News Humor Common PC Linux Mac CUCUG
The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, June 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 June 21 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. Richard will be showing TrueCrypt, NetDrive, and AllSync in the PC SIG. The Macintosh SIG is open for anything anyone wants to bring in.
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We'd like to welcome the newest member to our group. Charles Lam (Windows PC Laptop) who joined in April, but, due to a communications glitch, didn't receive proper acknowledgement then. So, he gets it now. And this last month, it's with a great deal of pleasure we welcome back former member Paul Neubauer. Paul has been away for far too long and it's great to have him back. Welcome both.
We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Run across an interesting item or tidbit on the net? Just send the link to the editor. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.
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by Kevin Hopkins
Well, it's a little embarrassing. I thought this anniversary was going to happen in June, but actually it was in May, 1987 that I officially became the newsletter editor for CUCUG. That's twenty years ago for those that bought a computer so they wouldn't have to do the math. (I actually bought my C64 for the word processor and spell checking.) I replaced former editor Tim Sickbert (for those of you who remember Tim), and actually gave the newsletter it's name, "The Status Register." That's the section of the 6510 processor where the status flags reside monitoring the state of the machine. Seemed appropriate for a C64 club, at the time.
Anyway, there have been lots of changes in the world and the club over those twenty years. I hope the Status Register has kept you informed of them. Thanks for all your support.
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by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#882/04-Jun-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9018>
Through a trio of commercials, Apple has revealed that Friday, June 29th will be the release date of the iPhone. The ads demonstrated some of the iPhone's unique combination of capabilities, including watching video, a "glass" (key-free) keyboard, rich email, and integration with Google Maps and local results (see "iPhone Seeks to Redefine the Mobile Phone," 2007-01-15) . While each of these capabilities is available on existing smartphones and other devices, no phone combines all of them, nor offers a library of music and video anywhere as extensive as Apple's iTunes Store.
<http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8810>
It's unclear what Apple means by the June 29th release date: that the iPhone will arrive on your doorstep if you've ordered one or that you will be able to go to an Apple Store or an AT&T (formerly Cingular) corporate store to obtain one. AT&T has not yet started to accept orders for the iPhone, but I would imagine that will occur soon. AT&T recently changed the signage and other details at its many corporate stores to shed the Cingular logo and name in preparation for the iPhone launch, the company said a few weeks ago.
The advertisements confirm that an iPhone requires a two-year commitment through AT&T. Recent rumors suggested that a prepaid option would be available, but that seemed unlikely given the premium nature of the phone and the exclusivity that results from it.
The iPhone will appear in two models: a 4 GB unit for $500 and an 8 GB model for $600. The iPhone includes Wi-Fi and EDGE support, the latter being a cell data standard that runs two to three times faster than a dial-up modem, and is widely available. Pricing for Wi-Fi and EDGE plans hasn't yet been announced.
T-Mobile offers the closest competition for such a package, with $30 per month providing unlimited use of EDGE data everywhere and Wi-Fi connections at over 7,000 T-Mobile Wi-Fi hot spots in the United States.
[Editor's Note: Glenn also wrote a good piece "iPhone Receives FCC Approval" in TidBITS#880/21-May-07 <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8996> for those that might be interested.]
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Report says lower prices and emerging markets in China and India will strengthen sales. Who will capitalize?
DAVID GEORGE-COSH
From Monday's Globe and Mail
June 11, 2007 at 3:22 AM EDT
URL: <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070611.wrpcmarket11/BNStory/Technology/home>
The world's personal computing market will hit a watershed mark with one billion computers sold by the end of next year, according to a report released today by Forrester Research Inc.
Forrester vice-president Simon Yates says that emergence of consumer markets in countries such as China and India and declining prices will help drive computer sales to unprecedented growth around the world. The big question for investors will be which of the major PC manufacturers will capitalize. According to several analysts, Hewlett-Packard Co. has the edge, although Lenovo Group Ltd. could have an edge in China.
"China's the fastest growing market ... with a growth rate of 27 per cent. Based on the size of the population, the rapidly increasing wealth and the growth of the middle class, it makes them easier to reach and market to. It's obviously going to be the top market for the next while," Mr. Yates said.
Although it took roughly 27 years to hit the billion-unit mark, the wait to reach two billion will be much shorter, as Mr. Yates predicts that benchmark will occur in 2015.
"In the next 10 years, there's going to be a lot of investment in infrastructure and education and more rapid economic growth that will bring enough people into the market to buy computers," Mr. Yates said.
The boom should be great news for some of the world's largest PC companies. HP, Dell Inc.and Lenovo will be looking to capture the largest piece of the consumer pie.
For now, HP appears to be poised to retain its position as the world's top computing vendor. The company restructured itself following a tumultuous period in which chairwoman Patricia Dunn stepped down amid an alleged boardroom spying scandal.
Two years after Mark Hurd was hired as chief executive officer, HP now enjoys a 3.5-per-cent market share advantage over long-time rival Dell and its shares have risen almost 36 per cent since last year.
"HP's strength right now is in the consumer market, which is growing everywhere in the world," said Gartner Inc. analyst Mikako Kitagawa. "In the next few quarters, we fully expect HP's position to remain pretty much solid at the top."
Dell, on the other hand, has seen its revenues stagnate and market share sharply fall to its lowest level in four years. The company recently announced plans to lay off over 8,000 employees in the next year.
"It will probably take 12 to 18 months to see some positive results out of this restructuring. In the meantime, Dell won't be a threat to HP for at least another year," Ms. Kitagawa said.
Wall Street analysts expect HP to remain bullish, with 22 of 29 investors giving the company a "buy" rating. UBS analyst Benjamin Reitzes gives the stock a target of $55 (U.S.).
"With increased diversification towards higher-end segments, investments in enterprise printing, a movement toward the scalable print technology platform and momentum with its long-time laser partner, Canon, we continue to believe the company is on-track to average the high end of its targeted margin range of 14 to 15 per cent long-term," Mr. Reitzes said.
Ms. Kitagawa says that Lenovo is the likely benefactor of the flourishing Chinese market, which is expected to comprise the majority of the new PC market, with over 500 million computers to be sold within the next seven years.
"It's no question that Lenovo will be No. 1 in China. The Chinese people are proud of their market and Lenovo has a great brand image in that country. It will be difficult for any other company to compete there."
But outside of China, Ms. Kitagawa says, Lenovo has struggled. She is critical of the company for its sluggish move into the consumer market after purchasing IBM's personal computer unit in 2005.
"Their challenge is how Lenovo is going to utilize a global presence with IBM," said Ms. Kitagawa.
Ms. Kitagawa admits that it's too early to predict who will surface at the top of the volatile computing market by 2015, but that if she were to place any bets, HP looks to be the best multinational company prepared to profit in the main emerging markets of China, India, Brazil and Russia. Local competitors could also be a factor, she added.
"Local competitors in these markets have been losing market share for some time now, but the advantage that they have is they already know what the local business conditions are. For HP and Dell to penetrate those markets, they should develop stronger channel relationships with local distributors."
With China and India accounting for over 700 million new computers in the next decade, Mr. Yates says he sees both countries experiencing a growing middle-class demographic which will force them to shift to more service-based economies. Manufacturing jobs that currently exist in those regions are moving to places like Vietnam and Cambodia.
"What will likely happen over the next 10 to 15 years will help countries that struggle to compete in a global market today to create better educated people. Depending on how successful countries are, you could be looking at a much more globally competitive work force," Mr. Yates said.
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Newest Mapping Program Includes Photos Of Unwitting Subjects
URL: <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/01/tech/main2877262.shtml>
SAN FRANCISCO, June 1, 2007 -- (AP) Google Inc. bills the latest twist on its online maps as "Street View," but it looks a bit like "Candid Camera" as you cruise through the panorama of pictures that captured fleeting moments in neighborhoods scattered across the country.
In San Francisco, there's a man picking his nose on a street corner, another fellow taking out the trash and another guy scaling the outside of an apartment building, perhaps just for fun or maybe for some more sinister purpose.
Further down the highway at Stanford University, there's the titillation of a couple coeds sunbathing in their bikinis. In San Jose, there's the sad sight of a bearded man apparently sleeping - or did he just pass out? - in the shadow of a garbage can, with what appears to be an empty cup perched in front of him.
In Miami, there's a group of protesters carrying signs outside an abortion clinic. In other cities, you can see men entering adult book stores or leaving strip joints.
Potentially embarrassing or compromising scenes like these are raising questions about whether the Internet's leading search engine has gone too far in its latest attempt to make the world a more accessible - and transparent - place.
"Everyone expects a certain level of anonymity as they move about their daily lives," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group devoted to protecting people's rights on the Internet. "There is a certain 'ick' factor here."
Google is hoping to elicit "oohs and ahhs" with Street View, which was introduced on its maps for the San Francisco Bay area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami earlier this week. The Mountain View-based company already is planning to expand the service to other U.S. cities and other countries.
The feature provides high-resolution photos to enable street-level tours so users can get a more realistic, 360-degree look at places they might go or spots where they already have been. To guard against privacy intrusions, Google said all the photos were taken from vehicles driving along public streets during the past year. The photos will be periodically updated, but the company hasn't specified a timetable for doing so.
"This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street," Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn said in a statement. "Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world."
Google certainly isn't the first company to venture down this photographic avenue. Amazon.com Inc. launched a similar mapping feature in January 2005 on a search engine called A9.com. That search engine's former chief executive, Udi Manber, now works for Google. And Microsoft Corp. began displaying street-level pictures on its online maps for San Francisco and Seattle late last year.
A9's photographic maps, which were abandoned late last year, raised privacy concerns about women being seen entering domestic violence shelters.
Hoping to avoid similar complaints, Google tried to identify potentially sensitive locations by contacting the Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, much to the delight of Cindy Southworth, the group's director.
"We were thrilled that a major technology company like this reached out in this way to help protect these victims," she said.
Google also is offering a "help" button on all the street-level photos to provide a link for users to request the removal of an image that is objectionable or clearly identifies a person who doesn't want to be included in the visual tapestry. Company spokeswoman Victoria Grand said Google has fielded "very few" removal requests so far.
Eileen Diamond is hoping she can persuade Google to replace its current picture of a Miami street corner where protesters gather once a week to protest the abortions performed at A Choice For Women. The picture, still available on Google's maps Friday afternoon, includes a cluster of protesters standing outside the clinic, an image that clinic administrator Diamond worries will scare away potential patients or perhaps attract troublemakers to the facility.
"It's sort of disturbing because it's certainly not the kind of message we want to be sending out," said Diamond. "It's already very painful for our patients to come in. We want them to feel safe and protected."
As of Friday, Diamond said she was still having trouble finding the right way through Google's Web site to notify the company she would like the picture removed.
Privacy experts believe these kinds of ticklish situations are bound to arise as technology makes it increasingly easy to share pictures and video on the Internet, pitting the rights of free expression against the rights to personal privacy.
"What you have to do is balance out the perception against the reality and I think in this case, the perception is much scarier than the reality," said Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People For Internet Responsibility, a policy group.
Because Google's street-level pictures were taken in public places, the company appears to be on solid legal ground, according to both Bankston and Weinstein.
But Bankston doesn't think the law necessarily absolves Google, particularly since the company has embraced "Don't Be Evil" as its creed. He worries that some people in need of psychological or medical help won't seek treatment for fear of being caught in the cross-hairs of Google's cameras.
"There's a distinction between what Google has a legal right to do and what is the responsible thing to do," said Bankston, who believes the company should have blurred the images of unwitting pedestrians before it posted the street-level pictures. "It's a problem we as a society have to grapple with, and I think we are just now seeing the fault lines emerge."
While he thinks some of the issues raised by Google's new service are prime fodder for a healthy debate, Weinstein worries that it might inspire overly repressive laws.
"It's a tough area, but it just seems there is no way around the fact that public spaces are public spaces," Weinstein said. "You don't want to create an environment where it becomes illegal to take photos in public. It can be riskier not to be able to see something than it is to be able to see something."
[Editor's Note: My thanks to David Noreen for this contribution to the newsletter.]
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Paul Thurrott, WinInfo Short Takes
URL: <http://www.wininformant.com/>
Yahoo!'s senior executive staff had the dubious honor of appearing before a raucous crowd at the company's annual shareholder meeting. No, this wasn't the sort of love-fest you see at Apple's similar meeting, mostly because Yahoo! is tanking in the marketplace thanks to ever-stronger gains by Internet search giant Google. Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel has pledged to improve the company's ad business, search results, and move into non-online markets. What's odd about this mess is that Yahoo!'s products and services are actually quite good. It's amazing that the company isn't putting up more of a fight.
[Editor's Note: One would be remiss if one didn't point out that Terry Semel, chairman and CEO of Yahoo Inc., was recently highlighted in the recent Associated Press report "Half of American CEOs made more than $8.3M each last year".
<http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070609.wceopay0609/BNStory/robNews/home>
"Mr. Semel, whose Internet company has lagged behind Google Inc. in profit growth and stock performance, led the pack with total compensation last year of $71.7-million, according to the AP formula used to analyze those filings." To quote the article, "That's more than 2 1/2 times the $27-million in total compensation this year for the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, baseball's highest-paid player, and higher than the typical pay A-list stars like Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio earn for a movie - $20-million, plus 20 per cent of the gross box office take."
Related Links:
<http://tinyurl.com/yt57eq>
<http://tinyurl.com/2guu4x>
<http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06082007/profile.html>
This might go some way in explaining why the Yahoo shareholders were upset, which Mr. Thurrott's piece failed to mention.]
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by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#882/04-Jun-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9016>
Apple has released iTunes 7.2, which is notable for only one thing - the fact that it now lets you preview and purchase "iTunes Plus" music that is both higher in quality and free of Apple's FairPlay digital rights management. As I wrote in "Apple and EMI Offer DRM-Free Music via iTunes" (2007-04-02), Apple and EMI Music announced in April 2007 that EMI's entire digital catalog of music would be available for purchase in DRM-free form from the iTunes Store worldwide. The promised start date was May 2007, so they just squeaked in under the wire, but that's good enough to consider it a kept promise. iTunes 7.2 is available via Software Update and as a 29.6 MB standalone download.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8937>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/itunes72formac.html>
Besides lacking FairPlay, iTunes Plus songs and music videos are encoded as 256 Kbps AAC files, up from 128 Kbps AAC. The price for songs increases as well to $1.29, up from $0.99. Music videos remain priced at $1.99, and although their audio quality increases, the video quality remains the same.
To purchase songs and videos in iTunes Plus format, you must enable iTunes Plus in your account preferences, although iTunes 7.2 prompts you to do this if you try to purchase a song that's available in iTunes Plus. Once enabled, you see a little + sign next to the $1.29 price of iTunes Plus tracks.
If you've purchased DRM-protected songs already, you can upgrade them to iTunes Plus versions for the $0.30 price difference from the Upgrade My Library page in the iTunes Store. You'll have to check back at that page over time to see if additional songs have been released in iTunes Plus format. Music videos cost $0.60 to upgrade, and entire albums are available at 30 percent of the current album price. When you upgrade a song, iTunes downloads the new one and optionally places the original version in an "Original iTunes Purchases" folder so you can compare it to the iTunes Plus version to see if you can hear the quality difference.
<http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZPersonalizer.woa/wa/upgradeMyLibraryPage>
(It's interesting to see Apple putting both the iTunes Plus preferences and the Upgrade My Library functionality in the iTunes Store, rather than in iTunes itself. The approach makes sense, since iTunes is increasingly becoming a true Internet application that's easier to enhance without pushing code to millions of Macs and PCs.)
iTunes Plus is certainly a good thing for consumers who found even FairPlay's relatively reasonable restrictions irritating, for those who will appreciate the higher audio quality, and for the subset of people who refused to purchase from the iTunes Store because of DRM restrictions. Even though EMI is offering DRM-free music to other online music stores, and eMusic has long sold DRM-free music, it's also a PR boon for Apple, which gets to be seen as helping in the push to free music from onerous DRM. EMI wins too, both in terms of increased revenue from sales of iTunes Plus tracks and the increased sales that will no doubt result from EMI music being featured on the new iTunes Plus page in the iTunes Store.
<http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/iTunesPlusPage>
However, Ars Technica is reporting that Apple embeds your full name and email address in tracks purchased from the iTunes Store, something that has apparently been true since the beginning but that wasn't relevant when those tracks couldn't be played without authorization. With iTunes Plus tracks, though, this hidden branding could theoretically be used to trace shared tracks back to the original purchaser, although without some form of digital signature, that information could also be spoofed as a way to frame an innocent user. It's not yet clear what Apple plans to do with this information, if anything, but such use of personally identifiable information should be included in the company's privacy policy. This could be an issue particularly in the EU, where privacy is treated with significantly more importance than in the United States.
<http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070530-apple-hides-account-info-in-drm-free-music-too.html>
Audio developer Rogue Amoeba is happy about iTunes Plus, since the removal of DRM enables their Fission audio manipulation program to work with iTunes Plus tracks to create ringtones, create sound bites, or just edit out the applause in live tracks. (John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted, however, that updated terms of service for iTunes 7.2 specifically disallow use of purchased music as ringtones, not that such a limitation is in any way enforceable.) What I'm really looking forward to, though, is audiobooks in iTunes Plus format, since it bugs me that a single audiobook comes from the iTunes Store in multiple files, making it annoying to play. There are workarounds (see "Audio File Concatenation: Driven to Distraction by DR," 2005-11-14), but they're cumbersome, and just being able to join unprotected AAC files would be a boon.
