The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group

The Status Register - February, 2008


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

February 2008


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

February News:

The February Meeting

The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, February 21st, at 7:00 pm, at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The Linux SIG convenes 45 minutes earlier, at 6:15 pm. Directions to the FBC-CS are at the end of this newsletter.

The February 21 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. The Macintosh SIG will be treated to a demostration of the new Macbook Air by Gary Williamson from the University's Micro Order Center. PC SIG is open for anything anyone wants to bring in.

ToC

Welcome Renewing Members

We'd like to thank our returning members, renewing last month: Allen Byrne, Edwin Hadley, George Krumins, Joseph Wayne Hamilton and Bill Zwicky.

We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Run across an interesting item or tidbit on the net? Just send the link to the editor. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.

ToC

Supreme Court will not hear warrantless wiretapping case

URL: <http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/19/supreme-court-rejects-warrantless-wiretapping-case/>

The Supreme Court "has rejected a challenge to the Bush administrationÕs domestic spying program" brought forth by the American Civil Liberties Union. The court offered "no comment explaining why they turned down the appeal," which seeks to allow a lawsuit over the warrantless wiretapping program. It was dismissed by a lower court "because the plaintiffs cannot prove their communications have been monitored."

Related Link:

<http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/02/20/contempt-by-the-supreme-court/>

ToC

U.S. Court Shuts Down Whistleblower Site

URL: <http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/19/headlines>

A U.S. court has shut down a popular website known as an online whistleblower on key political issues. A Swiss bank won an order to close WikiLeaks.org after the site published hundreds of documents detailing the bank's offshore activities. WikiLeaks has brought to light several revelatory documents, including the U.S. military manual at Guantanamo Bay and its rules of engagement for U.S. forces in Iraq.

[Editor's Note: An international friend of mine points out that the site is still accessible from other servers.]

<http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks>

ToC

FBI Mistakenly Accessed Email Accounts Based on Single Warrant

URL: <http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/18/headlines>

The New York Times has revealed an episode in which the FBI inadvertently gained access to hundreds of email accounts rather than the lone email address it was authorized to spy on. The 2006 incident occurred after an unnamed internet provider mistakenly turned over hundreds of other email addresses from the same domain as the account the FBI intended to monitor. An intelligence official says records of the unauthorized accounts were destroyed, but that inadvertent spying remains "common."

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/18/fbi_email_surveillance/>

Although the alleged mistake came to light in an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Freedom of Information Act (FIA) lawsuit, the internet service provider involved remains unpublished, due to the classified nature of the work involved.

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/17/MN99V44MJ.DTL>

ToC

Comcasted

Well, the process of being "transitioned" into Comcast has begun. I've received both email and snail mail correspondence from the new owners of our cable franchise. If you have been an Insight customer, you've probably been receiving them, too. If you're not, you could probably care less. So, in brief, we'll be keeping our 10 mbps speed, rather than being throttled back to the usual Comcast 6 mbps. And, our email addressing is TBA. If you are curious, here are acouple of links that their communications pushed.

Welcome Insight Customers!
- http://www.comcast.com/insight/>

Main FAQ page
- http://www.comcast.net/help/faq/index.jsp?cat=Services#Transferring_ServicesInsight%26cookieattempt=1>

Insight portion of FAQ page (about 4/5ths of the way down)
- http://www.comcast.net/help/faq/index.jsp?cat=Services#Transferring_ServicesInsight>

Late breaking development:

Kevin Hisel just sent along this link to our forum thread on the Comcast changeover for you all.

Your Internet is now on Comcast's network.

Some Comcast info over here:

<http://www.cucug.org/starship/viewtopic.php?t=1797>

ToC

Most People Have Misconceptions About Digital Transition

Written and produced by Stevie Converse <mediaminutes@freepress.net>
Media Minutes 2-8-08
Audio: <http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/mm020808.mp3>

A new report from Consumer Reports National Research Center says that one-third of Americans living in households with TVs are entirely unaware of the government-mandated transition to digital broadcasting slated to take place in February 2009. At that point, analog televisions will no longer receive over-the-air signals without a converter box.

