of videos showing some of the 140 consumers videotaped in San Francisco using Vista for the first time. But the users weren't told they were using Vista, as they were selected specifically because they believed that Vista wasn't any good. Instead, these people believed they were using a future Windows version, codenamed Windows "Mojave."
The comments made by these individuals are emblematic of the problems Microsoft now faces when it tries to market Vista to a world that, apparently, has already made up its mind about the OS. "I heard negative things; I never tried it myself," one woman says. "I wouldn't touch the thing." "It's horrible, it has so many problems." "I've heard nothing but bad things about Vista, really." On and on it goes. On a scale from 1 to 10, the average pre-rating for Windows Vista was 4.4, Microsoft says.
Then, the users were shown "Mojave" and walked through (Vista) features like backup and restore, parental controls, recording TV, and making DVD movies. The comments changed dramatically "Wow!" "I like that security feature." (Breathlessly) "That's great." "It's awesome." "Really cool." "It's really impressive." "It's totally different from what I heard it would be like." "It's an awesome program, but you have to see it for yourself." The average rating after the hands-on demonstration was 8.5. "Many would have rated it higher, but they wanted more time to play with it themselves," Microsoft notes.
Most tellingly, perhaps, not one of the 140 participants rated Vista lower than their initial pre-rating after having actually used the OS. And fully 94 percent of respondents rated Vista more highly.
The best part of this experiment, of course, is when the participants were told that they were really using Windows Vista. "Really?" one man asks, incredulously. Mouths literally drop. Laughter ensues. "Son of a gun," one man says. "You got me."
Perhaps. Or perhaps it was Apple with its often questionable anti-Vista advertising. Perhaps it was the under-qualified but pontificating tech pundits who bashed Vista incessantly. Or maybe it was, to be fair, Microsoft's months of silence on this issue. By doing nothing for so long, Microsoft has only exacerbated the problem.
Criticisms aside, Microsoft is finally fighting back. Finally. Turns out, all it had to do--go figure--is show people what Vista is really like. What a concept.
You can check out the videos on the Mojave Experiment Web site (<http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/>).
ToC
by Paul Thurrott
August 4, 2008
URL: <http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99931/intel-details-next-gen-larrabee-microprocessor.html>
Microprocessor giant Intel on Monday provided the first details of its next microprocessor architecture, codenamed Larrabee, which will combine multiple processor cores with graphics processing functionality. The first Larrabee processors will appear in late 2009 or early 2010, Intel says.
"Larrabee is expected to kick start an industry-wide effort to create and optimize software for the dozens, hundreds, and thousands of cores expected to power future computers," Intel says. "Intel has a number of internal teams, projects and software-related efforts underway to speed the transition, but the tera-scale research program has been the single largest investment in Intel's technology research and has partnered with more than 400 universities, DARPA and companies such as Microsoft and HP to move the industry in this direction."
Intel describes the Larrabee processor family as being "many-core" chips that will utilize an array of many processors, probably 16 to 48 cores per chip at the start. (Today's PCs typically utilize microprocessors with 2 or maybe 4 processor cores.) But because the Larrabee chips will be based on the family x86 processor instruction set used by today's PCs and servers, the chip will be backwards compatible with today's software.
Intel says that initial Larrabee sales will target high-end markets such as gaming, 3D animation, and the like, and will support popular multimedia libraries like DirectX and OpenGL. It will compete with dedicated graphics chipset products from companies such as NVIDIA and ATI, the latter of which is owned by Intel's chief competitor, AMD.
Intel says, however, that integrating high-end graphics functionality into the microprocessor has many advantages, including a central store of memory cache that can minimize delays associated with physically disparate chips. And Larrabee will feature a unique ring-based data pathway that will further enhance performance, according to the company.
Intel will release a whitepaper describing Larrabee further at the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference on August 12 in Los Angeles. But the company says this processor generation represents the biggest shift in mainstream processors in over a decade.
ToC
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Kevin Hisel for submitting all the articles above in this section of the newsletter.]
ToC
from Jon Bjerke
[Editor's Note: Below are the items of interest sent in by Jon Bjerke in the last couple of months. Thanks, Jon.]
Paul Thurrott, <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
My review of Firefox 3 is now available on the SuperSite for Windows.
- <http://ct.email.windowsitpro.com/rd/cts?d=33-9201-794-208-24229-931825-0-0-0-1-2-207>
- <www.winsupersite.com/reviews/firefox3.asp>
- <http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9128&tag=nl.e589>
- <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080617-firefox-3-exceeds-a-million-downloads.html>
- <http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147277/firefox_3_vulnerability_found.html>
- <http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,147112/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>
- <http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147294/red_hat_summit_panel_who_won_ooxml_battle.html>
- <http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/06/14/google-dumps-firefox-browser-sync/>
[Jon's Comment: "Guess I will have to switch to Foxmarks."]