<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/News/Fission-loves-iTunesPlus-2007-05-30-17-30.html>
<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2007/may#wed-30-ring_tones>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8326>
The two questions that remain are how quickly other music labels will jump on the iTunes Plus bandwagon and whether Apple will remove DRM from video. Stay iTuned...
[Editor's Note: The iTunes Store started selling music without copy protection on Wednesday, 30 May 2007. For more on "the trendsetting company's latest coup and providing a model for what analysts say will likely become a pattern for online music sales", check out
<http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2007/05/30/tech-apple-itunes.html>
.]
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Story from BBC NEWS
Published: 2007/06/01 14:26:40 GMT
URL: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6711215.stm>
The launch of music tracks free of digital locks on iTunes has been overshadowed by the discovery that they contain data about who bought them.
Some fear this data could be used to identify the owner of the tracks, if they turn up on file-sharing sites.
The tracks from record company EMI cost more and are of a better quality than standard iTunes songs.
Apple has yet to comment on what it plans to do with the information embedded in the music files.
The tracks without the digital locks, known as Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, officially went on sale on 30 May under the iTunes Plus banner. The downloads cost $1.29 (99p in the UK) rather than $0.99 (79p in the UK).
Apple uses a technology known as Fairplay to limit what people can do with downloads. Fairplay can be circumvented by burning tracks to a CD and then converting them to another format.
News site Ars Technica was among the first to discover that downloaded tracks free of Fairplay have embedded within them the full name and account information, including e-mail address, of who bought them.
It suggested that this information could be an anti-piracy measure as it could help work out who was putting downloads on file-sharing sites.
But it also added that the user information was found on all the tracks that people buy on iTunes whether free of DRM or not.
It was not clear, said Ars Technica, whether the data was part of Apple's administration system for iTunes or something else. It said because the data was easy to spoof Apple needed to explain why the data was present.
The BBC has contacted Apple seeking comment but so far the company has made no official response.
Other websites said it was only a matter of time before a utility program was produced which could strip out the identifying information.
At this point it is not yet clear how deeply the user data is buried in the track or how easy it is to remove.
EMI's decision to sell DRM-free tracks was announced in April.
At the launch event Apple boss Steve Jobs announced that the iTunes store was the first to sign up to sell them.
Tracks by artists such as Coldplay, Joss Stone, Frank Sinatra and Pink Floyd are available without DRM technology.
The EMI/Apple move followed an open letter penned by Steve Jobs in February that called for music companies to release tracks without digital locks.
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On The Media, June 01, 2007
URL: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/06/01/03>
Downloadable MP3: <http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm060107c.mp3>
Last month, a disagreement between Estonia and Russia resulted in a debilitating attack on some of Estonia's most-used government, banking and media websites. The attackers remain anonymous and many suspect Russia. Is it cyber-warfare? Arbor Networks' senior security researcher Jose Nazario explains.
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-estonia_rodriguezmay29,1,6793241.story?coll=chi-techtopheds-hed>
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1626744,00.html>
<http://www.arbornetworks.com/>
<http://news.com.com/Cyberattack+in+Estonia--what+it+really+means/2008-7349_3-6186751.html>
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Since the small Baltic nation of Estonia cast off Soviet rule in 1991, it has emerged as one of the world's most digitally advanced nations. Estonians use Wi-Fi all over the country. They shop, bank and even vote on the Net. Of course, this heavy dependence on technology can leave you vulnerable, a point driven home to Estonians last month after a disagreement with Russia.
In April, the Estonian Parliament voted to remove a World War II-era statue of a Soviet soldier from the capital, Tallinn. For Russians, the act showed a shocking disregard for Russia's fight to free the country from the Nazis. But for many Estonians, the statue symbolized years of oppression under Soviet rule.
The conflict itself is an old story, but the retaliation against Estonia was new. It took the form of a highly organized, highly destructive cyber-attack on Estonia's websites. Senior security researcher at Arbor Networks, Jose Nazario, says the attacks focused on Estonia's most important sites.
JOSE NAZARIO: These include the Ministries of Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Parliament. A number of key government websites were, in fact, targeted in what we call a distributed denial of service attack. It's distributed because it comes from multiple sources around the world - in this case, thousands of sources - and it's a denial of service attack because what they're trying to do is overwhelm the systems, both the network and the servers, with so many requests and so much traffic that they're unable to provide service to legitimate users.
BOB GARFIELD: This is not done necessarily by individuals sitting there at their computers and clicking on Estonian websites. This is a robotic attack.
JOSE NAZARIO: Correct. In most cases, it is what we call a botnet attack, a network of computers that have been compromised, essentially turning them into robots or zombies, where they receive these attack commands and they follow them blindly.
BOB GARFIELD: As you mentioned, these attacks seem to be emanating from hither and yon - Vietnam, Brazil, you name it. But, you know, you have to assume that there would be no actual motive for the random Brazilian [LAUGHS] to be incensed at Estonians removing a Soviet monument from Tallinn. So what is happening here?
JOSE NAZARIO: It's important to remember that a lot of these computers around the world participating in the attack are doing so without any of the owners' knowledge or consent. The people behind the attacks, however, that's a much different story. And these people often hide their tracks, especially in very high-profile attacks, and to discover that really requires a lot of traditional detective work. And right now we have no evidence that the Russian government was behind any of this.
BOB GARFIELD: Hmm. You've observed that Estonia is particularly advanced in terms of digital infrastructure and yet was quite vulnerable to this denial of service assault. What about the United States? Are we at national security risk from Russia or anybody else?
JOSE NAZARIO: We don't think so. Every day we track thousands of these kinds of attacks. The American government has really much, much beefier network resources available to it to withstand such attacks, because they have been dealing with these for quite a while. And so it would take a very determined adversary to actually disrupt this.
BOB GARFIELD: I call this cyber-warfare. Maybe it's more like cyber-civil disobedience. I mean, is it even illegal?
JOSE NAZARIO: It depends on the country. It is illegal in some countries for such attacks to take place. I think the U.K. has probably the most stringent computer security and attacker laws on the books. There have been some efforts to try and get some of these regulations codified around the world with some success, but not a whole lot. So it really depends on the jurisdiction.
BOB GARFIELD: Let's just say that this turns out not to have been either begun or facilitated by the Russian government but that it's more or less a spontaneous response from ethnic Russians in Estonia and elsewhere in the diaspora. Which, though, is the greater threat?
JOSE NAZARIO: You can, of course, negotiate with a government. Dealing with the individuals can be much tougher. And if they're loosely grouped, that they simply just share a nationalistic streak as opposed to taking orders from a central organization, it's much harder, I think, to shut down such an effort, because you have to go after each of those groups individually.
BOB GARFIELD: In a world in which dissidents are poisoned with polonium in foreign [LAUGHS] restaurants and Scotland Yard is rebuffed in its investigation, is there any reason to think that we'll ever get to the bottom of this particular episode?
JOSE NAZARIO: The good news is that while it's easy for some nations to block access to resources within their jurisdictions, the Internet, because it transcends a lot of national boundaries, there's a lot of data that can be gathered outside of those boundaries, really easing data collection. We don't physically have to go, for example, to Russian territory to find out if, indeed, the Russian government was behind these attacks.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, Jose, thank you very much for joining us.
JOSE NAZARIO: Thank you. It's been my pleasure.
BOB GARFIELD: Jose Nazario is a senior security researcher at Arbor Networks in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
ToC
Written and produced by John Anderson <mediaminutes@freepress.net>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/mm060107.mp3>
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/mm060107.pdf>
The U.S. Department of Justice, in large part thanks to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is seeking broad new powers to prosecute people under copyright law. The Attorney General has submitted proposed legislation to Congress that would strengthen the already-severe penalties imposed on those who knowingly duplicate and distribute copyrighted material, such as movies, music and software. However, Gonzales' proposal would also create a new category of crime, which can essentially be defined as "attempted" copyright infringement. That is, if someone tries to share copyrighted material with someone else and fails to do so, or uses an unauthorized copy of software that they might not even know was duplicated illegally, they could face heavy fines and imprisonment - in some cases, even a sentence of life behind bars.
What's worse, the Department of Justice's proposal also seeks to increase its already- expansive authority to conduct wiretaps, this time against anyone suspected of infringing another's copyright. This would effectively allow federal law enforcement to put citizens under surveillance even if they have no reasonable suspicion that they may be engaged in what is essentially a victimless crime. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security would be directed to work in conjunction with the Recording Industry Association of America on cases where large-scale copyright infringement is suspected - this continues a trend of effectively farming out copyright law enforcement authority from a government ostensibly accountable to its citizens to a private industry.
The federal government makes new moves to blur the boundary between public relations and information warfare, while becoming more secretive to boot. The U.S. military already targets both foreign and domestic media to conduct propaganda operations in Iraq and elsewhere. (Notable examples include the Marines conveying deceptive tactical battle plans over CNN in 2004 in order to try and provoke Iraqi insurgents into action; and the U.S. Army worked with a PR firm in 2005 to plant good-news stories in Iraqi newspapers, some of which found their way back to a U.S. audience via the World Wide Web.) Now General David Petraeus, the commander-in-chief of the Iraq occupation, is asking the Pentagon for even more flexibility in how it conducts psychological operations. At many U.S. bases in Iraq, soldiers who fight the propaganda-war and those who practice civilian media relations already work side-by-side.
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense has banned access to sites like MySpace, YouTube, and several other streaming media portals throughout its global network, claiming "operational security" concerns. This while the Pentagon launches its own video channel on YouTube, which presumably nobody in the military will be allowed to watch.
In addition, U.S. Army soldiers both abroad and at home are now prohibited from blogging about their experiences unless they get prior approval from a commanding officer. Failing to follow this restriction may result in a court-martial.
Back in D.C., the White House has informed Congress that it's going to stray from a pledge to get its wiretaps of phone and Internet traffic approved by a special court. After revelations last year that the National Security Agency was sifting through mountains of information on millions of people without the proper warrants, the Bush administration promised it would follow the law. However, national intelligence officials now claim that the President has constitutional authority to ignore the courts and continue illicit surveillance if he feels the circumstances call for it.
Related Links:
Administration Pulls Back on Surveillance Agreement
Further Restrictions on Soldiers' Internet Usage
Gonzales Proposes New Crime: "Attempted" Copyright Infringement
Is Copyright the Administration's Next Domestic Spying Tool?
Pentagon Weighing News and Spin
U.S. Army Cracks Down on Soldiers' Blogs, Launches YouTube Site
U.S. Military Shows Its Side of Iraq War on YouTube
ToC
It joins Hollywood in trying to keep bootleg material off its network.
By James S. Granelli <james.granelli@latimes.com>, Times Staff Writer
June 13, 2007
URL: <http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-piracy13jun13,1,402794.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business&ctrack=1&cset=true>
AT&T Inc. has joined Hollywood studios and recording companies in trying to keep pirated films, music and other content off its network - the first major carrier of Internet traffic to do so.
The San Antonio-based company started working last week with studios and record companies to develop anti-piracy technology that would target the most frequent offenders, said James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior vice president.
The nation's largest telephone and Internet service provider also operates the biggest cross-country system for handling Internet traffic for its customers and those of other providers.
As AT&T has begun selling pay-television services, the company has realized that its interests are more closely aligned with Hollywood, Cicconi said in an interview Tuesday. The company's top leaders recently decided to help Hollywood protect the digital copyrights to that content.
"We do recognize that a lot of our future business depends on exciting and interesting content," he said.
But critics say the company is going to be fighting a losing battle and angering its own customers, and it should focus instead on developing incentives for users to pay for all the content they want.
Few doubt that piracy is a significant problem. The major U.S. studios lost $2.3 billion last year to online piracy and an additional $3.8 billion to bootleg DVDs, according to industry statistics. AT&T can help only with the online losses, which the industry said were growing faster than those from counterfeit DVDs.
Cicconi is in Los Angeles to talk at the Digital Hollywood Summit conference in Santa Monica this morning and hopes to discuss the initiative there.
Last week, about 20 technology executives from Viacom Inc., its Paramount movie studio and other Hollywood companies met at AT&T headquarters to start devising a technology that would stem piracy but not violate privacy laws or Internet freedoms espoused by the Federal Communications Commission.
Cicconi said that once a technology was chosen, the company would look at privacy and other legal issues.
"We are pleased that AT&T has decided to take such a strong, proactive position in protecting copyrights," Viacom said in a prepared statement. "AT&T's support of strong anti-piracy efforts will be instrumental in developing a growing and vibrant digital marketplace and will help ensure that they have a steady stream of great creative content to deliver to their consumers."
But public interest groups are wary.
"The risk AT&T faces is fighting the last war by spending money and energy plugging an old hole in the wall when new ones are breaking out," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. The San Francisco digital-rights organization has sued AT&T, alleging it illegally released customers' phone data to the federal government.
Technology is putting unlimited copying power in the hands of consumers, Von Lohmann said, so the answer to piracy can't be trying to stop them from making copies.
"The answer should be to figure out how to turn them into paying customers," he said.
AT&T's decision surprised Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group.
"AT&T is going to act like the copyright police, and that is going to make customers angry," she said. "The good news for AT&T is that there's so little competition that where else are the customers going to go?"
Verizon Communications Inc., which has fiercely guarded the privacy of its customers, has refused so far to offer a network anti-piracy tool. It defeated in court the recording industry's demands to reveal names of those allegedly involved in downloading pirated songs.
In mid-March, executives at Viacom and the Motion Picture Assn. of America separately approached Cicconi with the idea of a partnership. Content providers have long looked for a network solution to piracy, but no operator had been willing to join with them.
Efforts to date have focused on filtering and other technologies at the end of uploads and downloads of pirated material, but those have largely failed.
The Recording Industry Assn. of America has engendered a barrage of criticism for its efforts at suing people who download copyrighted songs illegally and who trade in bootleg music CDs.
"They've tried the whack-a-mole approach, and I don't think they're winning," Cicconi said.
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Kevin Hisel for submitting this piece for the newsletter.]
ToC
Jun 15, 2007 5:00:00 PM
Well, not exactly. This year's Worldwide Developers Conference opened with a surprising announcement by some guy in blue jeans and a black turtleneck. It's a video (1 minute 58 seconds) of PC guy [John Hodgeman] pretending to be Jobs announcing, tongue firmly in cheek, that he's quitting. Yeah, he gets caught at it by Mac.
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Jon Bjerke for pointing out this one.]
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#882/04-Jun-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9004>
We're in the middle of a sea change in how we acquire and watch video, whether serialized television shows, must-see sporting events, blockbuster movies, quirky documentaries, or even homemade video clips. It has become wildly confusing, with choices ranging from the old rabbit ears to the iTunes Store. I've been thinking about the topic for quite some time with an eye toward trying to compare all the possibilities in terms of cost, show selection, and more. This started as a personal project, but as I delved into the research, I realized that what made sense for our family was by no means ideal for everyone. And so I increased my scope in an attempt to lay out for everyone the possibilities and to come up with recommendations for those whose viewing preferences differ from ours. Sit back, relax, and join me on a long tour through our video-filled world.
For many years, and for all of my rural childhood, over-the-air broadcast television was all that was available, though cable TV and, later, satellite dishes increased the number of channels that could be received. At some point in the 1980s, the VCR appeared, enabling both time-shifting and an aftermarket for movies, prompting MPAA head Jack Valenti's famous quote, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone." Needless to say, Jack Valenti couldn't have been more wrong, with the VCR and then the DVD player generating a vast source of new revenue for the movie and television industry via post-release sales. In 1998, the slim size and durability of DVD discs also made possible the online DVD rental company Netflix and a number of smaller and more focused competitors.
<http://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix>
As the original Napster caused panic among the music studios, the movie industry watched carefully, initially insulated from peer-to-peer copying by numerous technical limitations. Computers in the mid-1990s lacked sufficient processing power to encode and decode video at necessary speeds, hard disks weren't sufficiently large to store reasonable amounts of video, and too few people had sufficiently fat broadband pipes to download full-length movie files. Needless to say, those limitations fell by the wayside quickly. Aided by the breaking of the DVD copy-protection approach, the Content Scramble System in October 1999 by Jon Lech Johansen and two others via the program DeCSS, full-scale copying of DVDs became possible and indeed commonplace.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Scramble_System>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS>
Legal downloading of video wasn't far behind, with numerous video-on-demand services springing up for people with Windows PCs. But none put all the pieces together (wide selection, good business model, simple user experience) until Apple introduced video to the iTunes Store, making it possible for individuals to purchase full-length movies, first-run television shows, short films, and music videos for playing in iTunes on either a Mac, a PC, or a video iPod. Although Apple's selection was initially slim, significantly more videos have appeared on the iTunes Store since, and it's clear from sales (see "Disney Sells 125,000 Movies in First Week on iTunes Store," 2006-09-25) that the Internet will be a popular method of acquiring video.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8682>
Perhaps the most unexpected challenge to the studios and networks came, however, not from illegal downloads, but from video-sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video, which attract tens of thousands of homemade video uploads daily, and many millions of viewers. Though no money changes hands, the time viewers spend watching short clips on sites like YouTube (now owned by Google; see "Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion," 2006-10-16) is time that won't be spent watching traditional television and movies.