Bob Williams of Consumers Union, explains that most people surveyed had serious misconceptions about the transition's impact.

Bob Williams: We found that one-third of the consumers that would be completely unaffected by the transition planned to buy a converter box when they don't need to do that. And 31 percent planned to purchase a new digital television set with a built-in tuner, which they don't actually have to do that if they buy a converter box for their old analog television.

Many people are still unaware of a government program that will give a $40 voucher toward the purchase of a converter box. About 4 million requests have come in for vouchers -- which aren't available yet -- but that's not the only problem.

Williams: They're going to come with a 90-day expiration date. And if folks are getting their coupons soon, there's a possibility that the boxes aren't going to be in the stores where they can buy them before the coupons expire.

Congress needs to be more involved in the process, Williams says, and the House has scheduled a hearing about the transition on February 13. But he says there needs to be a more widespread effort to get the proper information out.

Williams: We would definitely like to see the broadcast networks running a lot of PSAs on this in prime time when folks are actually watching. And it needs to direct people with, say, a phone number where they can call and actually talk to a person and get some help.

Consumers Union has information on the transition at its site, HearUsNow.org.

Williams: You go to that page, we have a big banner on the front page there that directs you to our digital television transition page, where we have links to all the places you need to go, we have printable brochures, there's even a video that Consumer Reports has produced that actually shows someone installing a box and shows you how to do it.


Related Links:

74% of Consumers Have Major Misconceptions about DTV
- http://www.hearusnow.org/homepage/00/tvradio/74ofconsumerswhoknowaboutdigitaltvtransitionhavemajormisconceptionsconsumerreports

Broadcasting a Warning for Television
-http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/article/2008-2-1-pa-cable

Energy and Commerce Committee Hosts Converter Box Demonstrations for Members and Staffers
- http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_110/110nr197.shtml

HearUsNow.org
- http://www.hearusnow.org/

ToC

PEG Gets a Hearing on the Hill

Written and produced by Stevie Converse <mediaminutes@freepress.net>
Media Minutes 2-8-08
Audio: <http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/mm020808.mp3>

The House subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing on public, educational and governmental channels in the Digital Age last week. Chairman Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is concerned that so-called PEG channels are being short-changed by Comcast and AT&T.

Congress has a history of supporting PEG to ensure that a portion of cable capacity is available the public to develop and offer TV channels for their local communities. Markey told video providers that they need to work with their communities.

Edward Markey: The vast majority of this programming would otherwise not exist on the dial, because neither traditional broadcasters nor cable programmers typically develop programming on such a local level or open access to community groups to program time and capacity. It is important that cable operators, programmers and communities work together to ensure that consumer welfare is protected.

Comcast and AT&T testified that they were committed to PEG. But Annie Folger, executive director of the Midpeninsula Community Media Center in Palo Alto, California, told a different story. She said that PEG access obligations were not being met by these video providers, which have been lobbying against PEG at the state level and the Federal Communications Commission.

Annie Folger: The FCC has overruled Congress, assigning itself powers that Congress meant for local communities. Industry-backed legislation in 17 states has further harmed public access. Thirty years of community investment in PEG had been turned on its head.

Folger asked Congress to preserve PEG's signal quality, function, channel placement and funding - all of which are being degraded with state laws and new digital services like U-verse, she said.

To listen to the hearing and to find more information about PEG channels in your area and across the country, go to the Alliance for Community Media at ourchannels.org.


Related Links:

Alliance for Community Media
- http://ourchannels.org/

Archived video webcast of PEG House Hearing
- http://energycommerce.house.gov/cmte_mtgs/110-ti-hrg.012908.PEG.shtml

ToC

So who's Peg anyway?

by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>

No, it's not a who. It's a what. PEG stands for Public, Education, and Government access channels on your local cable system.