- <http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2219471/dell-charging-downgrade-xp>
- <http://bink.nu/news/reliability-and-performance-update-is-available-for-windows-vista-sp1.aspx>
- <http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147591/vista_service_pack_patched.html>
- <http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,147675/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>
- <http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2219920/adobe-issues-critical-fix>
- <http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2612&tag=nl.e550>
- <http://www.pcworld.com/article/148419/intels_quadcore_mobile_chip_coming_next_month.html>
- <http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148236/rambus_sues_nvidia.html>
- <http://www.pcworld.com/article/148253/fcc_may_prohibit_comcast_traffic_management.html>
- <http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9584_22-211104.html?tag=nl.e550>
- <http://apnews.myway.com//article/20080717/D91VRKP00.html>
- <http://www.wininsider.com/news/?11505>
- <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html>
- <http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=1102>
- <http://government.zdnet.com/?p=3907>
- <http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_to_slipstream_windows_xp_sp3_and_vista_sp1>
- <http://www.pcworld.com/article/149741/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>
ToC
WServerNews, Vol. 13, #25 - Jun 23, 2008 - Issue #679
URL: <http://www.wservernews.com/archives/wservernews-20080623.html>
Huh? Yes, they exist for real. I was trapped in one this week. No, I'm not talking aliens and tin foil hats. However, to my great surprise, tin foil does play a roll in this story. And no, I'm not smoking lunch either. To start off with, I will disclose here that I went to see a live Eddie Izzard show on Tuesday, which tells you something about my warped sense of humor.
The other thing you need to know is that since about a year I ditched the Jag and I drive a Toyota Camry Hybrid. I live 4 miles from work, so I go to the gas station about once a month. I never took the Camry to downtown Tampa until this week. And that is where I got into a 'dead zone'.
I park the Camry, and press the ON/OFF button to shut down the engine. So far so good. Next, I get out and use the wireless key fob to lock the car. No luck. Get back in, try to get it started. Error message: "Cannot Detect Key". Car sits in park and is totally dead. I can only lock it manually with the hidden little key in the fob. Call the Toyota Dealership for tech support (this vehicle is basically 30 computers on wheels).
They make me do a few things, but conclude that the battery in the key fob is probably dead. "Call your roadside assistance" was the advice. OK, I get the car towed to the dealership and after the show, I grab a taxi home. Cost? $150 plus the Izzard ticket so I'm over 200 bucks out of pocket. Great show by the way, the man is hi-la-rious.
Next day I call the dealership. They tell me, "Sir your car is fine, it worked when we started it here, and we tried 4 times. You can come pick it up any time". I'm asking customer service: "but, but, but... what caused this?" And then she said, "yeah, it's funny, I had the same problem with some one else this morning, identical car and identical spot in downtown Tampa."
And then the penny finally dropped! I remembered an article a few months back in the Saint Petersburg Times about cars not behaving in two spots in the USA: Around the Empire State Building in New York, and downtown Tampa. Focused electronic interference caused car alarms to go off, kill switches to kick in, cars not starting and similar problems. The suspected reason?
Anything from GPS tracking systems to TV satellites to other cars' alarm systems could be responsible, said Robert Martin, who owns Alarmtek Auto Alarm, a Tampa-based online auto security business. "It could be a combination of all those things downtown," he said. "If you're getting blanket radiation from another frequency, you could be in a field that nullifies the wavelengths used to operate your car's alarm."
Apparently, this also causes Toyotas to lose contact with the key fob and since there is no way to bypass that, you are up the creek without a paddle. But here comes the kicker. The Toyota Dealership Customer Service Rep calls me back and states: "If you hold some tin foil or even a tin can above the key fob, this should not happen". I swear, I'm not making this up! But I'm sure as heck not going to drive to Tampa and try that out. As the story unfolds, I'll keep you updated (I asked Toyota for a refund of my expenses). In the mean time, here is a link to the SP Times article of April 22 that proves I'm not entirely off my rocker. There are probably more of these 'Electronic Bermuda Triangles', not yet identified!
<http://www.wservernews.com/6VQGDU/080623-Tampa-Triangle>
ToC
Paul Thurrott, news editor, <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
URL: <http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99575/microsoft-releases-windows-server-2008-hyper-v-to-manufacturing.html>
More than a month before its expected ship date, Microsoft today released its Windows Server 2008-based virtualization solution, Hyper-V, to manufacturing. This product rollout does not include a related product, Microsoft Hyper-V, which is a standalone version of the company's virtualization technology that doesn't include Server 2008. Instead, the rollout includes the versions that are bundled directly with Server 2008. Currently, a prerelease version of Hyper-V is included with that product.
"This week we are releasing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to manufacturing," Microsoft Senior Product Manager Jeff Woolsey told me in a recent briefing. "We are meeting our commitment to ship this technology within 180 days of Windows Server 2008, so we're about one and a half months early. The overwhelming amount of feedback we've gotten from various channels tells us we've bet the quality bar. We've got numerous customers running Hyper-V live in production, and key Microsoft Web infrastructure is already running on Hyper-V as well."