<http://www.youtube.com/>
<http://video.google.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8709>
All this raises the question - what's the best way to acquire video entertainment these days? And that in turn asks the question of what "best" means. I think people determine how they'll acquire video in a number of ways:
<http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=485637&s=143441&i=486633>
Place-shifting. Finally, although most people still watch video on TV screens that continually increase in size, portable DVD players have been around for a while, laptop displays are now frequently large and widescreen, and video iPods are becoming ever more popular. In essence, we're saying that we want control over not just what and when we watch, but where we watch it too.
There's one additional variable that most people probably don't think about, but which comes into play whenever time- and place-shifting are discussed: legality. Almost by definition, time- and place-shifting require a copy to made, whether it's on a VHS tape or an iPod. In some cases, that action may be entirely legal, whereas in others it may be fraught with legal liability. (At least the FCC's controversial "broadcast flag" rule, which would have prohibited the manufacture of hardware lacking copy prevention hardware to prevent time- and place-shifting, was struck down in 2005 before it went into effect.)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag>
Let's rate each of the following methods of tuning in according to these criteria.
To many of us, with our high-speed Internet connections, over-the-air broadcast television may seem a quaint image of the 1950s, with images of Dad up on the roof adjusting the antenna to improve reception of the big game. The reality is that as of December 2006, about 13 percent of U.S. television households - roughly 15 million homes - still rely on broadcast TV, as do higher percentages of viewers in other countries. And why not? Availability suffers from physical barriers and the selection of shows can be restricted by limited channel reception. But at the same time, advertising-supported broadcast TV is free to receive; provides the latest network news, major sports events, and most commonly watched shows; and doesn't restrict viewers' ability to time-shift. Place-shifting is tougher, since it requires first recording shows to a digital format, but I suspect that most people content with broadcast television aren't the target audience for place-shifting hardware like the iPod.
It's worth noting that a digital video recorder (DVR) like the TiVo significantly improves not just the viewer's ability to time-shift, but also broadcast TV's show selection. That's not because it can pull in shows that weren't there before, but because it enables more efficient mining of shows that are broadcast at odd times.
For those in the United States, it's particularly worth noting that as broadcasters switch from old analog channels to new high-definition digital channels, they can offer more channels. The switch must be complete by 18-Feb-09, so by that point you'll need a converter to use existing analog televisions, or you'll need to buy a new digital TV (see the just-released second edition of Clark Humphrey's "Take Control of Digital TV" for help with that process). The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that 99 percent of U.S. television households can receive one digital channel; 89 percent can receive five or more. The Consumer Electronics Association's AntennaWeb site has an interesting FAQ and an online "interactive antenna mapping program" that provides advice about which stations (digital and analog) you are likely to receive, along with a map showing exactly how to orient your antenna. You can also check Antenna Direct's list of HDTV stations to see a long list of over-the-air HD stations. The Canadian HD experience for over-the-air broadcasts is similar; see HDTV Digital Home.
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/digital-tv.html?14@@!pt=TB882>
<http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx>
<http://www.antennasdirect.com/HDTV_station_lists.html>
<http://www.digitalhome.ca/hdtv/>
Broadcast isn't yet dead, and satellite TV is attracting ever more subscribers, but cable TV still rules, at least in the United States, where about 60 percent of households (65.6 million homes) have cable, and another 27 percent (30.1 million homes) subscribe to satellite TV. Worldwide, there are 1.2 billion television households, but only about 30 percent of those rely on cable TV. Although the average price for basic expanded cable is about $41 per month in the United States, both cable and satellite subscribers report paying an average of $58 per month thanks to extra services, and it's easy to see bills into the $80 per month range. Despite those steep monthly charges that generated $68.2 billion for the U.S. cable industry in 2006, advertising is still prevalent, accounting for another $23.8 billion in revenues. If we know that the average monthly bill is $58, and the average American watches (gasp!) 4.5 hours of TV per day, that puts the cost of cable or satellite TV at only $0.43 per hour. (As an aside, a recent study found that watching 3 or more hours of TV per day puts teenagers at increased risk of learning difficulties.)
<http://www.nielsenmedia.com/newsreleases/2005/AvgHoursMinutes92905.pdf>
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070507183630.htm>
Cable and satellite TV fare very well when it comes to freshness, with plenty of real-time news, sports, and current programming, and they also do well in terms of show selection. However, the massive amount of programming available is applied in shotgun fashion, so you can easily find yourself flipping through hundreds of channels without finding anything you want to watch. The sheer number of programs is overwhelming, making a DVR like the TiVo - or even the less-capable models rented out by the cable/satellite companies - essential not just for time-shifting (which is legal), but also for separating the wheat from the chaff. As with broadcast TV, place-shifting requires extra hardware and fuss; few people will go to the effort of extracting video from a TiVo to watch on an iPod.
The market for pre-recorded video started with the VCR but has been almost entirely supplanted by DVD. Although VCRs and DVD players are essentially equally popular, with between 75 and 82 percent of U.S. households owning one, the VCR is in significant decline, with sales of DVD players outstripping VCRs 40 to 1 globally. More telling, of the $24.2 billion spent on pre-recorded content in the United States last year, VHS claimed only $100 million (way down from $3 billion in 2004). 2006's total take of pre-recorded content was, in fact, lower than both 2005 and 2004, with the only increased portion coming from a $300 million jump in DVD sales. And even that growth was largely fueled by the increase in sales of TV show collections, which made up 18 percent of market in 2006, up from 8 percent in 2002. Also, TV DVDs cost an average of $41 for a full season, in comparison to an average price of $17 for a DVD movie.
The per-minute cost of purchased content on DVD varies significantly, from just under 4 cents to nearly 17 cents, with the lower costs coming for large bundles that bring together multiple seasons of a TV show or a movie and several sequels. That works out to between $2.40 and $10.20 per hour, and if all you watched was pre-recorded video, even assuming only 2 hours of watching per day, that would still come out to between about $140 and $600 per month. Obviously, dropping the average watching time to only 1 hour per day halves those numbers, but it's still much higher than cable or satellite.
However, although purchasing pre-recorded content may not make sense for one-time viewing, children often watch DVDs many times, reducing the cost with each viewing. I couldn't find stats to back this up, but I also believe that people in their 20s, who grew up squarely in the generation that could watch videotapes or DVDs multiple times, are still more likely to watch TV shows or movies multiple times as adults. That's in contrast with those of us who predate the VCR generation, and remember when it was a big deal because "The Wizard of Oz" came on TV each year. (Tonya and I own only a handful of movies that we watch multiple times, with each viewing often separated by years.) Plus, even for people who don't plan to watch a purchased DVD many times, the DVD has value as a collector's item.
The selection of shows is good, but not great, because back catalogs are still being transferred to video, so, for instance, not all seasons of the 1990s TV series "Northern Exposure" are available yet. It's not just TV shows either; reportedly, only about 50,000 of the 500,000 or so movies listed on the Internet Movie Database have been digitized and made available on DVD. Plus, the lag time between the airing of new TV shows and the theatrical release of movies and the subsequent release of the DVD hurts both show selection and the freshness of available content. Time-shifting is inherent in the medium, since you can watch whenever you want, but place-shifting is legally possible only if you own a portable DVD player or DVD-equipped laptop. Ripping physical DVDs to avoid carrying them on a plane or to watch them on a video-capable iPod is perfectly possible with the open-source HandBrake, but ripping is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), despite the fact that place-shifting is legal in all other situations.
Purchasing pre-recorded content may make little sense for one-time viewing, but renting DVDs is an entirely different cost proposition. A Netflix subscription costs between $5 and $48 per month, depending on how many DVDs you want checked out simultaneously. Other online video rental services offer similar plans, but with nearly 6.8 million customers, Netflix is by far the largest, with Blockbuster a distant second. One advantage of the Blockbuster Total Access service is that you can also pick up DVDs at a local Blockbuster store if you can't wait for snail mail delivery.
<http://www.netflix.com/HowItWorks>
<https://www.blockbuster.com/signup/s/howItWorks>
It's hard to calculate Netflix's cost on a per-hour basis, but on an "unlimited" plan, the limiting factor is how quickly you can watch a DVD and return it to Netflix. Assuming an average turnaround time of 7 days, a 1-out unlimited subscription equates to 4 DVDs in a month. Four DVDs of a TV series could reach 16 hours or more, whereas four DVDs of short 80 minute movies would be about 5.2 hours. Thus, the cost-per-hour for a month ranges from $0.63 to $1.92 for the 1-out plan. The 2-out plan is a bit cheaper, and starting with the 3-out plan, the costs settle into the range of $0.38 to $1.15 per hour.
In terms of show selection and freshness, Netflix is nearly as good as the option of purchasing pre-recorded video - the difference coming in adult content, which Netflix doesn't carry. Other services specialize in it, however, so the overall category of online video rental services is comparable. Another slight ding for Netflix's show selection is that popular new releases generate waiting lists, so you may need to wait a little longer to receive a hot new movie.
Netflix brings a new twist to the issue of time- and place-shifting. You can of course watch any DVD you've received from Netflix whenever you want, though ripping it to a hard disk for later watching violates not just the DMCA, but Netflix's own Terms of Use; the same goes for place-shifting. It's hard to know if Netflix added the no-ripping clause to forestall lawsuits from Hollywood or if ripping would present a business problem for Netflix. Someone who was ripping to enable time- and place-shifting would probably churn DVDs more quickly than anyone other than a dedicated TV watcher, costing Netflix more in postage and handling.
<http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse>
Of course, the fact that ripping DVDs violates the DMCA has in no way prevented it from happening. Nor, now that many people have sufficient bandwidth to download full-length movies, has the legal liability prevented massive sharing of video online via peer-to-peer file-sharing services. The appeal? Downloading is free, or at least no additional cost beyond the price of a broadband connection.
However, P2P downloading makes users pay in other ways. Finding and downloading particular movies or TV shows is time-intensive and often fraught with frustration and failure. Problems include being unable to find the desired show or movie, download times measured in days or weeks, ending up with a foreign-language dub, poor audio or video quality, and more. The selection of shows is impossible to predict, since the availability of a given show varies constantly with who's online. The freshness of content can be good, since users are more likely to share the latest releases than old movies, but there's no guarantee that you'll be able to download the latest episode of anything.
Not surprisingly, most of the users of the P2P file-sharing services are young people with more time than money, and for whom downloaded video has a whiff of danger and the cachet of rebellion.
Not all video downloads are inherently a violation of the DMCA, and thanks to Apple, it's now possible to purchase a variety of TV shows and movies from the iTunes Store. Or rather, it's possible if you have an iTunes Store with video in your country, if you have a modern computer running iTunes, and if you have a broadband connection. Lots of people do, but far fewer than those who can, for instance, receive cable or satellite TV.
<http://www.apple.com/itunes/>
The selection of shows is, on balance, poor. Apple is adding shows and movies all the time, but in comparison with the wealth of video content available in any other forum, the iTunes Store doesn't yet match up. What it does have is quite fresh, though, with new TV shows appearing quickly, along with first-run movies, and some sports shows.
Calculating the cost of video purchased from the iTunes Store is both easy and difficult. TV shows, whether they're 30 or 60 minutes long, cost $2. And movies cost either $15 for recent releases or $10 for older movies, with running times varying between about 80 minutes and 140 minutes. Purchasing a multi-pass for 16 episodes of something like "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" drops the price by about 40 percent; buying a season pass to a TV show cuts the price by 5 to 40 percent (usually about 17 percent). So to return to the cost-per-hour calculation we performed for pre-recorded video, we'd end up with a range starting at $1.25 per hour for an hour-long TV show purchased as part of a multi-pass and going all the way up to $11.25 per hour for a first-run movie that's relatively short. At 2 hours per day (less than half the national average), the monthly fee would range from $75 to $675.
As with pre-recorded content, if you fall into the 2 hour per day category, getting all your video from the iTunes Store makes no financial sense, but there are other advantages, such the ease of getting just what you want, the ease of moving video to an iPod, and the ease of watching downloaded video on a television via Apple TV.
Of all the methods of acquiring video, downloading from the iTunes Store is perhaps the friendliest to time-shifting, since you can at any time decide what you want, buy it, and be watching nearly instantly. (To be fair, Netflix now offers the similar Watch Now service with some of its movies, but it requires Windows XP-only software to handle the Microsoft DRM.) Place-shifting is easy and legal as well, but only if you want to watch on a laptop or video-capable iPod.
<http://www.netflix.com/WatchNow?lnkctr=mhWN>
Competing with the iTunes Store is Amazon Unbox, which like the Netflix immediate download approach, works only with Windows and broadband-connected Series2 or Series3 TiVo units. Purchasing TV shows and movies costs essentially the same as the iTunes Store, though Amazon Unbox also offers movie rentals for between $2 and $4.
<http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16261631>
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/tivo>
In recent months, the major television networks have started to change their role from pure providers of content to distributors as well, thanks to the Internet. Episodes of a number of current TV shows are provided free via the networks' Web sites, though with ads that cannot be skipped. The quality of the players varies a little and suffers a bit at full screen, but seems generally fine over a broadband connection, and it works fine on the Mac. Both time-shifting and place-shifting are supported with this approach, although both have some limits. The networks don't provide full back catalogs of shows, so you may have to watch on a fairly regular basis or purchase missed shows from the iTunes Store. And place-shifting is inherent in the system... as long as you're watching on a laptop and have a broadband Internet connection available. As far as I can tell, there's no easy way to record these video streams for later viewing on a video iPod.
In some ways, online streamed TV provides what so many cable and satellite subscribers have wanted - the ability to pick and choose without feeling as though you're paying for the vast amount of dreck that's available on the rest of those 200 channels.
It's also worth mentioning Joost, a company founded by the guys who started Skype. Currently in invitation-only beta, Joost promises to provide streamed video. Unlike the networks, it's using a peer-to-peer system that spreads the bandwidth load, but which may suffer quality of service problems, since the bandwidth cannot be guaranteed. It requires special software that's available for Mac OS X along with Windows XP and Vista. Joost is ad-supported, with short ads that are inserted at fairly frequent intervals into the programming. Not having seen Joost in person yet, I can't provide more details, but I imagine it will be public soon enough.
The sea change that's threatening to engulf mainstream video is led by Google's YouTube, although there are a number of competing services, including Google's own Google Video. What's different about YouTube is that its many millions of videos are contributed for free by users of the service, although there has been a spate of partnerships with groups like CBS, the BBC, the NBA, and the Sundance Channel. It's almost impossible to compare YouTube's content with what you would find anywhere else, because almost all of it is short, amateurishly produced, and poorly displayed in a tiny box in a Web page. (Apple just announced that YouTube content would become available on the Apple TV by way of a free software update later this month, but the video quality doesn't appear to be improved - in fact, you're taking highly compressed Web video and enlarging it for a widescreen TV, so the quality is going to be less than ideal.) But that's the charm of it as well; it's easy to find yourself watching utterly unpredictable bits of video after idly clicking into YouTube from a Web link.
<http://www.youtube.com/>
<http://www.youtube.com/press_room?morgue=yes>
While it may not be possible to compare YouTube to mainstream video, there's no question that TV networks and providers are extremely nervous about the rise of YouTube. We all have a limited amount of time to watch video (though it's apparently more limited for people like me than for the average American), and time spent watching YouTube takes away from time spent watching normal TV. What's not to fear? It doesn't cost anything for people to watch videos on YouTube, and it's unclear if even Google will be able to come up with a way to make YouTube earn its bandwidth keep. YouTube is not a future that TV executives like to dream about at night.
The genesis of this article came from my attempt to bring coherency to the video landscape for our family. From the point Tonya and I left for college in 1985 until 2001, when we moved back to Ithaca, we had only over-the-air TV, either because that was all that was available or because we weren't willing to pay for cable or satellite TV. We've always made heavy use of time-shifting, first with a VCR (supplemented for a while with a short-lived electronic program scheduler called a VideoGuide; mentioned in "Macworld Superlatives," 1995-08-21), and then with a TiVo, which we've covered in TidBITS numerous times.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/1359>
<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1204>
When we returned to Ithaca in 2001, Time Warner made it easy to add digital cable TV to our cable-modem subscription, and it was fun for a while to let the TiVo loose among the hundreds of channels we received. But having all that video available on the TiVo proved stressful, since we felt the need to keep up in order to prevent older unwatched shows from being deleted. We realized that we were watching TV more - 7 to 10 hours per week - just to manage the TiVo's contents, and worse, we often ended up watching shows that we either didn't reliably enjoy or found stressful before bed. It was fascinating - we were drawn like moths to a flame, to an activity that required significant time and money and often left us either slightly disgusted about how we'd spent the time or too wired to sleep. So in December 2004, we dropped cable TV and promised ourselves that we'd spend the money we saved on just the media that we wanted, whether print books, purchased DVDs, a Netflix subscription, audiobooks that we used to help us fall asleep (see "iPods Defeating Insomnia," 2005-02-28), support for podcast radio shows like This American Life or On the Media, or donations to the local public library.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8004>
<http://www.thisamericanlife.com/>
<http://www.onthemedia.org/>
<http://www.tcpl.org/>
So as much as this appears to be downright un-American, we're down to 3 to 5 hours of video per week. Thanks to a Netflix subscription, when we choose to watch video (on my MacBook or Tonya's MacBook Pro, since we don't own a standalone DVD player), we're catching up on TV series that we missed during the many years we could get only over-the-air broadcasts, along with the occasional movie (we've never been big moviegoers either). Tristan's choices tend toward naval history documentaries left on the TiVo and Looney Tunes DVDs he received for Christmas. Occasionally we watch YouTube clips I've heard about from friends, and tons of great lectures are available from the Internet too, such as the discussion between author Michael Pollan (of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" fame) and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. But what's important is that we're choosing what to do, whether watching video, reading books, listening to podcasts, discussing the day's events, or participating in other indoor sports.