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

Why would this be of any interest or even important to you? Well, with our cable system being bought out by Comcast, you might be interested in how your local government and cable provider are handling the transition and how it might affect you directly. A perfect example was the meeting of the C-U Cable TV and Telecommunications Commission on January 16, 2008. And guess what? Thanks to PEG you could have watched it in the comfort of your own home (on channel 6). Guess what again? You still can. Thanks to the local folks running the PEG channels for you in Urbana. The video has been posted to their website.

You could find it pretty interesting. For one thing, your Insight email address will be good for at least another 6 to 9 months. For another, who do you complain to if your cable TV goes out, or your broadband goes down, or your telephone/Voice-Over-IP goes out. The same complaint department? Maybe, but not legally.

C-U Cable TV and Telecommunications Commission January 16, 2008
Streaming media
(Requires a Media Player)

<http://www.ci.urbana.il.us/urbana/mayor/boards/catv_commission/video/01-16-2008/Main.asp>

ToC

"Internet Freedom Preservation Act" Introduced in the House

Producer - Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer - Candace Clement
Media Minutes, January 25, 2008
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/mm_2-15-08_transcript.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/MM_2_15_08.mp3>

This week, the issue of Net Neutrality has come back to the fore. In the House of Representatives, Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Chip Pickering, a Republican from Mississippi, introduced the ÒInternet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008.Ó HR 5353 would amend the Communications Act to protect the open nature of the Internet and require a series of public hearings nationwide on the future of the Internet.

Ben Scott, Policy Director of Free Press, explains.

Ben Scott: It signals to the marketplace, to the FCC, and to the rest of the legislators and the public that they represent, that an open Internet matters to the federal government and that it will seek to protect consumers' right to speak freely online and engage in commerce in an open marketplace online.

This is an important development for the broad coalition of groups and millions of people who have been fighting to keep the Internet open and accessible without discriminating against content, users or specific applications.

Ben Scott: The bill would, first and foremost, establish Net Neutrality Ð the consumer protection of equal access on the Internet - into the foundation of communications law. It is the most forward-looking we could ask for out of the Congress, directing the FCC to protect an open Internet.

The bill also requires the FCC to study how these open Internet principles should be applied to broadband networks. And, in one of the more novel provisions, the legislation requires the FCC to hold a series of public broadband summits across the country.

Ben Scott: This is a critical shift in Internet policy-making. It moves the decision-making outside of Washington and it opens the door and shines some light on what is often a back-room, lobbyists-only deal-making session that typifies telecommunications policy in the District of Columbia.

Open Internet activists are hoping to get 100 sponsors to sign on to the bill in the next 100 days. For more information about the Internet Freedom Preservation Act and contacting your members of Congress, go to SavetheInternet.com.


Related Links:

Internet Bill a Blow to the Gatekeepers
- <http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2008/02/12/internet-bill-would-bar-discrimination-engage-the-public-on-better-policy/>

Internet Freedom Law Will Keep Internet Open for Future Innovators
- <http://www.freepress.net/news/30408>

ToC

Bad to Worse: Fifth Undersea Cable Cut in Middle East

Undersea cable owners still won't speculate on cause of cable cuts

Shane McGlaun - February 6, 2008 11:14 AM
URL: <http://www.dailytech.com/Bad+to+Worse+Fifth+Undersea+Cable+Cut+in+Middle+East/article10598.htm>

Reports are coming in this morning that a fifth undersea fiber optic cable was severed in the Middle East. However, by several accounts, the fifth cable cut is actually a second cut on a different segment of the FALCON cable. How exactly these cables are being cut is still unknown, though Egyptian officials maintain a ship didnÕt cause the breakages near the port of Alexandria.

The saga of cut cables and lost bandwidth began on January 23 when the Flag Telecoms FALCON undersea fiber optic cable near the Egyptian port of Alexandria was severed. On January 30 another cable called the SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East- Western Europe-4) cable was cut according to the Khaleej Times Online. Egyptian officials said that a review of ship traffic in the area at the time of the breakage precludes the damage being caused by a ships anchor.