Woolsey said that with Hyper-V being finalized this week, the company was ready to talk performance. And the results were much better than expected. "We've seen substantial performance increases since the beta, especially around networking and storage," he reported, citing independent performance analysis from companies such as Intel and Q Logic. Hyper-V is able to achieve between 88 and 100 percent of the performance of physical server systems with regards to saturating I/O on iSCSI and fibre channel-based storage, according to these tests. And the technology delivers linear scalability for network traffic and disk I/O when you move from two- to four-socket systems. For its own part, Microsoft tested Exchange Server 2007 on Hyper-V and found that virtualization doesn't change the install or best practices requirements, meaning that companies will be able to virtualize their messaging servers without any onerous extra requirements.
In addition to the performance improvements, Microsoft has made a number of other Hyper-V gains since the beta. The technology now supports nearly 50 guest OSs, which are the systems that are run in a virtualized state within Hyper-V. These include all variants of Windows XP with SP2 (including x64) and SP3, all variants of Vista with SP1 (x64 and x86), all variants of Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008, Windows Server 2000 with SP4, and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with SP1 or SP2.
Additionally, Microsoft is reporting that key portions of its internal infrastructure and public-facing Web properties are already running on pre-release versions of Hyper-V, and the company will be switching more over to the technology over time. Currently, both the MSDN and TechNet Web sites, each of which average more than 2 million hits per day, are running fully virtualized under Hyper-V.
I'll have a more detailed report about the Hyper-V release to manufacturing (RTM) soon on the SuperSite for Windows. My understanding is that Server 2008 customers who wish to upgrade to the final release will be able to do so through a Web download in the near future, though Hyper-V will likely end up on Windows Update as well.
ToC
by Paul Thurrott
URL: <http://www.wininformant.com/>
An often irreverent look at some of the week's other news ...
For a few weeks now, billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been circling the Yahoo! board of directors like a vulture waiting for its next meal to take its first staggering step toward death. But this week, he upped the ante on his attempt to oust the Yahoo! board by asking Microsoft to wait on any other potential deals until his August 1 showdown with Yahoo! On that date, Yahoo! will hold its delayed annual shareholder meeting, at which time all the board members are up for re-election. Icahn is hoping to replace Yahoo! cofounder and CEO Jerry Yang (with "a talented and competent CEO") and all the other board members. If he's successful, he hopes to get Microsoft back to the acquisition bargaining table. I'll give the guy this much: He's got moxie.
Speaking of Yahoo!, everyone's favorite Internet punching bag this week announced a corporate reorganization that centralizes product development, prompting me to wonder aloud, "Yahoo develops products?" Basically, the company is splitting into three groups: global product strategy, sales operations and publishing, and data storage. I'll avoid the obvious "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" comment and ... oh heck, no I won't.
I don't know why this is still an ongoing concern, but Microsoft this week reiterated that it plans to ship Windows 7, Windows Vista's successor, in early 2010. The latest affirmation of this long-ago-resolved question came via a letter sent by Microsoft's Senior Vice President Bill Veghte to customers. In the letter, Veghte promised to "deliver Windows 7 approximately three years after the January 2007 general availability launch date of Windows Vista." He said the non-revelation was made because customers had asked the company to be more predictable about its OS releases. Seriously, I can't imagine how much clearer this could be.
This week, Microsoft purchased a company called Powerset for a cool $100 million, hoping to capitalize on the company's natural language search technology. Powerset is apparently a big deal in the search-engine world, which is to say it's really exciting to the three guys who know anything about it. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine World said that Powerset is different from traditional search engines. "[Powerset's] technology reads and comprehends each word on a page," he wrote. "It looks at each sentence. It understands the words in each sentence and how they relate to each other. It works out what that sentence really means, all the facts that are being presented. This means it knows what any page is really about. In lieu of a better phrase, call it an 'understanding engine'." All I understand is that if you're looking for a place for search-related technology to die, you couldn't pick a better home than Microsoft.
Todd Bishop of the Seattle PI has found another excellent internal
Microsoft email message, this one from Bill Gates, in which he chews
out various underlings in 2003 for failings at the company's Web site.
And once again, the blogosphere has gotten exactly the wrong message,
chortling over the notion that the world's biggest geek couldn't find
a particular download on Microsoft's Web site. (Hardy-har-har.) That's
not what this is about, children, and I have to be honest here, I'm
getting tired of explaining this kind of thing. Say what you will
about Gates--I have, obviously--but what this email message
demonstrates is that the guy cares about the customer experience.
Anyone who's not celebrating that, well, is kind of an idiot. Sorry.
By the way, Gates's response to this whole episode was classic, too.