<http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=19147>
<http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/1594200823/tidbitselectro00/>
I'm fine with the fact that we're statistical outliers in terms of the amount of video we watch. But if you're trying to figure out what of this cornucopia of options makes the most sense for you, here are a few thoughts, based on viewing patterns I've observed:
Again, perhaps I'm odd, but I feel a lot better having worked through the economics and restrictions of the options. Before, I had a nagging feeling that we were paying too much for the amount of enjoyment we derived from TV, and now I can rest easy knowing that we're on just the right plan, at least for the moment.
ToC
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#880/21-May-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9001>
My first computer, purchased in 1979, had 8K of RAM and 8K of ROM, BASIC baked in, and no persistent storage. My first hard drive was 60 MB and cost $600 in 1989. Now you can purchase one terabyte (TB) of storage in a single 3.5-inch Hitachi hard drive mechanism for about $400.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22osi+c1p%22>
<http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.8027a91c954924ae4bda9f30eac4f0a0/>
It's easy to purchase 1 TB of storage in a single package. LaCie, for instance, has offered a 1 TB Big Disk for some time, using two 500 GB drives in one enclosure; their USB 2.0-interface version costs just $350, less than Hitachi's raw drive.
<http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10188>
But form factor is important for devices that can accept only a single hard drive, and in the drives included in basic consumer systems. For instance, a digital video recorder like a TiVo could store 1,000 hours of programming on a terabyte drive; adding an external drive is problematic (though possible) with most DVRs.
The more storage packed into a single mechanism, the cheaper smaller units of storage become as well. Expect the release of the 1 TB drive to cause 500 GB drives to drop even further in cost (they're already closing in on $100).
<http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/sata_500gb.htm>
With the ongoing focus on video - particularly high-definition video - and the increasing resolution of still cameras, needing a terabyte of storage doesn't seem nearly as far fetched as it used to.
ToC
URL: <http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/05/23/AM200705232.html>
Just when you thought one of the greatest benefits of shopping online was never having to say "I'm just browsing thanks," more companies are discovering that virtual salespeople can boost Internet sales. Mike Rhee has the story.
--
LISA NAPOLI: We all joke about how one day we're going to be replaced by computers. Many jobs of course already have been. Well, those who work in another sector that should be quaking in their boots are sales clerks. From Chicago Public Radio, here's Mike Rhee:
MIKE RHEE: Andre McReynolds runs a silkscreen t-shirt business out of his home on Chicago's South Side.
He makes the t-shirts in the basement. It's unfinished and a little messy, but people shopping at his online store don't need to know that.
[ AVATAR: "Welcome and thank you for visiting SuesCrewPrinting.com." ]
That's the online salesperson for McReynold's website. These virtual characters, known as avatars, are meant to add a "human" touch to Internet shopping.
McReynolds says he was inspired by another site's avatars.
ANDRE MCREYNOLDS: On that website they were like tour guides and they would tell you to go this page to get this information, go to that page to get that information and then they would send you back to the homepage to make the complete sales pitch and I said, hmmm, that's a very good idea.
Orders from McReynolds's site have spiked up in the last year and a half since he installed the avatar, and his site has gotten stickier, meaning people are spending more time on it and clicking through more pages.
It doesn't stop there.
MCREYNOLDS: To me they're like Internet robots, they don't get tired, they're not human, you know what I'm saying, and they can work 24 hours a day whenever somebody comes to the site.
McReynolds' avatar is an animated, female brunette with emerald green eyes and a pink blouse. He created it using a program from a company called Oddcast, which sells customizable avatars.
President and CEO Adi Sideman says McReynolds' choice of a female is common. They actually convert into better sales.
Sideman's proud of his avatars, and says they're effective because people like to be taken care of. But it'll be a while before avatars are truly lifelike.
ADI SIDEMAN: A real-life salesperson is really smart, they smile, they move around, they grab things, they show you things, and in the end of the day, a virtual salesperson is only a robot. It's only as smart as it's been programmed.
Right now the avatars from Sideman's company are simple cartoons that can be programmed to say canned lines or lines that you supply.
So this isn't the android-filled future just yet. Or is it?
From Chicago, I'm Mike Rhee for Marketplace.
Related Links:
URL: <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10439850>
Morning Edition May 28, 2007 -- Pianist Glenn Gould's classic 1955 recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations has never been out of print. Yet this week, Sony Classical will release a brand-new recording of it.
It's actually a recording of a "re-performance" of the music, designed by a North Carolina software company called Zenph.
The idea is simple: Old recordings sound old. Decades of amazing musical performances are hidden behind the limits of audio technology at the time they were recorded.
The Zenph "re-performance" process isn't a remastering - that is, trying to fix an existing recording with equalization or noise reduction. Instead, it's a new recording of a performance that scientifically matches the earlier one. Zenph uses a Yamaha Disklavier Pro, an actual acoustic piano that can, with a computer's help, play back with microscopically accurate timing and sensitivity.
Zenph used the opening of Glenn Gould's famous 1955 Goldberg Variations as their "before-and-after" demo, a calling card that instantly got across to potential investors what they were doing.
"We did a sales call at Sony, and met with the president of Sony Music," says Zenph president John Q. Walker, recalling a meeting with Sony Classical, which owns the masters for the original 1955 recording. "He took our demo CD, listened to it for three minutes, and said 'Let's do albums.'"
The Glenn Gould estate also was enthusiastic. Gould himself stopped giving live concert performances early in his career, in part so he could edit together perfect takes in the recording studio, back in the days of tape and splicing.
Zenph's new process of capturing a performance is incredibly complex because, in order to play back a piece of music, they need to make the jump from the audio that we hear to performance data. It's sort of like the way scanners with optical character recognition can turn a picture of a document into a word-processing file you can edit.
First, they save the original recording to the computer as a sound file, then the software can begin its analysis. It tracks exactly when each note was hit, how loudly, with what kind of attack, and when and how it was released. Add to that the complexity of what a note does in the air after it's played, interacting with the room's acoustics and other notes around it.
Then there are the philosophical and ethical questions. Do you correct mistakes?
"We're able to actually clean out some of the wrong notes that Gould played," says Anatoly Larkin, a performance analyst with Zenph. "But we don't do that because our job is to, first of all, present the accurate artistic statement."
Colin Eatock is a Canadian music critic who was present when the Zenph team offered a concert performance of the complete Goldbergs in Toronto in September. He says that for all its cutting-edge technology, the Zenph re-performances are pointing classical music, yet again, into the past.
"I'm not sure that this is what a healthy musical culture does," Eatock says. "I mean, the past should be respected and remembered, but a culture that becomes so completely fixated on the past and reproducing the past is, I think, in trouble."
But the Zenph team sees what they're doing as bringing "value to the vaults" of troubled record companies by making older performances more accessible to audiences who are resistant to the sound of scratchy recordings.
Zenph will be turning to jazz next, with a recording of "re-performances'" of Art Tatum, including a live concert performance they hope to re-create, with no one at the piano, at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
- Aug. 30, 2004 The Variations of Glenn Gould <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1967623>
- The Life and Career of Glenn Gould <http://www.npr.org/programs/wesat/features/2002/sept/gould/index.html>
ToC
- Zenph Studios Site <http://zenph.com/>
- Glenn Gould Site <http://www.glenngould.com/>
Music Technology Group
Pompeu Fabra University
Barcelona, 2005
URL: <http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/>
The reactable, is a state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface . Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.
The instrument was developed by a team of digital luthiers under the direction of Dr. Sergi Jordˆ. The "Interactive Sonic Systems" team is working in the Music Technology Group within the Audiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain. Its main activities concentrate on the design of new musical interfaces, such as tangible music instruments and musical applications for mobile devices.
The reactable intends to be: collaborative (several performers - local or remote), intuitive (zero manual, zero instructions), sonically challenging and interesting learnable and masterable (even for children), suitable for novices (installations) and advanced electronic musicians (concerts)
The reactable hardware is based on a translucent round table. A video camera situated beneath, continuously analyzes the table surface, tracking the nature, position and orientation of the objects that are distributed on its surface, representing the components of a classic modular synthesizer. These objects are passive without any sensors or actuators, users interact by moving them, changing their position, their orientation or their faces (in the case of volumetric objects). These actions directly control the topological structure and parameters of the sound synthesizer. A projector, also from underneath the table, draws dynamic animations on its surface, providing a visual feedback of the state, the activity and the main characteristics of the sounds produced by the audio synthesizer.
Movies of reactable in use can be found at <http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/?media> [and on YouTube, just search for 'reactable'. - ELHadley]
PUBLICATIONS - 2006: The reacTable*: A Collaborative Musical Instrument Kaltenbrunner, M. & Jordˆ, S. & Geiger, G. & Alonso, M. Proceedings of the Workshop on "Tangible Interaction in Collaborative Environments" (TICE), at the 15th International IEEE Workshops on Enabling Technologies (WETICE 2006). Manchester, U.K. Download as pdf - <http:// mtg.upf.edu/reactable/pdfs/reactable_tice2006.pdf>
SOFTWARE <http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/?software> reacTIVision 1.3 - reacTIVision is an open source, cross-platform computer vision framework for the fast and robust tracking of fiducial markers attached onto physical objects, as well as for multi-touch finger tracking. It was mainly designed as a toolkit for the rapid development of table-based tangible user interfaces (TUI) and multi-touch interactive surfaces. This framework has been developed by Martin Kaltenbrunner and Ross Bencina at the Music Technology Group at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain as part of the the reacTable* project, a novel electro-acoustic music instrument with a tangible user interface.
reacTIVision is a standalone application, which sends OpenSound Control messages via UDP port 3333 to any connected client application. It implements the TUIO protocol, which was specially designed for transmitting the state of tangible objects and multi-touch control on a table surface. This framework includes a set of free example client projects for various programming languages, which can serve as the basis for the easy development of tangible user interface applications. Alternatively reacTIVision is also able to send MIDI messages, although TUIO is the recommended messaging format.
The reacTIVision application is available for the following operating systems: Windows, MacOS X and Linux. Under Windows it supports any camera with a proper WDM driver, such as USB, USB2, FireWire and DV cameras. Equally under MacOS X any such camera supported by QuickTime will work in reacTIVision. Under Linux, FireWire cameras are best supported, as well as a few Video4Linux USB cameras. If you are interested in this video acquisition software, the PortVideo framework is available as a separate component.
All reacTIVision files including earlier versions are hosted at sourceforge.net . The latest development snapshots can be retrieved from the CVS repository .
In a nutshell the system works like this: reacTIVision tracks specially designed fiducial markers in a real time video stream. The source image frame is first converted to a black&white image with an adaptive thresholding algorithm. Then this image is segmented into a tree of alternating black and white regions (region adjacency graph). This graph is then searched for unique left heavy depth sequences , which have been encoded into the fiducial symbol. Finally the found tree sequences are matched to a dictionary to retrieve an unique ID number. The fiducial design allows the efficient calculation of the marker's center point as well as its orientation. OSC messages implementing the TUIO protocol encode the fiducials' presence, location, orientation and identity and transmit this data to the client applications.
Team e-mail:
Snail Mail address:
Reactable-MTG,
Universitat Pompeu Fabra,
Ocata, 1 , 08003 Barcelona , Spain
[There is fairly detailed info about building a table on the website as well as other similar technologies. - ELHadley]
ToC
[Something similar but not the same... ZOUNDZ. - ELHadley]
Zizzle, L.L.C.
website: <http://www.zizzle.com/zoundz.html>
description: With Zounds users can create their own riffs by placing one
of Zoundz pawns on an interactive "hot spot" on the sound board. Each
pawn associates with the sound it makes and by placing them on different
locations and in different combinations, users can compose music all
their own. The music portion can be fine tuned with the mode switch
which enables users to adjust the tempo of the music, raise and lower
the volume, increase or decrease an echo, or sustain and draw out
specific sounds. Each interactive "hot spot" lights up when a pawn is
placed on it and will groove to the tempo of your music. The color of
the light also reflects what type of music the pawn produces with red
indicating a sharper tone while blue reflects softer more soothing
sounds.
[It is not being produced anymore but is available through Amazon.com ($100), Edmund Scientific ($60) or on ebay ($20 or so). Best Buy, Target and Sharper Image all carried it, but they don't anymore. In addition to the info mentioned above, you can plug your iPod into it and use it as a 'color organ' or use the built-in alarm clock to wake up to tunes that you set with the Zoundz pawns. Sound quality is not real good, but the ability to 'play' with the object oriented interface is a bunch of fun. The Zounds webpage is <http://www.zizzle.com/V14/products/product-zoundz.htm>. I don't know how much longer this link will work since the product is no longer being produced. If you go to the Ziggle website and click on the Zoundz icon it will not take you to the Zoundz page. Ziggle makes Iz - an ipod player and toy as well as other sound producing toys. - ELHadley]
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Edwin Hadley for submitting these two pieces for the newsletter.]
ToC
On The Media, June 08, 2007
URL: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/06/08/07>
Downloadable MP3: <http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm060807g.mp3>
Instead of fading into failed TV history, some canceled pilots are given new life on the internet. Canned by the WB network, Nobody's Watching, has had more than 14.2 million online views. Wired's Hugh Hart discusses the phenomenon and why we can expect more of this in the future.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEYCN3hVTYI>
<http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2007/05/tvpilots>
BOB GARFIELD: It's that time of year when many television producers get the bad news that the pilot they've slaved over for the past year or more, that's been tweaked to accommodate the network's demands and refined to appeal to just about everyone, has been rejected. Of the 54 comedy pilots that were actually produced, only a select few have been picked up.
You might think that the shows that get thrown out are never seen again, but, of course, you'd be wrong. Rejected pilots have gone viral on sites like YouTube and BitTorrent and have amassed quite the audience. The rejected Nobody's Watching has had a combined total of 14.2 million views.
[CLIP]:
MAN: This is a message for all of you TV networks. Lately your sitcoms suck.
MAN: They suck!
MAN: I mean, come on! According to Jim? Awful. Good Morning, Miami? It ain't funny.
[END OF CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: That's a little bit from Nobody's Watching. Hugh Hart wrote about the phenomenon in Wired, and he joins me now. Hugh, welcome to OTM.
HUGH HART: Good to be here.
BOB GARFIELD: So this life after death for sitcoms, when did this phenomenon begin?
HUGH HART: It began cropping up, I think, about when a drama called Global Frequency got turned down from the WB Network, and somehow or another the drama wound up on BitTorrent and people started downloading it. And a campaign to have it released on DVD and all these other kinds of effects followed a little bit of subversive uploading onto the Web.
So far, the networks have taken an adversarial stance towards unofficial postings of their copyrighted material on YouTube, MySpace and other sites, like BitTorrent.
BOB GARFIELD: Now, one explanation for this hard-line legal approach could be that the production companies and the networks don't want to create a precedent of giving away content that they own. But you actually pose another possibility.
HUGH HART: Absolutely. And this is something that each and every person that I spoke to for this story brought up, unsolicited. It's a question of network executive ego. These guys are paid, and paid well, to pick winners at the best, and, at the very least, contenders that they think have a shot at gathering up substantial primetime audience.
If it were to turn out that one of the sitcoms that they rejected as being a loser winds up gaining a following on the Internet, it makes them look less than perspicacious.
BOB GARFIELD: So if, for the time being, most networks and production companies are clamping down, a couple have been a little bit more liberal. There is an [LAUGHS] Adam Sandler-produced program called Gay Robot, which is preposterously sophomoric, at least mildly offensive [LAUGHS] and pretty funny, at least the small segment I heard. In fact, let's listen to a bit of it.
[CLIP]:
[PHONE RINGS]
MAN: Hey, Gay Robot, where are you?
GAY ROBOT: I'm across campus at the Student Union.
MAN: Well, come over. I'm watching the football game.
[CLICK]
Hello. Hello?
MAN: Was that a chick?
MAN: No, it's Gay Robot.
MAN: Gay Robot. What's that?
MAN: You haven't met Gay Robot yet? He's my roommate here at the frat. Professor Edwards built him.
MAN: While Professor was building the robot, he accidentally spilled a wine cooler on him, and he came out gay.
MAN: Really?
[HIGH "SHIMMERY" SOUNDS]
GAY ROBOT: Hey, hey, hey!
[END OF CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Now, that's still on YouTube. Tell me why it's still there.