Khaleej Times Online reports that on February 1 another cut appeared in the FALCON cable, which resulted in severe disruption of data service in the Gulf region. The rundown of cut cables in the region includes the FLAG Europe-Asia cable near Alexandria, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran, SeaMeWe-4 near Alexandria, SeaMeWe-4 near Penang, Malaysia, and FLAG near the Dubai coast.

Mahesh Jaishanker executive director of Business Development and Marketing for TeleGeography is quoted by the Khaleej Times Online as saying, ÒThe submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.Ó

DailyTech reported that the first pair of cables were severed on January 31, followed by a third cut undersea cable on February 4, and a fourth cut cable on February 5.


Related stories:

<http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/31/dubai.outage/index.html>
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7222536.stm>
<http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2008/February/theworld_February77.xml&section=theworld&col>


Map approximating cable cuts over the last two weeks and the immediate regions affected (red)

http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/7187_large_cablecutsmap.jpg

INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE

cable infographic

1 Polyethylene cover
2,4 Stranded steel armour wires
3,5 Tar-soaked nylon yarn
6 Polycarbonate insulator
7 Copper sheath
8 Protective core
9 Optical fibres

Not to scale

ToC

Internet FALCON Undersea Fiber-Optic Cable Cut By Abandoned Ship's Anchor

Over five tons of loose metal crushes errant conspiracy theories

Chris Peredun - February 8, 2008 12:40 PM
URL: <http://www.dailytech.com/FALCON+Undersea+FiberOptic+Cable+Cut+By+Abandoned+Ships+Anchor/article10619.htm>

The cause for at least one of the many failures that occurred recently in the undersea fiber optic cables providing Internet connectivity to the Middle East has finally been determined. The "FALCON" cable failure is being blamed on an abandoned ship's anchor.

<http://www.dailytech.com/No+YouTube+for+You+Cut+Undersea+Cable+Wrecks+Middle+East+Internet/article10533.htm>
<http://www.dailytech.com/Mysterious+Severed+Egyptian+Internet+Backbones+Now+Total+Three/article10570.htm>
<http://www.dailytech.com/The+Game+is+Afoot+Fourth+Undersea+Internet+Cable+Cut+in+Middle+East/article10576.htm>
<http://www.dailytech.com/Bad+to+Worse+Fifth+Undersea+Cable+Cut+in+Middle+East/article10598.htm>

According to the owners of the cable, FLAG Telecom, one end of the cut FALCON cable was recovered in the Persian Gulf approximately 35 miles north of Dubai. While the repair ship was searching the area, the 5-6 ton ship's anchor was also discovered and hauled to the surface. An additional repair ship is working on the cuts in the Europe-Asia cable -- repairs are expected to be completed by Sunday, despite rough weather conditions in the area.

<http://www.flagtelecom.com/index.cfm?channel=4328&NewsID=27493>

FLAG Telecom is also planning to run an additional cable, called the "Mediterranean Cable," through a different route, which will be "fully resilient" to cuts.

While a ship's anchor may be a less exciting cause for the damaged cables than some of the more entertaining and paranoid alternatives proposed online -- the cut cables are shaping up to be no more than an unfortunate coincidence.

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/07/cut_underseas_cable_conspiracies/>
<http://government.zdnet.com/?p=3644>


[Editor's Note: This story kind of dropped off the radar, so I went looking for a resolution to tie it all up. This article was the best I found. But... you know I couldn't leave it at that. I started reading the comments. They cracked me up. So, here, for your entertainment, are a few of them. Hope you get a laugh or two, as well.]

[Comments]

Come again?

By HaZaRd2K6 on 2/8/2008 12:50:16 PM

What, did the anchor, get up, walk over, and plonk itself down on top of the cable?

I don't believe this for a second. I'm not blaming anyone because I honestly have no idea how all these cables were cut, but I seriously doubt it was cut by an abandoned anchor.

RE: Come again?