He said, "There's not a day that I don't send a piece of email like
that piece of email. That's my job." Exactly. You can read the full
message on the Seattle PI Web site.
blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp
Intel reportedly has decided not to upgrade most of its 80,000 PCs to Windows Vista, and you can imagine the twittering that announcement caused among the Vista-hating iCabal. There's just one problem (isn't there always?): Intel always rolls out new OSs late. In fact, Windows watcher Ed Bott reports on his ZDNet blog that Intel in 2002 rolled out Windows 2000 across its 80,000 PCs, instead of Windows XP, which was a year old at the time. So, this is exactly the same thing. Exactly. The. Same.
ToC
Paul Thurrott, news editor, <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
URL: <http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99817/apple-sells-25-million-macs-in-quarter.html>
Maybe Apple should have left the word "Computer" in its name after all: The Cupertino consumer electronics firm sells lots of iPods and iPhones, but once again the Macintosh computer line bolstered Apple's bottom line. Apple sold 2.5 million Macs in the most recent quarter, raising its worldwide market share to 3.5 percent. But Apple's share in the United States is even more impressive, about 7.8 percent, though that number is harder to calculate because Apple doesn't break down sales in that fashion. Overall sales of the Mac are growing at more than twice the rate of the wider PC industry.
"We're proud to report the best June quarter for both revenue and earnings in Apple's history," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in what is becoming a familiar refrain. "We set a new record for Mac sales, we think we have a real winner with our new iPhone 3G, and we're busy finishing several more wonderful new products to launch in the coming months."
Apple reported a profit of $1.07 billion on revenues of $7.46 billion in the quarter ending June 30. These numbers represent year-over-year growth of 31 percent and 38 percent, respectively.
While Apple was busy growing its Mac business at a healthy 41 percent increase in year-over-year sales, its other businesses were flat or maturing. Sales of the iPod portable media player grew just 12 percent to 11 million units, whereas sales of the iPhone were a paltry 717,000, due in small part to anticipation of the new iPhone 3G model, which went on sale in July. But iPhone sales had already been declining quarter over quarter.
As always, Apple offered a conservative outlook for the coming quarter, and it's unclear why financial analysts continue to fall for this well-oiled bit of fakery. But Jobs' comments about "wonderful new products" suggest that the company is getting ready to unveil some long-overdue product upgrades to its notebook computers especially. That could mean a big bump in sales, yet again, for the Mac in the coming quarters.
More problematic for the company, perhaps, are ongoing concerns about Steve Jobs' health. The mercurial CEO looked gaunt and sickly at a recent Apple event, raising new questions about whether his cancer had returned. After previously explaining away his appearance as a reaction to a common bug, the company this week tersely noted that "Steve's health is a private matter." But this statement has only caused more concern that something is wrong. Not to be crass, but Jobs is Apple's greatest asset and it's understandable that shareholders, fans, and analysts would want to know about the health of the company's cofounder and technological shepherd.
ToC
Reading the August 2008 Linux Journal and found WiiLi
ToCYou guessed it. Linux for the Wii.
More information at <http://www.wiili.org>.
I know one guy who likes to try out Linux on game machines and the Wii is the best interface to a game that has been along so far IMO.
I think of getting the additional use from the game machine as a desktop or portable is great.
Bought it for the headline about Billix replacing CDs "Kiss Install CDs Goodbye". This is the upgrade to the idea of the "Bootable Business Card CD". A set of tools including DSL with various net installs, Memtest86, Ntpwd, and DBAN a disk wiper utility. Put it on a very cheap 256 MB USB thumbdrive and you have an administrative tool kit. Larger drive can add functionality or you can store files on them as designed. Bill Childers is the man behind the compilation of tools and the author of the article.
The article provides tips for trouble shooting the Billix you are trying to set up.
Billix Project Page
- <http://sourceforge.net/projects/billix/>
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#939/04-Aug-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9718>
Apple has released iTunes 7.7.1 with criminally terse release notes saying that it includes "fixes to improve stability and performance." As a result, it's nearly impossible to figure out what has changed, although some trawling through Apple's discussion forums yielded additional information. Two of the bug fixes below were noted by an pseudonymous Apple employee, which gives them a certain imprimatur, but for the rest, the best we can do is to offer user reports that have only anecdotal support.
<http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7759172#7759172>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9705>
<http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7550414#7550414>
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7760703#7760703>
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7760835#7760835>
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7760565#7760565>
iTunes 7.7.1 is a 48 MB download available via Software Update or from the iTunes download page.
<http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/>
ToC
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>, Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#939/04-Aug-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9720>
Twenty-four days after the rest of the industry mobilized to patch a serious flaw in the domain name system (DNS) protocol that's core to the functioning of the Internet, Apple has at long last released Security Update 2008-005, which includes its fix for the regular and server flavors of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard. If 24 days doesn't sound like a long time, note that Apple was notified privately on 05-May-08, nearly 3 months ago, and this is for a vulnerability with significant exposure that had the potential to be disastrous for Apple's business and hosting customers, as amply described in an opinion piece for Macworld by Mac system administrator John Welch.