HUGH HART: The pilot was rejected a few months ago by Comedy Central, and the idea now is to do what they call a "proof of concept," meaning let's throw it out there and see if the comedy actually works with ordinary comedy fans, and see what kind of a response it gets. Then we can take that as ammunition and return to maybe Comedy Central or some other network and say, look, it's got 14 million hits online. We still think it's a viable concept, even though it's been turned down earlier. What do you say you give it a second shot?
BOB GARFIELD: Has anyone actually seriously discussed using the Internet to create the world's largest focus group?
HUGH HART: That is exactly where I think things are likely to head in the next year or two. They came close to doing that with Nobody's Watching in the sense that NBC had picked up the show after it had been rejected by the WB.
And NBC said, well, maybe we should give this a shot. And they asked the producers to start producing Webisodes to kind of take the temperature of the Internet fan base and see what kind of response the characters and the comedic sensibility might have online.
[CLIP]:
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
MAN: We thank you, Father, for the American Broadcasting Company and the miracle of the electromagnetic wave so that Will and I may experience this unparalleled television event.
MAN: Amen.
MAN: We thank you for "The Others."
MAN: Amen.
MAN: We thank you for the hatch.
MAN: We thank you for killing Michelle Rodriguez.
MAN: Amen!
MAN: For the rock n' roll hobbit. And we do not thank you for all the copycat TV shows that are on this season.
MAN: Not Amen.
[END OF CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: Now, the number, 14.2 million views so far for the rejected Nobody's Watching, would seem to impeach the network's judgment. But, you know, if you think about it, 14.2 million viewers is kind of like one episode of the sort of average-rated network primetime sitcom. So how impressed should we be that over a period of months, 14.2 million people around the world have watched this thing?
HUGH HART:That's a fair question. And it's true that you need big, big numbers to qualify as a primetime hit. It might be a question, frankly, of television creative types thinking more in terms of using some of their talents towards Web-specific content that cost a heck of a lot less to produce.
Maybe if they scaled down, produced something that was shorter but, one hopes, just as funny, [LAUGHING] if not funnier, that might be an entirely new model unto itself.
BOB GARFIELD: Hugh, thank you very much.
HUGH HART: Thanks for your time, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Hugh Hart wrote about life-after-death TV pilots for Wired Magazine.
ToC
June 08, 2007
URL: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/06/08/08>
Downloadable MP3: <http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm060807h.mp3>
Surfing has films, skateboarding has VHS tapes, and parkour has the internet. After a few clips of David Belle leaping around the French suburbs made their way to the internet, a sport was accidentally born. New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson explains how parkour managed to be the first sport to go viral.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huv2sTalt7o>
<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_wilkinson>
Our favorite Parkour clip: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLJumlmZaT4>
If you saw the opening scene of the most recent James Bond movie, Casino Royale, you may have unknowingly been introduced to what some are calling a new sport - Parkour. It's a sort of freestyle acrobatics or gymnastics, only the apparatus is ordinary urban architecture.
The most adventurous devotees seem to defy gravity, running up against vertical walls, flipping over handrails, leaping, almost flying from rooftop to rooftop.
While skateboarding and snowboarding had their underground VHS tapes to help capture a broader following, Parkour may be the first sport made popular entirely via the Internet. Its origins can be traced to one man in the French suburbs, David Belle, who had no intention of popularizing anything.
A couple of clips of Belle were posted on the Web, and soon aspiring youngsters were posting their own clips and meeting online to form their own Parkour clans everywhere from Lithuania to Japan.
New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson made a pilgrimage to Paris to talk with Parkour's patriarch, and he says the mythic tales Belle heard about his acrobatic fireman father stamped his destiny.
ALEC WILKINSON: All the stories that he heard about his father were sort of hero stories, Superman stories and Tarzan stories. David wanted to be Spiderman and so he really literally devised ways of swinging from tree to tree and jumping over rocks and climbing up walls and leaping from one stairwell to another.
BOB GARFIELD: Now, because it is so breathtaking to watch, and it's stunning video, it is just made to order for the YouTube world, eh?
ALEC WILKINSON: Yes. I can't think of a circumstance like it, in which a completely private activity engaged in by a solitary person, with his friends, became something which spread around the world. Of course, it's all and entirely because of the Internet.
BOB GARFIELD: Now, you mentioned that David had dreamed of being [LAUGHING] Spiderman.
ALEC WILKINSON: Yes.
BOB GARFIELD: Do I understand that he actually had the opportunity to be Spiderman?
ALEC WILKINSON: He did. He did. He was offered the role, I think, for Spiderman III, of being the body double, as it were. It had been his childhood ambition, really, to be that kind of figure. In the end, though, he finally turned this opportunity down because he had come to feel sufficiently committed to pursuing his own performance of Parkour.
He reminds me of what I have heard and read about the figure of Charlie Parker. He seems committed entirely to what he is doing. He doesn't seem to be one of those people who sees necessarily choices between engagement with the world or disengagement. He simply really wants to do Parkour.
He'd like to bring it himself to as many people as possible by means of performances and shows, but he's not sufficiently ambitious to really figure out a way to make it happen. Before he does, I suspect someone else will figure out how to popularize it.
Certainly the man who was in Casino Royale, Sebastian Foucon, has stolen the march on him a little bit. And it's one of the reasons they no longer speak.
BOB GARFIELD: Now, it's clear that, much like the videos, the sport itself has gone viral. People all over the world are doing Parkour
ALEC WILKINSON: Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: Does David Belle feel that he has - does he feel he's lost control of his invention?
ALEC WILKINSON: I would think no because, again, he is so revered that, you know, in other parts of the world there are right now arguments going on about whether or not David Belle would approve of that maneuver. You know, here's a new thing I'm trying. Well, that's not Parkour, man. Dude, that's not Parkour - very heated, vehement kind of website exchanges. So I don't think he probably feels he's lost control.
I think it may happen once marketers really get hold of it - you know, once Nike really figures out how to build a Parkour shoe.
BOB GARFIELD: One more thing. As a former bored adolescent, I can say that I've invented, you know, probably a half a dozen sports myself -
ALEC WILKINSON: [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD: - including my beloved sock golf, which is played with a couple of balled-up [LAUGHS] socks and a trash can, indoors or outdoors. Do they have any chance to go viral, or do they have to be just breathtaking to witness in order for [LAUGHS] this phenomenon to play out?
ALEC WILKINSON: Well, I'm sure it has a lot to do with the dramatic impact. And you alluded to it before - it's so spectacular to see. And I cannot myself watch any of these films of Belle, as many times as I have, without my hands and feet breaking into a sweat. It's a little like watching Macbeth and sort of wanting to yell out from the audience, no, don't do it.
It seems to me it was like hearing the Beatles for the first time. It was so different from everything else. It had so much vitality.
To the kid who is wired to receive this kind of particular electronic charge through the screen of his computer, I think it's all but irresistible. And it plays on those adolescent themes of superheroes and fantasies and having a response for life that seems larger than life, when, in fact, adolescence is all about being utterly sort of terrified of life around you.
BOB GARFIELD: Alec, thank you so much for joining us.
ALEC WILKINSON: Thank you very much, my pleasure.
BOB GARFIELD: And, you know, when you get ready to do 7,000 words on sock golf, you just give me a holler.
ALEC WILKINSON: I'll go to the source.
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Alec Wilkinson is a writer for The New Yorker.
ToC
VeriSign EV Green Bar Extension from Firefox Add-ons
URL: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4828>
New Verisign authentication functionality extension for Firefox. Some may need or want this.
Also, recently, in an online discussion concerning the playing of video content of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" from MSNBC, it was noted that one would need the Windows Media Player plugin for Firefox on a Windows machine. Or, if you are running Linux, try the Firefox mplayer plugin. One person said, "I have that installed on Ubuntu 7.04, and it played the clip perfectly."
<http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/>
<http://www.linux-sxs.org/multimedia/mplayermozplug.html>
Posted by Robin Harris @ 8:06 am, June 11th, 2007
Persistence of Memory
URL: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=147&tag=nl.e040
Flash drives only look like disks. In fact, nothing works the way you'd think. Flash is really different from magnetic recording, and those differences have a big impact on flash drive performance. How well vendors manage flash oddities has a huge impact on performance and even drive lifespan.
I've started from the bottom up - the bits - to present flash weirdness logically. And what it means to users of flash drives.
To write a page you must first erase the entire block. NAND flash, the most common kind, is divided into blocks - typically 128 KB - and each block is divided into pages - typically 2 KB. To write a new page, the entire 128 KB block must be copied first - less pages due for rewriting - and the entire block rewritten.
This impacts performance even more. You may just need to write 2 KB, but the drive has to erase 128 KB and then write 128 KB.
This makes small random writes very slow - even slower than notebook disk drive writes. And since today's PC/Mac file systems perform lots of small random writes, you won't see all the performance flash drives promise after you boot up.
This means that vendors have the opportunity to improve flash drive performance through smaller block sizes and better block management techniques. They'll cost more to implement, but you should get more too.
What workloads? Sorry, you'll have to figure that out for yourself. The bottom line is that flash drive write performance will be all over the map as engineers try to optimize for a wide range of workloads.
Flash drives fast access times are a compelling advantage over magnetic disks. Flash prices are dropping faster than disk prices, so the cost differential is dropping, making flash more attractive each day.
But just because it looks like a disk doesn't mean it acts like a disk. It will be years before we have a good handle on the details of flash drive performance.
Of course, if filesystems stopped issuing lots of small random writes these performance issues would go away. Apple's new ZFS does this, but NTFS doesn't and it isn't clear if it can be modified to reduce the problem.
Update: I added some text to discuss the impact on users. And I tweaked the title, which is why it shows up two different ways.
Update II: I've written a lot more about flash at StorageMojo my personal blog. If you want to get your storage geek on, check it out.
[Editor's Note: My thanks to David Noreen for the above contribution to the newsletter.]
ToC
Paul Thurrott
URL: <http://www.wininformant.com/>
This week, Microsoft released a statement acknowledging that it's working in an open dialogue with European Union (EU) Commissioner Meglena Kuneva to clarify the efforts that Microsoft is taking globally to address consumer concerns about the Xbox 360's amazing ability to scratch Xbox 360 game discs so bad that they become unplayable. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the software giant has publicly admitted to the problem, which I've seen happen to several discs. However, Microsoft continues to blame the problem mostly on "improper use" by consumers, which I can state emphatically is just plain, old-fashioned baloney: I have three Xbox 360 game discs that are marred beyond playability, and the games and my systems have been lovingly cared-for. Make no mistake: There's something very wrong with the Xbox 360, and it's scratching discs. I'll be watching this story closely and waiting for my chance to get free game disc replacements. This problem is absolutely Microsoft's fault.
This week, Microsoft shipped a near-final release candidate version of Windows Home Server to beta testers, a milestone that suggests the company will have no problem shipping this eagerly-awaited product in time for the holidays. Microsoft says that more than 100,000 enthusiasts are currently beta testing Windows Home Server, and if the current release candidate is any indication, the product is shaping up nicely. Windows Home Server will be sold with special home server hardware and also as a standalone software package that white-box PC makers can use to build their own custom home servers. Pricing and availability haven't yet been announced.
Apple's surprise release of the Safari Web browser for Windows this week was accompanied by the usual hyperbole: It's "the world's best browser," Apple boasts, and "the fastest Web browser on any platform." Um, right. Actually, the initial beta of Safari on Windows was pretty weak: It's buggy, slow, and feature-starved, crashes frequently, is decidedly slower than both Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, and has serious compatibility problems with major Web sites. So the real question now is, who exactly will use this browser and why? Apple says that Safari for Windows is aimed at Windows users who love the simplicity and power of Apple products such as iTunes and the iPod, and Apple's even touting its "worry-free" security features. So isn't it ironic that the browser suffered from an unprecedented three zero-day flaws at almost the moment it was released? Apple subsequently shipped out a security update, but this should serve as a heads-up to anyone who thinks Apple products are automatically more secure. Again, I have to wonder: Who would ever use this browser?
And finally, I must report, somewhat sadly, that Microsoft has quietly killed its Digital Image Suite product line, which I should have seen coming when the company repackaged the 2006 edition during the last holiday season without adding any new features. Now, a note on the product's Web site simply tells users that Digital Image Suite has been discontinued. "Many of the digital imaging features and tools that have been enjoyed for years now can be found in new Microsoft titles and services including Windows Vista," the note adds. That's only sort of true; Vista's Windows Photo Gallery application offers a subset of the features in Digital Image Suite 2006 Library and Editor. I actually use Digital Image Suite 2006 almost every day and can't imagine how I'll replace it in the short term. Ah well.
This week, in a bizarre war of words, Sony claimed that Vista doesn't support certain new hardware types, such as Intel's Turbo Memory--code-named Robson--and hybrid hard disk drives, hardware that Microsoft specifically said was supported. Microsoft denied Sony's claims, saying that Vista was indeed completely compatible with this hardware. Because I'm typing this article in Vista on a Lenovo notebook with Turbo Memory installed, configured, and working correctly, I think I'm going to have to take Microsoft's side on this one.
Microsoft slipped in under its May deadline and delivered the long-awaited public beta of Windows Live Mail, the desktop mail client that it says will supplant both Outlook Express and Vista's Windows Mail. Windows Live Mail looks like a winner after a few days of testing: It features Web mail, POP3, and IMAP support, in addition to RSS and USENET newsgroup support, and you can turn off the advertisements. I'm using it now and will write up a review in the coming weeks. In addition to Windows Live Mail, Microsoft also shipped public betas of Windows Live Messenger 8.5, which is more Vista-like than the previous version, and Windows Live Writer, a blog posting solution that's surprisingly solid.
An otherwise unrelated Microsoft press release this week quietly noted that Windows XP SP3, the long-awaited final service pack for the OS that Microsoft is pretending doesn't exist anymore, would actually ship later this year alongside Windows Server 2008. This press release contradicted Microsoft's previous public statements about XP SP3, which placed the XP SP3 release somewhere in the mid-22nd century. So I asked the company what was up. I still haven't heard back from Microsoft yet, but "Computerworld" apparently did. Microsoft told "Computerworld" that XP SP3 is still due in the first half of 2008 and that the recent press release was mistaken. Oh well.
ToC
-Kevin Hisel
This is one handy Vista tool that allows you to change the behavior or User Account Control so that it's not so naggy. The big plus is that it doesn't require a reboot so you can quickly toggle UAC requesters on and off while installing or working remotely via VNC (VNC hates UAC's pop-ups).
It can turn off UAC altogether (not recommended) and has an in-between setting called "Quiet Mode" which retains the protection of UAC but just doesn't display the prompts.
Visit the TweakUAC web site: <http://www.tweak-uac.com/>
ToC
-Kevin Hisel
A nice big honkin' page of Windows Vista tips for more advanced users (like CUCUG members) can be found here:
<http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=499870>
There are quite a few very specific Vista-oriented tips and other information including downloads. Check it out.
ToC
-Kevin Hisel
Remember when you first got your Windows XP box and realized that it was bloated with all kinds of stuff running you didn't need? Well, you went over to Black Viper's web site and he set you straight on what all the various OS services did so you could either set them for manual execution or just disable them altogether.
Black Viper is at it again, this time for Vista. Visit Black Viper's "Windows Vista Service Configurations Introduction" and set up your machine to only load and run the stuff you really need.
Here you go: <http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm>
ToC
URL: <http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9729126-7.html>
Posted by Robert Vamosi
Checkpoint has released an updated ZoneAlarm 7.1 that's designed to work with Windows Vista's architecture. This is the first true two-way firewall for the Windows Vista environment. Windows Vista includes the Windows Firewall, however, it blocks only inbound traffic, allowing all "except where excepted" outbound traffic. This may seem like a fine distinction, but it can be huge. If you acquire a remote-access Trojan on your Windows Vista machine, Microsoft may not flag the outbound traffic.
Checkpoint explained its delay in releasing this product in an e-mail. "Rather than rush to market with a patchwork solution when only a small fraction of our users were actually using Vista," the company said, "we decided to invest in the long-term." This includes building the product on Microsoft's Windows Filtering Platform API, rather than continuing to use the soon-to-be outdated TDI API. Not only does this provide ZoneAlarm with more stability under Windows Vista, but it means Checkpoint won't have to rewrite its code when TDI does expire.
ZoneAlarm continues to provide a free version in addition to its paid versions. Its Internet security suite continues to use best-of-breed third-party products such as the Kaspersky antivirus engine and MailFrontier antispam filters.
ToC
By CHRISTOPHER LAWTON
The Wall Street Journal
Breaking a largely direct-sales model it has used for more than a decade, Dell Inc. said that it would begin to sell desktop personal computers in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. next month.
Dell said it plans to offer two Dimenson desktop models in 3000 Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico starting June 10th.
In a statement, Dell spokesman Bob Pearson said, "Our customers are asking us for additional ways to purchase our products and we plan on delivering on a global level. Offering Dell Dimensions in Wal-Mart is a great example of this approach."
Today's announcement represents the largest change yet to come under Chief Executive and Founder Michael Dell, since Mr. Dell took back the reins of the company from then-CEO Kevin Rollins in January amid sluggish sales and profit growth. Dell used the direct model of selling PCs over the phone and the internet for years, eventually rising to be the largest PC company in the world.