By amanojaku on 2/8/2008 1:02:11 PM

It's possible that an anchor DID cut the cables, but there's something being left out here. For one thing, the previous articles imply that the cuts occurred over several days. Not to mention the fact that they seem to have occurred over a somewhat wide area. Ocean currents are strong, but are they strong enough to move a 5 ton anchor so far and so quickly with so much force? We need more info...

RE: Come again?

By Mitch101 on 2/8/2008 4:55:04 PM

Your right the Government recently changed its statement of it being an boat anchor. That was incorrect. What cut the undersea cable was a weather balloon. Picture to follow soon for all the news papers.

RE: Come again?

By Mitch101 on 2/8/2008 4:57:19 PM

Sorry correct that statement the boat anchor was tied to a weather balloon that was launch from the grassy knoll. There were no other boat anchors just the one.

RE: Come again?

By Ajax9000 on 2/10/2008 7:26:47 PM

"Single Boat Anchor Theory" to follow soon.

RE: Come again?

By Mitch101 on 2/11/2008 9:33:57 AM

You mean a multi million dollar commission/report proving the single anchor theory and only the one anchor could have done it.

RE: Come again?

By Souka on 2/8/08

Only one cable cut with the anchor ... not all.

but... as everyone is asking... how did an abandond anchor cut a cable? I can't imagine sea currents being strong enough to move an anchor or the cable...

Maybe the achor was "abandonded" after it snagged the cable...the ship cut n' run....

Anyone read if they can determine what ship the anchor came from? or HOW LONG it had been down there?

RE: Come again?

By MeTaedet on 2/8/08

No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. The anchor got up, walked over, plonked itself down on top of a cable, got up, walked over, plonked itself down on top of another cable, got up, walked over, plonked itself down on top of yet another cable, got up, walked over, plonked itself down on top of still another cable, and finally, now breaking with tradition, got up, walked over, and plonked itself on top of a fifth cable. That's how it happened. It's obvious to anyone with a brain...

ToC

Yahoo Board to Spurn $44B Microsoft Bid

Yahoo Board Intends to Turn Down Microsoft's Unsolicited $44.6 Billion Takeover Bid

By Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer
Sunday February 10, 7:45 am ET
URL: <http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080210/microsoft_yahoo.html>

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Yahoo Inc.'s board will reject Microsoft Corp.'s $44.6 billion takeover bid after concluding the unsolicited offer undervalues the slumping Internet pioneer, a person familiar with the situation said Saturday.

The decision could provoke a showdown between two of the world's most prominent technology companies with Internet search leader Google Inc. looming in the background. Leery of Microsoft expanding its turf on the Internet, Google already has offered to help Yahoo avert a takeover and urged antitrust regulators to take a hard look at the proposed deal.

If the world's largest software maker wants Yahoo badly enough, Microsoft could try to override Yahoo's board by taking its offer -- originally valued at $31 per share -- directly to the shareholders. Pursuing that risky route probably will require Microsoft to attempt to oust Yahoo's current 10-member board.

Alternatively, Microsoft could sweeten its bid. Many analysts believe Microsoft is prepared to offer as much as $35 per share for Yahoo, which still boasts one of the Internet's largest audiences and most powerful advertising vehicles despite a prolonged slump that has hammered its stock.

Yahoo's board reached the decision after exploring a wide variety of alternatives during the past week, according to the person who spoke to The Associated Press. The person didn't want to be identified because the reasons for Yahoo's rebuff won't be officially spelled out until Monday morning.

Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment Saturday on the decision, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on its Web site.

Yahoo's board concluded Microsoft's offer is inadequate even though the company couldn't find any other potential bidders willing to offer a higher price.

Without other suitors on the horizon, Yahoo has had little choice but to turn a cold shoulder toward Microsoft if the board hopes to fulfill its responsibility to fetch the highest price possible for the company, said technology investment banker Ken Marlin.

"You would expect Yahoo's board to reject Microsoft at first," Marlin said. "If they didn't, they would be accused of malfeasance."

But by spurning Microsoft, Yahoo risks further alienating shareholders already upset about management missteps that have led to five consecutive quarters of declining profits.