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2647>
<http://www.macworld.com/article/134793/2008/07/apple_dns.html>
This update also repairs the ARDAgent flaw first reported 18-Jun-08 that enables someone either with access to a computer as a regular user, or who could convince someone to download and run software containing a Trojan horse, to gain root privileges on the system.
(For details on the DNS flaw and Apple's delayed response, see "Apple Fails to Patch Critical Exploited DNS Flaw," 2008-07-24. For more about how the ARDAgent vulnerability could be exploited, see "How to Protect Yourself from the New Mac OS X Trojans," 2008-06-25.)
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9706>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9665>
You can download Security Update 2008-005 via Software Update (the easiest approach), or as standalone downloads for all versions of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (65 MB), for the desktop versions of Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger for PowerPC (88 MB) and Intel (143 MB), and for Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger Server for PowerPC (135 MB) and Intel (180 MB). While the Leopard update doesn't explicitly state it works with Leopard Server, we checked Software Update on TidBITS's Xserve running 10.5.4 Leopard Server and were prompted to install the same-sized and -named update as on a MacBook that uses Leopard's 10.5.4 desktop release.
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2008005leopard.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2008005ppc.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2008005intel.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2008005serverppc.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2008005serverintel.html>
Those of you operating DNS servers via any version of Tiger or Leopard should immediately back up your current systems, make sure they have a good point to revert to in the case of failure, and install this security update. The same goes (with fewer potential repercussions) for all other Tiger and Leopard users.
Although we haven't tested this update in a production situation where we're answering DNS queries from servers all over the Internet, the update seems to have worked just fine on all the systems we've updated, including Leopard Server and a regular Leopard installation. Apple's security updates have a generally good track record in performing as expected and not introducing new complications.
Tiger users will see Internet Security Consortium BIND (the DNS software Apple relies on) updated to 9.3.5-P1, and Leopard systems will move to 9.4.2-P1. The latest version of BIND software is 9.5.0-P1, but Apple hasn't incorporated this update into Leopard.
Owners of systems running Mac OS X 10.3 Panther or earlier releases are still vulnerable, whether the systems are acting as recursive DNS servers that handle lookups from queries on the same computer or others, or merely as clients. The flaw is likely to be exploited on servers, but clients are still vulnerable. Servers can, at least, turn off recursion and forward requests to patched DNS servers, dramatically reducing the current risk profile. We'll write more about this as we understand the scope of the concern for ordinary users of Panther and earlier systems. While there may not be many such people - The Omni Group's operating system statistics show 57 percent of their users on Tiger, 42 percent on Leopard, and a vanishingly small 0.3 percent using other versions of Mac OS X - the last thing the Mac community needs is a small group of older systems being used as a springboard for new types of malware.
<http://update.omnigroup.com/>
Security Update 2008-005 repairs a number of other serious-sounding flaws in Tiger and Leopard that don't appear to have been exploited yet. As noted earlier, the update closes a hole that allowed the Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) daemon software, even when not running, to be used as a conduit to run a script that would allow a local user or malicious software installed by a local user to gain root access to a system.
The fix for ARDAgent (and similar programs) involves a change in the Open Scripting Architecture that prevents programs with system-level privileges from loading scripting additions, thus stopping attackers from using such software as a wedge for gaining system control.
The update also fixes a Disk Utility error that happens when you use Repair Permissions in 10.4.11. The terminal-based text editor emacs would be granted root privileges after permissions were repaired. The fix restores the correct controls within Disk Utility, but Apple doesn't state whether you should re-run the repair operation. We imagine you should, if you have other local users on a system that's running 10.4.11.
Also noteworthy is that Security Update 2008-005 installs PHP version 5.2.6 to address security flaws in the 5.2.5 release that was previously available in Leopard. PHP is widely used to power Web sites. Other potentially concerning but less-known problems were also fixed.
As usual, we'll never quibble with Apple releasing a security update, particularly one that fixes such serious vulnerabilities. But put bluntly, Apple blew it on this one - this update should have been released on 08-Jul-08 when the rest of the industry released their patches. Yes, Apple was busy with the iPhone 3G, iPhone software 2.0, and App Store launches, along with the .Mac-to-MobileMe transition (which itself turned into a debacle). It doesn't matter - Apple had plenty of time and all they had to do was package up and perform normal stress testing of new versions of BIND. The BIND installation shows a creation date of 25-Jul-08, meaning that Apple didn't finalize its update for testing until just a week ago.
Trust takes time to acquire, but it can be lost quickly. Apple has made much of Mac OS X's security and, after a slightly rocky initial start with the earliest versions of Mac OS X, has been doing a generally good job of responding in a reasonably timely fashion to security threats. But to delay the release of the fix for such an important vulnerability was simply negligent, and it both infuriated Macintosh system administrators and damaged Apple's reputation in the enterprise market.