But the model began to lose steam in 2005, as consumers -- the growth engine in the U.S. market -- began gravitating to retail stores to buy portable notebook computers. Dell had largely focused on selling desktops to commercial customers, a market that has slowed.
Since then, sales and profits for the Round Rock, Texas company have waned, and it lost the No. 1 spot in the global PC industry to Hewlett-Packard Co., whose PC division has resurfaced since Mark Hurd has come on as CEO of the large tech giant.
In January, following the resignation of Mr. Rollins, Mr. Dell returned as CEO and has since reshaped the executive team bringing new blood into the company, including Ron Garriques, a top executive from Motorola Inc., to run its global consumer business.
Then in an email sent to Dell's worldwide staff last month, Mr. Dell outlined moves to reach more customers and make technology simpler for users. In particular, Mr. Dell wrote that the company will pursue new models of distributing and manufacturing computers, adding, "The Direct Model has been a revolution, but is not a religion."
Dell declined to make executives available for an interview, and Mr. Pearson declined to give further details. He suggested that other retail moves might be in the offing, however.
In the statement, he added, "Today's announcement with Wal-Mart represents our first step. Stay tuned."
ToC
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Kevin Hisel for the above contributions to this section of the newsletter.]
ToC
[Editor's Note: For years I've said "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." Well, Jon Bjerke has taken me up on it and I couldn't be happier. Here are the things Jon found interesting this month - besides a few others you'll find sprinkled elsewhere in the newsletter. Thanks, Jon.]
by George Ou, ZDNet.com
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=493&tag=nl.e622>
<http://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer>
[Note from Jon: I signed up for the beta and installed WHS on a machine of mine last night. I might be able to show this at the July meeting if there is interest.]
New vulnerabilities include a critical flaw in Internet Explorer and a "major" bug in Firefox.
The complete story can be found here:
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132543/article.html>
by Paul Thurrott, <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
Is any Web browser truly safe? A well-respected security researcher from Poland has published information about several new browser vulnerabilities over the past few months, and he's added four more to the list just this week. And although the most serious of these flaws affects Microsoft's bug-plagued Internet Explorer (IE) 6.0 as well as IE 7.0, at least two of them affect open-source darling Mozilla Firefox too.
"The entire security model of the browser collapses like a house of cards and renders you vulnerable to a plethora of nasty attacks," writes Michal Zalewski, a security researcher who has made it a personal crusade lately to find browser flaws, or as he calls it, the "triannual intercontinental browser bug-o-la-palooza."
Humor aside, Zalewski is working with browser makers to ensure they have the information they need to combat these flaws. Microsoft says it's investigating Zalewski's claims, but says it's not aware of any attacks or customer impact at this time. Mozilla's reaction was to downplay what Zalewski claimed were "major" Firefox flaws. Mozilla security chief Window Snyder characterized both flaws as having a "low" rating, but later admitted that if combined into a single attack, they could qualify for a "medium" severity rating.
<http://www.informationweek.com/news/199904890>
<http://www.wxpnews.com/G5JDYA/070524-Press-Release>
<http://www.wxpnews.com/G5JDYA/070524-Competitive-Upgrade>
Republican presidential hopeful names Cisco's John Chambers and Microsoft's Steve Ballmer among those he'd hope to recruit to work in his administration.
The complete story can be found here:
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132592/article.html>
<http://entmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=8651>
<http://www.matousec.com/projects/windows-personal-firewall-analysis/leak-tests-results.php>
<http://www.matousec.com/projects/windows-personal-firewall-analysis/leak-tests-results.php#firewalls-ratings>
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132650/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132629/article.html?tk=nl_csxnws>
<http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/06/08/iphone_may_become_king_in_cellphone_chip_ban.html>
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132851/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132956/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132975/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132969/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>
<http://209.34.241.68/benp/archive/2007/06/07/tech-ed-2007-top-5-powershell-questions.aspx>
ToC
from Allen Byrne
By Eric Lai, Computerworld, 06/11/07
URL: <http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/061107-can-new-york-make-the.html?fsrc=rss-linux-news>
The New York state politician backing a bill that would order the state to examine a switch to open document formats for official business said Friday that she is optimistic her bill will escape the fate of similar bills in five other states. - LinuxWorld
Thursday, June 7, 2007 11:29 AM
Posted By Darcy Dapra, Strategic Partner Manager
URL: <http://librariancentral.blogspot.com/2007/06/google-scholar-library-links-hits-1200.html>
This morning, as I tinkered with slides for a talk that I'm giving at the ALA Annual Meeting on Google Scholar and Libraries, a recent statistic on our Scholar Library Links program caught my eye. In fact, it made me exclaim "Holy moly!" out loud, much to my cubemates' amusement. I was amazed to see that Library Links -- a program that we launched just over two years ago to facilitate the connection between Scholar search results and libraries' electronic journal collections -- is now more than 1,200 libraries strong. - Google Librarian Central
Franklin Hadley, Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies
June 7, 2007
URL: <http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/wireless-0607.html>
MIT team experimentally demonstrates wireless power transfer, potentially useful for powering laptops, cell phones without cords
Realizing their recent theoretical prediction, they were able to light a 60W light bulb from a power source seven feet (more than two meters) away; there was no physical connection between the source and the appliance. The MIT team refers to its concept as "WiTricity" (as in wireless electricity). The work will be reported in the June 7 issue of Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science. - MIT News
Posted by Peter Lattman
May 17, 2007, 5:01 pm
URL: <http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/05/17/law-blog-qa-sun-microsystems-gc-mike-dillon/>
Q: Some people, like former Microsoft big wig Nathan Myhrvold, defend the rights of patent-holding companies, arguing that without full rights there is no way for small inventors to get big infringers to the table to settle. How do you respond to that?
Dillon: The area of software patents is where you see most of the troll activity. Twenty years ago you weren't able to patent software. As a result of the dot com crash, you see software patents out there that are being bought up for no other purpose than to derive revenues from companies. These aren't inventors but are mostly lawyers and investors seeking a quick return. These patents in most cases are not being used to create products and innovation which is what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they established the patent system. - WSJ Law blog
By Anne Broache, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: June 5, 2007, 3:31 PM PT
URL: <http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6188887.html>
At the latest in what has become a multiyear series of hearings focused on university campus piracy, members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Science and Technology Committee said college administrators must seriously consider using not only educational campaigns but also technological filters to reduce illicit file swapping among students. - ZDNET
By Todd R. Weiss, Jeremy Kirk and Elizabeth Montalbano
Computerworld
06/06/07 4:00 AM PT
URL: <http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/57653.html>
Joe Lindsay, CIO at Secured Funding in Costa Mesa, Calif., said Microsoft's maneuvering may scare some users away from Linux and other open source software in the short term. ...
However, he predicted that in the long run, Microsoft will suffer the most damage, because it should be focusing more on developing innovative products than on threatening other vendors that have outsmarted it. "Their business model is fundamentally changing, and Microsoft is using [the specter of] the courthouse to extend their old way of doing business," Lindsay said. - Linux Insider
By Mary Jane Smetanka, Star Tribune
Last update: June 06, 2007 - 9:24 PM
URL: <http://www.startribune.com/education/story/1228873.html>
Up to 1 million books in the University of Minnesota's libraries will become part of Google's project to put every book in the world online, University officials announced this morning.
The new agreement, announced at 9 a.m., is between Google, the Big Ten institutions and the University of Chicago. Google will scan up to 10 million volumes from libraries at those institutions....
No money will change hands. Google essentially is digitizing large parts of the U library for free. If the U did it itself, it would take years and cost about $60 per volume. - Mary Jane Smetanka, Star Tribune
ToC
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Allen Byrne for the above contributions to this section of the newsletter.]
ToC
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/39671/39671.html>
A. The Trinity Rescue Kit is a Linux distribution on a bootable CD-ROM that contains everything you need to rescue or repair dead or damaged Linux or Windows systems. The kit, which you can download for free at <http://trinityhome.org/trk/index.html>, is based on Mandrake Linux 9.1 binaries.
When you start the CD-ROM, you'll see a splash-screen Linux Loader (LiLo) boot menu with a few options to specify how the startup procedure should behave. The default configuration will work in most cases, but the rescue kit also gives you the option to specifically search for PC Card network adapters or USB Ethernet adapters, run extra scripts from a 3.5" disk, or even customize the way the CD-ROM boots (e.g., load a Belgian keyboard, detect all USB Ethernet adapters, use DHCP to locate an IP address, mount all file systems found on the local computer). After you boot the rescue kit, you can access tools to help you address the most common problem scenarios.
The rescue kit will typically attempt to detect onboard network adapter and use DHCP to obtain an IP address. If the rescue kit is successful at both tasks, you can then transfer files to an FTP, Secure Shell (SSH), or Windows server. For example, if you need to rescue files from a crashed Windows 2000 system, you'll be able to mount the partition, read the files, and copy them somewhere safe on your LAN.
If you accidentally delete files from an NTFS partition, you can use the included Ntfsdelete utility to recover those files. You can use the Winpass shell script, which uses a GNU Windows registry editor called Chntpw, to reset Windows passwords without having to know Linux. The script searches for any available local Windows installations, asks you which installation you want to reset the password for, then starts Chntpw.
You can use the included Virusscan shell script to scan for viruses. The script calls a free version of FRISK Software International's F-Prot Antivirus and scans every local disk; the script also presents you with the option to first fetch the latest antivirus definitions from <ftp.f-prot.com>.
<http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/49229/49229.html>
A. I first discussed this tool in the FAQ "What's the Trinity Rescue Kit?". A new version is now available here, and you can find more information at <http://trinityhome.org/trk>. This new version is still a Linux-based recovery tool for Windows, but it has several new features including:
- Read/write support on NTFS drives. The command "mountallfs" gives you read-only access to NTFS drives. Using the command with the -f option gives you safe, fast write access to NTFS drives, but you can create only 10 files per subdirectory, so it's not an ideal solution if you have to do many copies. Mountallfs -c gives you full write access, but you need to add ntfs.sys and ntoskrnl.exe from Windows XP Service Pack 1a (SP1a) manually, as the Usage Howto section of the Web site explains.
- Simple password resets via winpass
- Offline virus scans with two different antivirus tools (F-prot and ClamAv)
- Registry editing
- Partition editing with qtparted
- NTFS file undelete functionality
- Lots of hardware support, from most network cards and disk controllers to USB storage
- Fast boot times (less than 40 seconds)
- Network NTFS cloning
- Remote administration possible
- Network environment preconfigurable at boot
- Integrated Web browser (links)
All this functionality is from a bootable CD-ROM; no information is written to the physical disk. For example, you can use the Winpass shell script, which uses a GNU Windows registry editor called Chntpw, to reset Windows passwords without having to know Linux. The script searches for any available local Windows installations, asks which installation you want to reset the password for, then starts Chntpw, as the figure shows. I recommend that you download and burn the utility to a CD-ROM and practice using it. It's a valuable tool for any power user or administrator.
ToC
by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#883/11-Jun-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9024>
Apple revamped its MacBook Pro line of portables last week with faster processors, better graphics capabilities, 802.11n wireless networking (removing the need to run an enabler), and screens that are backlit using LED technology. I need to remind myself that the MacBook Pro I bought last November is still a perfectly fine machine for my needs, and not allow techno-lust to overpower me (see "More Bang, Less Bucks for My MacBook Pro," 2006-11-20). That won't be easy, however.
<http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8761>
The new 15-inch and 17-inch models are powered by Intel Core 2 Duo processors running at 2.2 GHz or 2.4 GHz. The new chips belong to the recently announced Intel "Santa Rosa" family, which offer improvements in power consumption and bus speed (800 MHz versus 667 MHz for the Core 2 Duo processors used in the previous MacBook Pro revision). The chips also enable the use of up to 4 GB of RAM, up from a maximum of 3 GB. The base configurations include 2 GB of memory. For graphics, the MacBook Pros use the Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT processor with either 128 MB or 256 MB of memory.
That memory comes in handy not only for graphics-intensive applications such as Final Cut Studio but also for powering the 17-inch model's optional (for $100 more) display with a resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels, large enough to view and edit 1080i high-definition video at native resolution. The default configuration remains the same as before, with a native resolution of 1680 by 1050 pixels.
The MacBook Pro is also the first Mac to use energy-efficient LED (light-emitting diode) backlighting for its display, though only on the 15-inch model for now. Steve Jobs alluded to LED-backlit displays in his "A Greener Apple" open letter posted at the Apple Web site in May (see "Steve Jobs Talks Green," 2007-05-07) because replacing fluorescent backlighting with LEDs reduces the amount of toxic mercury used in computers. According to comments by Apple, the LED backlighting can also add 30 to 60 minutes of time to a battery charge.
<http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8974>
<http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/apple-interview/details-on-the-new-led-macbook-pro-266091.php>
Storage has been increased, offering 120 GB or 160 GB hard drives running at 5400 rpm for the 15-inch model, with an optional 160 GB drive at 7200 rpm or a 200 GB drive at 4200 rpm. The 17-inch model comes with a 160 GB drive, but can be outfitted instead with the 7200-rpm 160 GB drive or a 250 GB 4200-rpm drive. Note that drives spinning at faster rates will not necessarily perform more quickly in real-world usage.
In most other respects, the configurations are similar to the previous generation, including one FireWire 400 port, one FireWire 800 port, two USB 2.0 ports (three ports on the 17-inch model), 8x slot-loading SuperDrive, built-in iSight camera, backlit keyboard, ExpressCard/34 slot, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR short-range wireless networking, and gigabit Ethernet.
<http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs.html>
The new MacBook Pro models are available now for the same prices as the previous generation. The 15-inch model with the 2.2 GHz processor, 120 GB hard drive, and Nvidia card with 128 MB of memory costs $2,000. The 15-inch model with the 2.4 GHz processor, 160 GB hard drive, and Nvidia card with 256 MB of memory runs $2,500. And the 17-inch model with the 2.4 GHz processor, 160 GB hard drive and an Nvidia card with 256 MB of memory costs $2,800.
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#880/21-May-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8992>
Almost exactly a year after its initial release (see "MacBook Fills Out Laptop Line," 2006-05-22) and six months after the last processor jump ("MacBook Gains Core 2 Duo Processor," 2006-11-13), Apple has updated the MacBook line of laptops with faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors that add roughly .16 GHz to each model, a standard 1 GB of RAM across the line, and larger hard disks. Prices remain the same, but the stock choices now include a white 2.0 GHz model with an 80 GB hard disk for $1,100, a 2.16 GHz model with a 120 GB hard disk for $1,300, and the black 2.16 GHz model with a 160 GB hard disk for $1,500. Apple is also now advertising the MacBook as supporting 802.11n, which presumably means that the 802.11n enabler is no longer necessary.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8534>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8742>
<http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html>
by TidBITS Staff <editors@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#883/11-Jun-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9038>
At today's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs demoed the first feature-complete developer beta release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, showing off slick new features, including what appears to be the most significant overhaul of the Finder in some time. At last year's WWDC, demos focused largely on marquee features like Time Machine, Spaces, Mail, and Dashboard (see "Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Previewed at WWDC 2006," 2006-08-07). Today Jobs also shocked the Mac world by announcing the release of a test version of Safari 3 for Windows XP and Vista, and then wrapped up by explaining how developers will be able to create applications for the iPhone, due at 6 P.M. on 29-Jun-07.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8632>
Although Jobs claimed 300 new features in Leopard, he chose to focus on only a few in the keynote, and didn't cover the new features in Mail or iCal, or Mac OS X's accessibility capabilities, which were previously revealed. Jobs reiterated a shipping date of October 2007 for Leopard.
Eye candy is important to Apple these days, and Leopard provides plenty of it, with the new translucent menu bar and a reflective "floor" on which Dock icons sit. These features are likely due to Core Animation, a new API that simplifies the process of creating sophisticated animations.
Computer makers, processor makers, and operating system developers all conspire to make sure that each new update to an operating system's interface includes something that requires more horsepower. Not so much that it hobbles older computers, but enough that it can wow existing owners into buying new hardware. Multi-core processors make it somewhat easier to justify burning processor cycles on trendy 3D effects, too.
Stacks, a new element of the Dock, should appeal to clean-desk types irritated by Mac OS X's inability to handle piles of things. As far as we can tell, a stack is a new way of looking at the contents of a docked folder; you can either fan out the contents to see (and select from) them, or you can view them in a grid if there are too many for the fan display to make sense. The newest document is always placed on top of a stack.
In essence, Stacks brings back the tabbed folder functionality from Mac OS 9, although with a modern look and feel. In a bid to end piles of downloads scattered across your Desktop, Jobs said that a default stack named Downloads will automatically capture downloaded files, notifying you when new ones arrive.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/desktop.html>
Another Finder improvement is Quick Look, which provides a fast preview of any document in the Finder. Pressing the spacebar with a file selected presents a preview of the file's contents. This preview includes the capability to play QuickTime movies and page through multi-page documents. Apple will provide Quick Look support for common document types, like Microsoft Word and Excel, PDF, text, movie, and image files, and will offer a plug-in architecture for developers to build their own Quick Look preview interfaces. Clearly, Steve's documents are prettier than ours, but Quick Look may still prove useful for examining documents quickly without having to launch the associated application.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/quicklook.html>
The popularity of iTunes is having a notable effect on the Finder, with an iTunes-like sidebar that contains top-level items labeled Devices (disks), Shared (networked computers), Places (folders), and Search For (essentially smart folders). For those who enjoy the iTunes Cover Flow feature that lets you browse by album art, Jobs said that the same option will now be available for Finder windows, letting you browse through items and even play QuickTime movies in the interface.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/finder.html>
Spotlight extends its reach in Leopard to search networked Macs and PCs, providing a fundamental enhancement to the technology. Leopard's Spotlight will also feature Boolean searching, exact phrases, dates, ranges, and absolute dates. Oddly, it will reportedly also perform simple calculations (much the way you can perform calculations in LaunchBar, we suppose). It remains to be seen if these improvements will cause those of us who find Spotlight relatively useless now to change our minds. Because Jobs said this new Spotlight feature will search PCs, Apple may need to release Spotlight for Windows, too, perhaps in a challenge to the various desktop searching programs like Google Desktop.