The downturn caused Yahoo's stock price to plummet by more than 40 percent, erasing about $20 billion in shareholder wealth, in the three months leading up to Microsoft's bid.

Seizing on an opportunity to expand its clout on the Internet, Microsoft dangled a takeover offer that was 62 percent above Yahoo's stock price of just $19.18 when the bid was announced Feb. 1. Yahoo shares ended the past week at $29.20.

Led by company co-founder and board member Jerry Yang, Yahoo now will be under intense pressure to lay out a strategy that will prevent its stock price from collapsing again. What's more, Yang and the rest of the management team must convince Wall Street that they can boost Yahoo's market value beyond Microsoft's offer.

Yahoo's shares traded at $31 as recently as November, but have eroded steadily amid concerns about the slowing economy and frustration with the slow pace of a turnaround that Yang promised last June when he replaced former movie studio mogul Terry Semel as Yahoo's chief executive officer.

This isn't the first time that Yahoo has spurned Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash.-based company offered $40 per share to buy Yahoo a year ago only to be shooed away by Semel, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person didn't want to be identified because that bid was never made public.

Yahoo now may want that Microsoft to raise its price to at least $40 per share again. That would force Microsoft to raise its current offer by about $12 billion -- a high price that might alarm its own shareholders.

Microsoft's stock price already has slid 12 percent since the company announced its Yahoo bid, reflecting concerns about the deal bogging down amid potential management distractions, sagging employee morale and other headaches that frequently arise when two big companies are combined.

Although it isn't involved directly in the deal, Google is the main reason Yahoo is being pursued by Microsoft.

Yahoo has struggled largely because it hasn't been able to target online ads as effectively as Google.

Microsoft believes Yahoo's brand, engineers, audience and services will provide the company with valuable weapons in its so far unsuccessful attempt to narrow Google's huge lead in the lucrative Internet search and advertising markets.

As it examined ways to thwart Microsoft, Yahoo considered an advertising partnership with Google -- an alliance long favored by analysts who believe it would boost the profits of both companies. It was unclear Saturday if Yahoo's plans for boosting its stock price include a Google partnership, which would probably face antitrust issues.

A Microsoft takeover of Yahoo would also be scrutinized by antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe. The antitrust uncertainties could be cited as one of the reasons that Yahoo's board decided to spurn Microsoft.

Yahoo: <http://info.yahoo.com/>

Microsoft: <http://www.microsoft.com>

ToC

Analyst Expects Nvidia to Acquire AMD

Posted by Daniel Fleshbourne via Xbit-Labs on 15 February 2008 - 11:13
URL: <http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/02/15/analyst-expects-nvidia-to-acquire-amd>

Doug Friedman, an analyst with American Technology Research, said that graphics chip maker Nvidia Corp. could well acquire x86 microprocessor maker Advanced Micro Devices in order to "re-architect it". The acquisition is considered to be useful due to the fact that roadmaps of AMD and Intel Corp. threat Nvidia. The only problem for the graphics giant is that AMD's x86 license is a non-transferable one.

"We believe AMD [could] face mounting pressure from shareholders, to restructure the company with a focus on a change in leadership," said the analyst. Indeed, shareholders of AMD are hardly pleased with the company's performance in the recent quarters as well as issues with the launch of quad-core microprocessors and the release of DirectX 10 graphics processing units. Nevertheless, late last year AMD managed to secure $622 million from Mubadala Development Company, which means that there are those who believe in AMD.

ToC

European Court Decides FileSharers Should Stay Anonymous

Written by Ernesto on January 29, 2008
URL: <http://torrentfreak.com/european-filesharers-anonymous-080129/>

European file-sharers were given a huge legal boost today, as the European Court of Justice declared that EU law does not allow Internet Service Providers to be forced to reveal the personal details of people accused of file sharing.

Telefonica, Spain's largest telecom operator successfully argued that the law only required it to reveal the identities of those accused of a criminal offense and that sharing of music was a civil issue.