ToC
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#939/04-Aug-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9721>
The SANS Institute installed and tested out Apple's fix for the underlying flaw in the domain name system (DNS) protocol, and found that a patched copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (the desktop version, not Leopard Server) still suffers from the risky technique that makes DNS vulnerable to exploitation.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9720>
<http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4810>
This exploitation, so far, seems extremely unlikely, but we won't know how unlikely until security researcher Dan Kaminsky, the discoverer of this flaw, provides full disclosure on 06-Aug-08 in his Black Hat conference talk, "Black Ops 2008: Its (sic) the End of the Cache as We Know It."
<http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-08/bh-usa-08-schedule.html>
As Rich Mogull and I noted in "Apple Fails to Patch Critical Exploited DNS Flaw" (2008-07-24), servers are at a high risk from this DNS vulnerability. The flaw allows an attacker to send tens of thousands of fake responses for a DNS query to a server, which then poisons the server's DNS entries if the attacker matches the right pattern with their forged information before the legitimate response arrives from the DNS server for the domain that's being queried.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9706>
However, computers used by individuals without DNS server software in operation are also vulnerable to this flaw in DNS; we just don't know yet quite how vulnerable. With servers rapidly being patched worldwide, it's likely that the low-hanging fruit has largely disappeared, and attacks would then turn to clients - if clients are readily exploitable, too. Clients use stub resolvers, which forward requests for DNS answers to a full-blown, or recursive, DNS server run by their company, ISP, network provider, or co-location facility.
These clients pass their requests along, and it seems unlikely that they could be attacked directly unless an attacker had a computer on the same local network segment as the exposed system. In that case, the attacker would have a panoply of other network information poison available, and could disrupt DNS in a more efficient manner.
The DNS flaw relies on predictability in how ports are assigned to outbound requests for domain name lookups in a DNS query. An attacker forces a DNS server to look up a domain using a DNS server the attacker controls, and from that obtains the current port number being used for requests. If the ports are sequential - each query increments by one the port number used for each subsequent request - then the attacker starts sending forged requests using ports numbered just above the one it sniffed.
This is part of the question about client vulnerability: it's very hard to force a client to look up an evil domain to prime the pump because clients don't answer DNS queries to begin with, and typically aren't running mail servers which can be gamed when an attacker sends incoming email with an evil domain in the return address.
By increasing entropy - choosing a random port for each request - a patched DNS server prevents attackers from producing enough packets quickly enough to win the race with the legitimate DNS server, such that they cannot - statistically speaking - poison the DNS cache. (This is a patch, not a fix, actually; DNS itself must be overhauled to remove the fundamental weakness.)
I checked out my updated Leopard desktop system, and, sure enough, I saw precisely what SANS reported: sequential UDP ports returned in response to outbound requests, regardless of what this entails.
If you'd like to duplicate the SANS experiment, follow these steps:
sudo tcpdump | grep domain
dig tidbits.com
15:06:53.900835 IP 192.168.1.16.49229 > yourDNSserver.com.domain: 5228+ PTR? 16.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. (43)
15:06:53.947838 IP 192.168.1.16.49230 > yourDNSserver.com.domain: 48400+ PTR? 11.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. (43)
15:06:55.003628 IP 192.168.1.16.49231 > yourDNSserver.com.domain: 15730+ PTR? 7.34.232.205.in-addr.arpa. (43)
(If you don't see any results in step 4, you need to specify the network adapter with the tcpdump command. You can try en1, en2, en3, and so forth as in the following command.)
sudo tcpdump -i en1 | grep domain
In the example above, you'll notice 49229, 49230, and 49231 after "192.168.1.16". Those are the port numbers used for each request, and the fact that they're sequential shows that Leopard is still vulnerable as a DNS client.
We're not back where we started, because clients are enormously harder to attack. But it's still a hole that needs to be filled. We just won't know how deep a hole until next week.
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#939/04-Aug-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9719>
Upping the ante in the ongoing virtualization competition with Parallels, VMware has released the second public beta of VMware Fusion 2. The beta, available for free download, adds features to the Unity Mac-Windows integration technology, virtual machine snapshots to protect against problems, enhanced video capabilities and performance, and more. You can read more about it and view a demo video on VMware's Team Fusion blog.
<http://www.vmware.com/communities/content/beta/fusion/fusion2_beta2.html>
<http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/07/safer-stronger.html>
The most obvious changes in VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2 appear with Unity 2.0, which now enables application sharing between the Mac and Windows, thus letting you launch any Mac file with a Windows application. Unity 2.0 also goes beyond simple folder sharing by mirroring key folders between the two environments, such that Windows uses Mac OS X's Desktop, Documents, Music, and Pictures folders as the Desktop, My Documents, My Music, and My Pictures folders, respectively. Other Unity 2.0 improvements include custom keyboard and mouse mapping between the two environments, better reliability with shared folders, and improved copy and paste that can handle up to 4 MB of data, including styled text. Additional usability improvements include support for Leopard's Quick Look, glowing icons to indicate activity, better keyboard compatibility with Quicken and Google Earth, and better integration with Boot Camp's support for 64-bit Windows Vista.