Finally, a shared computer listed in the Finder's sidebar can be accessed not just for file sharing, but also for remote control, just as though you were in front of it. Apple didn't stop there. The awkwardly named "Back to My Mac" feature allows remote access to other Macs for which you have authorization over the Internet, with Apple's .Mac service managing the connection. Several products - including LogMeIn, a beta of which was released last week for Mac OS X (see "LogMeIn Adds Remote Control for Mac," 2007-06-11) - allow remote control connections to computers behind home and corporate gateways that assign private network addresses. Private network addresses are typically non-routable, unreachable from the rest of the Internet.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9027>
Jobs said Leopard will be a 64-bit operating system that will also support 32-bit applications. In a slight jab at Microsoft, which has sold 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows separately, Jobs said that Leopard will have a single version that can handle both kinds of applications.
The advantage of 64-bit processors when they have operating system support is, in part, their capability to perform mathematical operations on larger chunks of data a time. That can produce substantial improvements in computationally intensive tasks, which invariably include the display of new, fancy interface elements - Quick Look, Cover Flow, etc. - and serious application tasks, like creating movies in iDVD or playing games. Apple is unique in selling mostly computers that feature 64-bit processors. Until now, the real underlying power hasn't been used to its full advantage.
Leopard will, as expected, have Boot Camp built in, but only as a complement to Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. By "built in," it appears that Apple means you'll be able to switch to Windows by choosing Restart in Windows from the Apple menu. But Leopard won't require that you end your session on the Mac side; instead, it goes into "safe sleep" mode so when you return, you'll be right back where you left off.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/bootcamp.html>
Nonetheless, this approach to Boot Camp means that Apple chose not to compete with the third-party software offering virtualization capabilities. That's unusual in the sense that Boot Camp, by forcing the user to reboot into Windows, isn't a very Mac-like solution to the problem of needing to run the occasional Windows application.
Both Parallels Desktop, with Coherence, and VMware Fusion, with Unity, offer far more integrated approaches, but Boot Camp is free with Leopard. Jobs did say that Apple is helping both companies, and both are working hard to provide seamless compatibility with Windows partitions created by Boot Camp so you can use either Boot Camp or a virtualization program without duplicating your Windows installation.
On the other hand, Boot Camp enables full use of all hardware drivers and peripherals in Windows, along with 100 percent of the potential processor power. Virtual machines can never achieve that efficiency - although they can get close to it, depending on task - and specific hardware that uses software that bypasses the driver abstraction layer may never be supported on a virtual machine.
With Spaces, Leopard users will be able to create and switch among multiple desktops, each with different active applications. Such capabilities are by no means new, but by integrating Spaces into Mac OS X at a low level, we suspect that multiple desktops will become significantly more popular among normal users. It appears that Apple has done a particularly good job with Spaces, making it simple to switch among spaces, drag windows from one space to another, and more.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/spaces.html>
The attraction of Spaces comes in part from the constant demands for attention inherent in today's Macs - it can be difficult to concentrate on writing, for instance, when people can interrupt via iChat, when email is constantly flowing in, when Web pages update automatically, and when various other distractive applications are constantly at the ready.
Jobs claimed that over 3,000 Dashboard widgets have been written, making the technology a success. However, creating a widget currently requires a bit of programming, whereas with the new Web Clip feature of Dashboard, anyone will be able to cut out a regularly updating part of a Web page - perhaps the comic of the day, a Google Analytics usage graph, or CNET's "What's Hot" treemap of popular and timely articles - and turn it into a Dashboard widget.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/dashboard.html>
Leopard's iChat may be one of the most compelling improvements for many of us. First and foremost, audio quality has been improved through support for AAC-LD (AAC Low Delay) encoding. iChat in Leopard also offers tabbed chats, as are currently available via Chax, and in a bit of a silly but fun move, Photo Booth effects that can be applied to live video, as well as bluescreen effects behind (and overlays in front of) someone in a video chat, much like Script Software's ChatFX.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/ichat.html>
<http://www.ksuther.com/chax/>
<http://www.scriptsoftware.com/chatfx/>
But what's really interesting is that you can now share iPhoto slideshows via iChat, along with Keynote presentations and videos. Plus, anything you can display with Quick Look can be shown in iChat, making it possible to show others documents in real time. We're looking forward to using iChat for remote presentations with Mac user groups; we've done a few that way already, but it's nearly impossible to flip back and forth between video and showing something onscreen. Even better, anything you show with iChat can be saved, audio chats as AAC files, and video chats as MPEG-4 files. The podcasting world may explode, thanks to the added ease of recording live audio and video.
This year's demonstration of Time Machine wasn't particularly detailed, but Jobs revealed one previously unannounced feature that's notable. It turns out that Time Machine can back up multiple computers to a hard drive connected to an 802.11n-based AirPort Extreme Base Station (2007 release). Network backups are far easier and more efficient (if slower) than schlepping a hard drive between Macs - it would be nice if an initial backup could be made while the drive was connected locally, and then attached to the AirPort base station for remote backups. Time Machine will let you change the disk to which you're backing up, exclude items you don't want backed up, encrypt your backed up data, and set time limits on how long versions of files should be kept to avoid filling up the destination drive. It remains to be seen if it will be easy to store a Time Machine-based backup drive off-site, as is ideal to protect against fire or burglary.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/timemachine.html>
The classic "one more thing" announcement was a shocker, with Jobs announcing that Apple would be taking advantage of the experience in porting iTunes to Windows to release Safari 3 for Windows XP and Vista as well as for Leopard and for Tiger. Although this seems like an odd move, given that Apple won't make any money from a Windows version of Safari, it may be designed to encourage Web developers working in Windows to create sites that will display properly on the iPhone, which itself will be running a version of Safari. The public beta version of Safari 3 was released today.
<http://www.apple.com/safari/>
Security and standards support may provide another rationale for Apple porting Safari to Windows. A long-standing complaint among security experts has been the many holes in Internet Explorer that allow exploitation of a user's computer by simply visiting a Web site. Internet Explorer 7 solved some of this problem by creating a kind of walled garden in which browsing takes place, but it's a hack on Microsoft's part. Plus, Web designers have long been irritated by successive versions of Internet Explorer that fail to fix fundamental problems in the browser's CSS support. A single line of simple CSS that works correctly in Safari, Firefox, and Opera on all platforms can require several lines of additional code to work in multiple versions of Internet Explorer.
It's ironic that Apple is releasing a browser for Windows, given that Microsoft released Internet Explorer for the Mac in 1996. Internet Explorer was the Mac's default browser until early 2003, when Safari was unveiled, after which the program saw no more development effort before being discontinued in 2006. See "Microsoft Unveils Internet Explorer for Mac," (1996-01-22), "Internet Explorer for Mac in Maintenance Mode" (2003-06-16) and "Internet Explorer Officially Fades Away," (2006-01-09) for more on Internet Explorer for Mac's history.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/1169>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/7227>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8383>
Jobs didn't let last week's appearance with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates at the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference stop him from poking fun at Microsoft's multiple versions of Windows Vista. Jobs announced - apparently to a little initial shock - that Leopard would be available in Basic, Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate versions, all of which will cost $130. (It's a joke - there's only one version.) This is the same price as all previous versions of Mac OS X.
<http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macword/2007/05/gatesjobsd/>
The release of the beta of Safari 3 for Windows, the potential of Spotlight for Windows (based on Jobs's comments), and continued development of iTunes, Bonjour network discovery, QuickTime, AirPort Utility, and other programs continues to change Apple's role vis-a-vis the Windows platform. Apple is a very serious, top-level Windows software developer now with tens of millions - if not more - customers using their software for Windows.
If, as our illustrious editor in chief, Tonya Engst, has suggested, the iPhone is the new network computer, then Windows and Mac OS X become equally viable platforms for interacting with the iPhone, just as is true for the iPod.
Speaking of the iPhone, Jobs's final announcement was that Apple has come up with a new way for developers to create applications that can run on the iPhone, a question that has been much debated since the iPhone was first announced. Apple's approach is to leverage the Safari engine to enable AJAX-based applications that can communicate with the Internet and integrate with other iPhone services like placing calls, sending email, accessing Google Maps, and so on. And that's all without the need for Apple to publish and maintain a software development kit.
(Lest this sound like gibberish to those readers who aren't Web developers and designers, AJAX, or asynchronous JavaScript and XML, enables a Web page to retrieve information and update a page via JavaScript without reloading the page. This lets a single page to work like a mini-application along the lines of Google's Gmail.)
In retrospect, this approach makes perfect sense, and lets Apple make it possible for anyone (well, anyone who could create an AJAX-enabled Web site) to create an iPhone application without actually opening the platform up for development. Apple's Scott Forstall, vice-president of the iPhone division, demoed a corporate address book that took less than 600 lines of code and a person-month to write and test, but which enabled remote lookups via LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), direct dial, direct sending of email, and more.
Jobs didn't explain how many iPhone-specific functions will be reachable via JavaScript. He noted that AJAX applications could dial the phone and send email, but that's not saying much. Notably, by relying on AJAX for third-party programs, Apple can likely prevent the direct access to the iPhone's hardware that might make voice over IP (VoIP) calling possible, something we suspect Apple's partner AT&T wouldn't want cutting into cell phone earnings.
With all those announcements out of the way, we can sit back and contemplate what it will be like to use Leopard come October. Or at least, those of us for whom the iPhone will simply cost too much can ponder Leopard - everyone else will undoubtedly be too busy playing with their iPhones on the subway, while stuck in traffic, or at the beach to notice the intervening months.
ToC
by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#882/04-Jun-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9015>
Call me a rainmaker. Just a few days after I sent my latest book ("The Apple TV Pocket Guide") to be printed, Apple announced upgrades to the Apple TV.
<http://www.amazon.com/Apple-TV-Pocket-Guide/dp/0321510216/tidbitselectro00/>
<http://www.apple.com/appletv/>
During last week's D: All Things Digital conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg chatted onstage about Apple's latest "hobby," the Apple TV. "The reason I call it a hobby," said Jobs, "is a lot of people have tried and failed to make it a business. It's a business that's hundreds of thousands of units per year but it hasn't crested to be millions of units per year, but I think if we improve things we can crack that."
<http://d5.allthingsd.com/>
<http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/30/steve-jobs-live-from-d-2007/>
One method of cracking the business comes in the form of a build-to-order option, now available, to include a 160 GB hard drive in the Apple TV instead of the relatively small 40 GB capacity in the base model. Apple claims the more capacious drive will hold up to 200 hours of video or 36,000 songs, compared to 50 hours of video and 9,000 songs on the 40 GB model. The 160 GB version costs $400; the 40 GB version remains priced at $300.
More intriguing is the addition of downloadable YouTube content, something that we suspected would appear, given that the box is already capable of downloading movie trailers and other video content (see "Apple TV: The Real Video iPod," 2007-03-26). A new YouTube menu item will lead to categories such as Featured and Most Viewed, with video streamed directly to the Apple TV. (Unofficial hacks have made it possible to view YouTube videos - and other online content - on the Apple TV since a few days after the device began shipping, but the process to implement them isn't trivial.) The capability will be available sometime in June as a free update.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8924>
<http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Main_Page>
by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#881/28-May-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9005>
Apple has released its fifth Mac OS X security update of 2007 to patch a number of potential vulnerabilities. Security Update 2007-005 makes changes to CoreGraphics, iChat, VPN, BIND, crontabs, PPP, and other components, in most cases correcting problems that require either local user access or access to the Mac via a local network. However, several fixes are more important. An update to BIND prevents a possible remote denial of service attack (but because it reportedly overwrites the BIND launchd plist file, it may both turn BIND off and cause other changes to be lost, a potential problem for Mac OS X Server machines), a new version of fetchmail prevents possible disclosure of passwords, and a fix for CoreGraphics in Mac OS X 10.4 provides additional verification of PDF files to avoid possible crashes when opening maliciously crafted PDFs. The update is available via Software Update or for download in four varieties: for Mac OS X 10.4.9 as Universal (29.2 MB) and PowerPC (15.7 MB) installers; and for Mac OS X 10.3.9 Client (42.5 MB) and Server (56 MB) systems.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305530>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2007005universal.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2007005ppc.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate20070051039client.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate20070051039server.html>
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#882/04-Jun-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9014>
Apple last week released two security updates, version 1.1 of Security Update 2007-005 (see "Security Update 2007-005 Released," 2007-05-28) and Security Update (QuickTime 7.1.6). As of this writing, Apple had said nothing about what was fixed in the 1.1 version of Security Update 2007-005, but the QuickTime security update fixes two issues in QuickTime for Java that could result either in arbitrary code execution or disclosure of sensitive information. That sounds similar to the security fixes in QuickTime 7.1.6 itself from earlier this month, but it seems to be different (see "QuickTime, AirPort, Security Updates Released," 2007-05-07). In either case, both updates are likely worthwhile. Downloads for Security Update 2007-005 1.1 are available in PowerPC (15.7 MB) and Universal (29.2 MB) forms, and Security Update (QuickTime 7.1.6) is a 1.4 MB download. Or just use Software Update to get the appropriate version for your Mac.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9005>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305531>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8975>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2007005v11ppc.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2007005v11universal.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdatequicktime716formac.html>
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#881/28-May-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9003>
Thanks to our buddy Bill Rabel in Seattle for the impetus to write this article. After Mark Anbinder wrote in "Call Me 'Two Finger' Mark" (2007-05-21) about how he was surprised to find himself addicted to two-finger scrolling on his MacBook (which is equivalent to using a scroll wheel or Mighty Mouse scroll ball), Bill went spelunking and found a trick I hadn't previously known, causing me to look for other scroll wheel tips. (And if you're interested in the history of the scroll wheel, check out "The Evolution of Scrolling: Reinventing the Wheel," 2004-12-13.)
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8991>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/7925>
Many applications, such as word processors, are oriented vertically, so scrolling up and down with the scroll wheel is intuitive. But what about applications like Microsoft Excel and ProVUE Development's Panorama database, which often require scrolling horizontally? Just hold down the Shift key and your scroll wheel switches to controlling the horizontal scroll bar instead of the vertical scroll bar. Applications must support this Mac OS X feature explicitly, so it may not be universal to all applications with a horizontal scroll bar.
Hold down the Control key while you scroll with the scroll wheel and Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later will zoom the screen smoothly. Mac OS X has long provided screen zooming (see the Universal Access preference pane), but it required keyboard shortcuts that were awkward and jerky. Screen zooming isn't just for those who have trouble reading too-small text or for presenters who want to focus on a particular part of the screen, though; it's also great for zooming tiny Internet videos up to full-screen size. Of course, they pixelate more at larger sizes, but that's fine if you're sitting further back from the screen anyway. The only downside is that it's hard to get the mouse pointer out of the picture when you're zoomed in on a video; normally you want the pointer to stay in the zoomed screen.
A further tip: if you take a selection screenshot with Command-Shift-4 or Snapz Pro X while zoomed in, the screenshot reflects your zoom level properly (trying to take a screenshot of an entire window while zoomed doesn't work, though).
I'm not sure if this is any easier or not, but if you press Command-Tab, let up on the Tab key, and then use your scroll wheel, Mac OS X will scroll the selection in the application switcher. Of course, you can also just keep pressing Tab, which seems easier, or hover the mouse pointer over an application's icon to select it.
Want to see if animators hid secret messages in individual frames of a film? If you can open it in QuickTime Player, using the scroll wheel pauses playback and then either advances or rewinds a frame at a time. It's probably a little easier to do with a real scroll wheel that has little detents as you scroll. Alas, this trick doesn't work in iTunes, DVD Player, or VLC, though you can play .m4v files from the iTunes Store in QuickTime Player.
The same trick works in iMovie HD 6, too, but with a caveat. The scrolling seems to work only as a per-frame preview; if you press the left or right arrow keys, which also rewind or advance per frame, the video jumps back to the point where you started scrolling.
Here's the tip Bill found. If you use Firefox or Camino with tabbed browsing, hold down the Option key and turn the scroll wheel to scroll backward and forward in the tab's history. These browsers navigate back or forward one page for every scroll detent. It's a fast way to move back through a lot of pages in a tab, though it's easy to overshoot your target. Oddly, Netscape and Mozilla use Shift as the modifier key to navigate through a tab's history, and Safari and OmniWeb don't have the feature at all.