Since many Windows virtual machines are used for testing, VMware added the capability to take, save, and manage multiple snapshots, making it easier to restore a virtual machine to a pre-damaged state. Plus, Fusion 2 can now back up virtual machines automatically at specified intervals with AutoProtect snapshots.
Video support has been improved, with support for 1080p high definition video in Windows XP and Vista, better 3D support, and the capability to switch in and out of full screen view while playing games.
Now that Apple has eased the licensing restrictions on Mac OS X Server (see "Apple to Allow Virtualization of Leopard," 2007-10-31), you can create a virtual machine containing Mac OS X Server 10.5. The beta also includes support for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, provides Unity view in Linux, and offers a Linux Easy Install that can install VMware Tools for a number of popular Linux distributions. You can also now resize virtual disks. Finally, this public beta provides experimental support for up to 4 virtual CPUs in a virtual machine and offers a command-line interface for scripting VMware Fusion.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9277>
Keep in mind that this is beta software and should not be used for mission-critical tasks. When Fusion 2 is finally released, it will be a free downloadable upgrade for all Fusion 1.x users.
ToC
by TidBITS Staff <editors@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#939/04-Aug-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9712>
<http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/aperture211.html>
<http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Aperture_2.0_lbn_z.pdf>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/lexmarkprinterdriver11.html>
reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>
June 19, 2008 - President Richard Rollins began the meeting with the usual introduction of officers.
The floor was then opened up for Questions & Answers.
Ed Serbe reported that when he upgraded from AVG 7.5 to AVG 8 Free, the new version of AVG triples his boot time on a Vista machine. AVG works on XP SP2 and above. He also gets a warning from Windows Security Center that says no firewall is active, but his is. Richard suggested he might run a root kit checker. Todd Anderson suggested that he disable Linkscanner.
Jon Bjerke reported that there's a flaw in Firefox 3 already. There have been 8 million downloads to date.
Norris Hansell brought up the dictionary function mentioned in the June newsletter.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9634>
Richard then asked "How many people have installed Service Pack 3? How many have taken it back off?" He then informed everyone there's a problem with it on AMD processor machines and the there is a Service Pack ISO on Microsoft site fixes the problem. However, he said most home users can live without Service Pack 3. It only contains a few oddball networking things and rollups.
Someone else said they were unable to connect after Service Pack 3 and Vista SP1 terminal to server. It was suggested that he check his network security settings. This has to do with the Remote Desktop/Terminal Services Client and Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol.
Todd Anderson reported that Microsoft is killing XP as of June 30th. A discussion followed.
Mark Zinzow said he doesn't like Vista for only two reasons: because of IE and dragging a program to a DOS prompt command prompt. It was suggested that he look into PowerShell which is a command prompt replacement. It needs NetFramework 2.0.
<http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell>
<http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/>
<http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/01/24/powershell-cheat-sheet.aspx>
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa973757(VS.85).aspx>
Joe Dewalt said Hamachi has came out for Leopard. It's called "LogMeIn Hamachi" now.
<https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp?lang=en>
The new iPhone is coming out on July 11th with 8 GB and 16 GB phones. Phil Wall said it was a complete replacement for Garmin hiker GPS. A discussion of cell phones followed.
Concluding the main portion of the meeting President Rollins asked what was on tap for the Mac SIG. Emil said "to beg for programs" and to review some iPhone games. For the PC SIG, Kevin Hisel said he would be giving a brief overview of the new Firefox 3. We then proceeded to our fifteen minute break.
reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>
Kevin Hisel began his presentation by noting that the new version of Firefox 3.0 had just been released on Tuesday.
Kevin said he has about 15 to 20 add-ons that he uses regularly with Firefox, so he was reluctant to upgrade. However, he noted that three quarters of his favorite add-ons have been updated already. "Autocopy" and "Bookmark Sync and Sort" as yet have not and they are deal breakers.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/383>
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2367>
Kevin said, in the new Firefox 3, the programmers have gutted rendering engine. It renders faster and is more standards compliant. Mozilla and Microsoft have committed to standards. So, Firefox 3 is more secure, faster, and has a few new features.
However, one thing he has encounter already is that his router page constantly updates and he can't enter anything.
Kevin then showed how to use the Tools/Ad-ons menu to work with Firefox's add-ons. He showed the "Search All Add-ons" window feature in Ad-ons when the "Get Ad-ons" button is selected.
Kevin explained the meaning of the green Verisign security icon in address bar when visiting certain secure sites and talked about the Enhanced Validation feature.
Kevin then ran through some of add-ons he likes. First was Glazoom. Glazoom puts a zooming tool in your Firefox toolbar so that you can easily use the new zooming features of Firefox 3.0.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6489>
Next was Forecast Fox an add-on that allows you to get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar. It's highly customizable and unobtrusive.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/398>
Next was Foxmarks. If you use Firefox on more than one computer, you can install Foxmarks on each computer, and it will work silently in the background to keep your bookmarks synchronized. It puts your bookmarks on their site and you can log in to my.foxmarks.com to manage your bookmarks from any computer.
<http://www.foxmarks.com/>
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2410>
Then came Tweak Firefox's Password Saver Without An Extension written by Ryan June 7, 2006.
<http://cybernetnews.com/2006/06/07/tweak-firefox-password-saver-without-an-extension/>
<http://tinyurl.com/322v3e>
This one provides a way to force Firefox to remember your passwords on sites that wouldn't normally allow you to store them.
Next, Firebug, an add-on for web development.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843>
Next, Sxipper, a free alternative to Roboform. Sxipper makes interacting with the Web simpler by keeping track of an unlimited number of usernames, passwords and personal information.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4865>
<http://www.roboform.com/>
While talking about upgrade deal breakers, Kevin Hopkins said one such program for him was PowerSnap on the Amiga and now Copy/Paste on the Mac. Both programs allow for multitudinous copy and paste selections. Kevin said for the PC that would be M8 Free Multi Clipboard which works with XP and Vista.
<http://m8software.com/clipboards/freeclip/freeclip.htm>
The last extension Kevin showed was MRTech Toolkit. The primary goal of this extension is to provide the tools needed to install and manage extensions and themes locally. To do this the extension provides multi-extension installation support, hacking capabilities to the Extension/Theme manager windows, features to find and troubleshoot Extensions/Themes Build, GUID and Profile information.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/421>
All in all, this goes down as another of Kevin's tremendous presentations. You absolutely had to go away from this one wanting to install something on your machine once you got home (if you didn't put it on your laptop while the show was going on). As ever, our thanks to Kevin Hisel for sharing his wealth of knowledge and experience.
ToC
reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>
The June meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, June 24, 2008, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Emil Cobb, Kevin Hopkins, Rich Hall, Joe Dewalt and Kevin Hisel.
Rich Hall: Rich reported that we had on new member join at the June meeting.
Kevin Hopkins: Kevin reported that the newsletter was mailed out this last month with an attempt to have it not grabbed by the GMail SPAM filter. The method used was successful.
Kevin also reported that he would be gone on vacation during the month of July and would be unavalable to produce the July newsletter and attend the July General and Board meetings. Substitutes would be needed to fill those editorial and reporting tasks. Kevin Hisel volunteered to send out an email notice of the July meeting, but as there were no other volunteers for the main tasks, they will go unfill for the month of July.
Emil Cobb: Emil reported that we had 22 members and one visitor in attendance at the June meeting. He noted that the Mac SIG had been an open forum and that there had been some really good questions and conversation.
Joe Dewalt: Joe said he had nothing to add, although he did talk about the plans for the City of Champaign's 150th Anniversary.
Kevin Hisel: Kevin noted he had spoken about Firefox 3 at the PC SIG. He further reported that Firefox Zoom works with Flash video but not with Flash application. This led to a discussion about videos. We wondered if anything would play Ed Serbe's CUCUG animation (CUCUG.anim in the CUCUG.lha archive on Aminet). We were unsuccessful, so we thought we'd ask Ed if he could update it for a more recent player. Ed?
ToC
The CUCUG is a not-for-profit corporation, originally organized in 1983 to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users. We've grown since then, now supporting PC, Macintosh and Linux platforms.
Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The FBC-CS is located at 1602 N. Prospect Avenue in Savoy, on the NE corner of Burwash and Prospect. To get to the the First Baptist Church from Champaign or Urbana, take Prospect Avenue south. Setting the trip meter in your car to zero at the corner of Kirby/Florida and Prospect in Champaign (Marathon station on the SW corner), you only go 1.6 miles south. Windsor will be at the one mile mark. The Savoy village sign (on the right) will be at the 1.4 mile mark. Burwash is at the 1.6 mile mark. The Windsor of Savoy retirement community is just to the south; Burwash Park is to the east. Turn east (left) on Burwash. The FBC-CS parking lot entrance is on the north (left) side of Burwash. Enter by the double doors at the eastern end of the building's south side. A map can be found on the CUCUG website at <http://www.cucug.org/meeting.html>. The First Baptist Church of Champaign is also on the web at <http://www.fbc-cs.org>.
Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.
Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by email. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.
For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):
President/WinSIG: Richard Rollins 469-2616 Vice-Pres/MacSIG: Emil Cobb 398-0149 Secretary/Editor: Kevin Hopkins 356-5026 Treasurer: Richard Hall 344-8687 Corp.Agent/Web: Kevin Hisel 406-948-1999 Linux SIG: Allen Byrne 344-5311
Email us at <http://www.cucug.org/contact/index.html>, visit our web site at <http://www.cucug.org/>, or join in our online forums at <http://www.cucug.org/starship/> .
CUCUG
912 Stratford Drive
Champaign, IL
61821-4137