It's all too common to run across a Web page with text that's too small to read (Geoff Duncan explained this in "Why Windows Web Pages Have Tiny Text," 1999-02-15). All Web browsers make it easy to expand or shrink text, usually with Command-+ and Command--, but you can also use the scroll wheel to do this in Firefox and Camino. Just hold down Command-Control and scroll to adjust text size.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/5284>
Normally, if you're scrolling through a long Web page, the speed accelerates as you turn the wheel. That's good, since it means you can get to the bottom of a page quickly if you want. But at times you might want a slower scrolling speed so you don't accidentally scroll past where you're reading. Hold down the Command key while scrolling in Firefox and scrolling will slow to what seems to be an almost fixed rate. It might be useful if you prefer to keep your eyes in one spot on the page and scroll the text past that spot.
Speaking of small text... In Microsoft Word and Excel, if you find yourself squinting to read text at the default font size, you can zoom in and out with the scroll wheel. In Word, hold down Command-Control and scroll to change the zoom level by 10 percent increments per detent. In Excel, hold down Control-Option to zoom in and out by 15 percent increments. If you're using two-finger scrolling on a trackpad, zooming in and out in this fashion may be hard to control.
In iCal's Day and Week view, you normally see the hours from 8 AM to 6 PM, or whatever you've set in iCal's General preference pane. But by holding down Option and rolling your scroll wheel, you can increase or decrease the number of hours that appear in Day or Week views without opening the preferences window. Note that the changes are persistent, but they aren't reflected in the preferences window.
In iPhoto 6's Calendar pane, Apple gave us funny little up and down arrows on either side of the pane's title for scrolling through the years. An easier way to scroll forward and backward in time in that pane is to use the scroll wheel - just make sure the mouse pointer is over that portion of the screen first.
There is one notable place where the scroll wheel doesn't match up to dragging the scroller in the scroll bar. In iPhoto 6, when you scroll by dragging the scroller, iPhoto pops up a translucent display containing the name and date of the current film roll, updating it smoothly as you drag. Alas, that doesn't work if you scroll with a scroll wheel, so here's hoping that iPhoto 7 rectifies that situation.
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#880/21-May-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8995>
If you find yourself needing to access Office Open XML documents created by Windows users in Word 2007, Microsoft now has a free beta converter that may help. The Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.1b can convert .docx and .docm documents (the latter are Word macro-enabled documents) into RTF format, which can be opened in Word 2004 and Word X on the Mac. The converter provides both individual file and batch conversion.
In this beta release, macros and Visual Basic scripts are dropped from the converted file, and charts and SmartArt graphics are converted to pictures. Other problems that might crop up in the beta include resizing of graphics, loss of color fills and shading in tables, loss of certain document formatting and layout, loss of some Unicode characters and picture bullets, and font substitution. The conversion might fail entirely if the document contains a bibliography, citations, WordArt, or very large pictures, or if you use an SMB network volume as the destination. To summarize all that, most documents should convert fine, but some that use less-common features may have troubles. Nonetheless, it's great to see Microsoft's Mac Business Unit releasing this beta now; even though it's clearly not done, it will undoubtedly be useful to Mac users right away. Now if only they could give it a snappier name.
The Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac beta is a 24.9 MB download and expires on 31-Dec-07. It requires Mac OS X 10.4.8, and either at least Office 2004 11.3.4 or Office X 10.1.9 to open the converted documents. Free upgrades to both versions of Office are available from Microsoft's Mac Downloads page.
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx>
If you find yourself needing a conversion capability that this free beta doesn't support, it's worth taking a look at Panergy's $20 docXConverter, which promises to convert the majority of Word 2007 features to RTF as well.
<http://www.panergy-software.com/products/docxconverter/features.html>
Microsoft tells us that updates to the converter in a few months will include support for PowerPoint and Excel documents, and a version of it that provides read/write conversion will be integrated into Office 2004 six to eight weeks after the release of Office 2008 for Mac. For more about it, check out Geoff Price's post in the Mac Mojo blog.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archive/2007/05/15/get-converted.aspx>
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#881/28-May-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9007>
Thanks to Jim Dewitt, who alerted me that DataViz's venerable MacLinkPlus Deluxe, now at version 16, also includes read-only support for the file formats used by Word 2007 and Excel 2007 under Windows. So, if Microsoft's free beta converter doesn't work for you (see "Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter in Beta," 2007-05-21), and you want an alternative to Panergy's docXConverter, check out MacLinkPlus Deluxe. DataViz deserves kudos for sticking with the conversion game for so long and with such a large list of file formats. My experience is that conversions are seldom perfect, but any automatic tool that brings you closer to the desired result is a good thing.
<http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8995>
<http://www.panergy-software.com/products/docxconverter/features.html>
by Joe Kissell <joe@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#883/11-Jun-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9036>
For almost a year, we've covered the ongoing rivalry between Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, the two leading ways to run Windows on an Intel-based Mac without rebooting. Last week, the competition escalated yet again as both products received major new releases. And, just to keep things interesting, Apple also released another beta of Boot Camp, their official dual-boot solution for running Windows.
VMware has released the fourth public beta of their Fusion virtualization software. The biggest news in this release is that Fusion has outdone Parallels Desktop's Coherence feature (for now, at least) with a feature called Unity. Both Coherence and Unity free Windows from running in a separate box, putting windows from both Mac OS X and Windows on equal footing - and giving Windows applications their own Dock icons. However, Coherence puts all windows from Windows in the same "layer," which is to say that you can't put a Mac OS X window between two Windows windows; switching any Windows window to the front brings them all to the front - and ExposŽ groups all Windows windows together. Fusion's Unity has no such limitations; it not only provides full support for ExposŽ but also adds drop shadows to each window, for a much more Mac-like Windows experience. In addition, Unity replicates most of the contents of the Windows Start menu in your Mac menu bar, unlike Coherence, which displays the whole Windows task bar within Mac OS X. On the other hand, Unity currently works only with Windows XP, whereas Coherence already supports Windows Vista as well.
Beta 4 also gives Fusion the capability of using Boot Camp partitions with Windows Vista installed. (Previously, only Boot Camp partitions running Windows XP were supported.) This support is still considered experimental, however, meaning users must reactivate Windows Vista each time they switch between Boot Camp and Fusion. Fusion's Boot Camp support received several other bug fixes and enhancements in Fusion beta 4 as well, including automatic updating of Fusion's drivers when running Windows from a Boot Camp partition in a virtual machine. Other improvements in beta 4 include improved performance, a customizable tool bar, and support for Apple 30-inch Cinema Displays. Fusion beta 4 is a 167.4 MB download.
Meanwhile, Parallels has kept busy on other fronts, and their newly released version 3.0 of Parallels Desktop provides a number of major improvements and new features. At the top of the list is the long-awaited support for 3D graphics, which finally enables gamers to consider Parallels as a viable alternative to Boot Camp.
<http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/>
A new Snapshots feature lets users save the state of their Windows virtual machines at any time, so that they can install new software or make other changes and then easily go back to the system's earlier state if crashes or serious problems occur. Another new feature, SmartSelect, provides the capability to associate file types with particular applications in either Windows or Mac OS X - so that, for example, you could double-click a .txt file in Windows and have it open in TextEdit under Mac OS X, or double-click a .doc file in Mac OS X and have it open in the Windows version of Word. And Parallels Explorer provides a way to view and access files stored in your Windows system even if Windows itself isn't running.
Among the many other changes in version 3.0 are improvements to Coherence, Boot Camp support, Shared Folders, and USB support, plus hundreds of bug fixes.
This is the first paid upgrade to Parallels Desktop since its release. The upgrade costs $50; new copies remain priced at $80. Parallels Desktop 3.0 is a 78.3 MB download.
Lastly, Apple released beta 1.3 of Boot Camp, a 274 MB download. This latest version supports the newest Macs (including, presumably, the new MacBook Pro models introduced on 05-Jun-07). It also adds support for keyboard backlighting on MacBook Pros, pairing of Apple Remotes (for those who have more than one), and improvements in several areas, such as graphics drivers and international keyboard support. Apple recommends the update for all current Boot Camp users. As in previous versions, updating requires burning a new Mac Windows drivers CD or DVD, restarting under Boot Camp, and installing the updated drivers.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/>
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#881/28-May-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9006>
In the fun category, Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University has created a video review of copyright principles. You're probably thinking, "How could anyone make a video about a legal concept even mildly entertaining?" But Faden's truly inspired video works on many levels because it consists entirely of extremely short clips (often no more than one word) from a wide variety of animated Disney movies. It's thanks in large part to Disney that copyright - which was designed to encourage creativity by giving the creator control over copying for a limited time - now lasts for the life of the creator plus 75 years, or, for a work of corporate authorship, 95 years. But thanks to the short length of the clips, its non-profit educational nature, and the fact that it would in no way affect the potential market for the copyrighted works, Faden's video undoubtedly falls under fair use.
<http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/documentary-film-program/film/a-fair-y-use-tale>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use>
Moving from fun to games, the latest idiocy to emanate from the U.S. Department of Justice is a legislative proposal (in other words, something the DoJ would like Congress to turn into law) that would criminalize copyright infringement. (For a selection of entirely reasonable, real-world copyright infringements that could be criminalized by this proposal, see my article, "J.D. Lasica's Darknet: People in the Copyright Wars," 2006-06-05.) Under this proposal, the RIAA wouldn't have to settle for extracting money from citizens who may have infringed copyright; instead, they could just get the federal government to take away the miscreants' computers and throw them in prison. That's right - the DoJ wants people who even attempt to infringe copyright to be liable for property forfeiture and prison time, just like drug dealers.
<http://politechbot.com/docs/doj.intellectual.property.protection.act.2007.051407.pdf>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8552>
And to make sure that none of these attempted copyright infringements go undetected, the DoJ wants to allow law enforcement to wiretap personal communications in copyright infringement investigations. The sheer audacity of this proposal is astonishing - it's hard to do more than sputter, "But but but!" as you read it. But what you can do is write to your elected representatives to urge them to oppose this proposal if it is introduced; the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a tool that makes it easy.
<http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=299>
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[Editor's Note: I wish to express my deepest appreciation to those at TidBITS for the use of their material in this newsletter.]
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reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)
May 17, 2007 -- President Richard Rollins opened the meeting which was indeed an old home week. Present were Jim Lewis, Jim Huls, Dave Witt, Mike Latinovich, Paul Neubauer all of whom make rare but much anticipated appearances at our meetings.
Q&A:
Phil Wall asked about VMWare. Has anyone messed with it? It won't be faster Mike Latinovich said. Is VMWare a hassle? Won't be able to run games on it, Mike said. Ed Serbe protested in mock shock "Hey!" XP and Linux in the virtual environment. VMWare will run on any Vista you buy. You can run Vista with XP and Linux in the VMWare environment with no licensing problems. Richard talked about DOSBox, a DOS emulator. Dave Witt said some games provide installers that help the old games run. Jon Bjerke talked about Railroad Tycoon which came with DOSBox preconfigure and all you have to do is click and go. It emulates PCDOS. Paul Neubauer noted it emulates the sound hardware - a SoundBlaster, Jon said. Jim Lewis said that answered most of his questions, so he was going to dig out his Redneck Rampage and get started.
Edwin Hadley said he said OSX 10.4.7 won't talk to a 9.1 or a 9.2.2 machine across Ethernet and it's not a dual boot machine. Emil said it wouldn't work. Edwin is trying to copy a 1.2 megabyte file. There was a discussion a bunch of possibilities. There was a lot of laughing at Edwin trying to get his ancient software to communicate from ancient hardware to a newer machine. He took it in his usual gracious manner.
Mark Zinzow talked about building his own machine. He reported that the cooling fan had not come on his AMD processor. He said there was thermal paste from a test fan, a patch of thermal goo on new processor. He was advised to take off plastic cover. Clean the old goo off with a Kleenex. Alcohol won't effect silicon based paste. Install new paste with his fan and he'd be good to go. He was asked where he got his processor. Mark said PartsPC, which used to be Monarck. It cost about $400. He's going to have a terabyte and a half of storage. Jim Lewis recommended more than stock cooling in the case. Mark replied he was thinking of two 80mm fans additionally. Jim suggested two intake fans and one outflow fan. This creates positive case pressure which keep dusts accumulation to a minimum. Mark noted he was going to have five 7200 RPM drives. Jim said you don't need cooling on each drive unless they're 10,000 RPM drives. Mark said he was going to have a 500 watt power supply. Richard Rollins recommended 650 watts.
Richard thanked Mark for showing his Skype phone last month.
Jim Lewis asked about the guy in Nigeria. Richard said 70% of email is SPAM. He then brought up that Kevin Hisel is going to show Thunderbird. Richard said if there was time he will show TrueCrypt.
Emil reported that he had a client who's Safari wouldn't render a page. He discovered her laptop battery was dying. The machine wasn't setting date and time, so Safari wouldn't work.
Richard Rollins related a story about a lampshade iMac he encountered. It would run fifteen minutes and then freeze, ten minutes then freeze, five then freeze. It was reporting a bad memory address error. It turned out to be cat hair that had plugged up the air intake. The machine was getting no cooling. Richard said he cleaned it out and replaced one memory chip and it worked fine.
Emil spoke a little about Handbrake on the Mac. It's a free program on the Mac that allows you to throw a DVD into your drive and Handbrake will convert it into an MP4 file (about 771MB in size depending on the length of the movie), which you can put it on a thumb drive and sneakernet it to your PC, with a drag and a drop.
At his point in the meeting we took our fifteen minute break.
Once we resumed, Kevin Hisel presented the email client Thunderbird.
Kevin began by saying that he and Richard had both used to use Pegasus, which they liked, but which is no longer being supported. This necessitated a move to a more modern email client.
He chose Thunderbird because it is a cross platform application.
Kevin said the choices are Yahoo or GMail (don't access it at lunchtime or dinner Phil Wall interjected) web based clients or run your own email client on your own machine.
It looks a lot like Outlook and that's on purpose. Although, it is much more secure.
Thunderbird has some very good SPAM filtering, very robust. It doesn't crash, and it handles enormous sized mailboxes.
Kevin rated it as having an average addressbook. Anybody in the addressbook is allowed through the SPAM filter.
Thunderbird 2 has a GMail option. Kevin talked about turning Thunderbird off of a thumb drive.
Thunderbird defaults to not opening images.
Richard says it does lists or groups like Eudora.
Next, Kevin addressed message filtering. He showed how to set up a filter. Kevin Hopkins asked about this, noting disparagingly that the junk filter on Eudora runs first and a lot of things wind up in the Junk Folder that don't belong there and which may have a message filter set up that never gets to run. Kevin said, in Thunderbird, your filters run first and you can prioritize them, like Eudora. Thunderbird's Junk filter learns as it goes. It learns what is and what is not junk. After three days of training, Kevin said, it was getting 95% of his junk email.
Kevin said he doesn't care for the Options settings. The Defaults are really good. In answer to another question, he pointed out that is was in Account settings where "Leave messages on server" is located.
Rich Hall asked about getting email from the U of I. Richard Rollins said you have to set the SSL clickbox in its Account window. Rich busied himself with that and got it to work properly. Richard noted you can have your own rules for each account.
In Firefox, Kevin said, extensions are critical for the way he uses the program. In Thunderbird, extension aren't as critical. Rich Hall talked about the iCalc extension in Thunderbird which he found very useful for work related scheduling.
Kevin said Thunderbird is real strong in HTML email rendering. This is because Thunderbird uses the Firefox engine.
Kevin then showed how color tagging of email can make an email visually distinguishable. You can visually flag your incoming email. You can also make your own tags. However, the email scam protector doesn't work.
Kevin's overall review of Thunderbird was that there was "a lot of polish in this program."
Kevin Hopkins asked about having multiple taglines of signatures for your email. Kevin said the Quicktext extension or add-ons for Signatures would allow for that.
Finally, Kevin noted, "Thunderbird. It is free."
<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/>
Richard then talked about the Dawn program, a database address filter.
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reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)
The May meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, May 22, 2007, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Richard Rollins, Kevin Hopkins, Rich Hall and Kevin Hisel.
Richard Rollins: Thanked Kevin Hisel for doing the presentation on Thunderbird. He said he learned a few things. He now has color working in his Thunderbird. Lots of questions and a lot of conversation.
Richard reported for Emil, in his absence, that we had 16 or 18 people at the May meeting. It was nice to see all our old friends again.
Richard will do the other half of the intended presentation next month: TrueCrypt, NetDrive, and AllSync. Richard briefly discussed what each one does.
Richard said he was not sure what Emil will have for the Mac SIG.
Kevin Hisel: BBS traffic has been light. Forum traffic has been brisk and spirited.
Rich Hall: Rich reported that Paul Neubauer rejoined. He said we had a mystery member join in April. He gave cash to Emil, but Emil couldn't remember his name. We believe it was Charles Lam.
Rich said he had come with two questions. He has a file on his backup hard drive that he doesn't know if he could delete. Kevin Hisel identified it as a log file and said, "Delete it."
The second problem was a Thunderbird problem. Rich said he couldn't send out. Kevin showed him how to fix it. Richard Rollins talked about the University's SMTP server being finicky.
Kevin Hopkins: Kevin reported that he had misremembered an important anniversary. He said, "I thought it was June, but actually it was May, that I became your newsletter editor twenty years ago."
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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