The European Court of Justice agreed with Telefonica in its dispute with the Spanish music rights holders association Promusicae. In order to start civil proceedings, Promusicae had asked for the names of Telefonica subscribers, who allegedly infringed copyrighted material by using KaZaA.

The court said that: "Community law does not require the member states, in order to ensure the effective protection of copyright, to lay down an obligation to disclose personal data in the context of civil proceedings."

This ruling is a huge victory for EU filesharers, whose privacy is now backed by a ruling from the European Court. For ISPs this should be a huge relief as well, and they can finally put their time and effort in working for their customers, instead of against them.

The tide is changing for European filesharers. Last week we reported that the data protection commissioner in Switzerland criticized the infamous anti-piracy tracking outfit Logistep for helping to breach the privacy of filesharers. A few days before that decision, Greens EFA, a coalition of two political parties that currently have 42 seats in the European parliament, launched a pro-filesharing campaign named ÒI Wouldn't StealÓ.

ToC

ISPs Take the Easy Way to Internet Access

Producer - Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer - Candace Clement
Media Minutes, January 25, 2008
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/1-25-08_transcript_2.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/MM_01_25_08.mp3>

As Internet technologies allow users to download larger and larger files, Internet providers are warning that their pipes could be overloaded in the near future. Rather than investing in higher capacity, providers are taking other steps to limit high-volume users.

Comcast has resorted to blocking certain file-sharing programs. Last week, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that the agency would investigate claims that Comcast violated Net Neutrality principles when it secretly prevented a software application called BitTorrent from being used over its network.

Time Warner is taking a different approach. The company announced this week that it would be testing a tiered system in Beaumont, Texas, where the company will charge higher fees for heavy bandwidth users. This so-called metered pricing would operate much like a cell phone, where you pay more for the more bandwidth you use.

But the ways that both Comcast and Time Warner are approaching heavy bandwidth use underscores the need for the United States to upgrade and improve cable and phone networks, says Marvin Ammori, general counsel for Free Press.

Marvin Ammori: In a lot of our competing countries - Scandinavia, Western Europe and East Asia - the networks provide far higher speeds, far better value, far greater bandwidth. In the U.S., mainly because we lack the kind of competition that public policy has made possible in those other countries, because we lack competition, the companies that control the networks - the cable and phone companies - don't have a competitive incentive to invest in improving and upgrading their network. And so companies like Time Warner and Comcast which have networks that need to be upgraded an improved, find themselves trying to take shortcuts.

And although Time Warner's solution of metered pricing may be somewhat preferable to the Comcast's secret blocking, there are problems with charging more for higher bandwidth use.

Marvin Ammori: High-intensity users are often innovators, they're the cutting-edge first adopters, and so a lot of new, innovative technologies won't be produced. Another problem is Time Warner could set the prices in such a way that it ends up just raising the price for everyone. But at best it's an interim solution. What we really need are policies to make really sure that these companies invest in better networks: open, high-speed, high-capacity networks.

Related Links:

FCC Asks for Public Comment on Net Neutrality Allegations
- <http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/7ba71c40662872b1fde5235c0d135e23.htm>

Time Warner's Pricing Paradox
- <http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2008/tc20080118_598544.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories>

ToC

Michigan Townships Fight Comcast's Attempt to Move PEG Channels

Producer - Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer - Candace Clement
Media Minutes, January 25, 2008
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/1-25-08_transcript_2.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/MM_01_25_08.mp3>

Community-access cable channels in Michigan have suffered since the legislature passed a statewide video franchising bill in 2006. With no state mandate to maintain public, educational and government channels, cable provider Comcast quickly closed all of the public access studios they were housing, leaving many of the local channels with little new programming.

Now Comcast wants to move the so-called PEG channels from the basic analog tier to a digital tier. Not only would the public access channels change locations on the dial, but subscribers would have to buy a digital, cable-ready TV or rent a special converter to watch their local channels. The move would affect more than 400,000 subscribers. Comcast wanted to implement the change on January 15, but judges in two separate court challenges have issued temporary orders to keep the channels where they are.

Deborah Guthrie is the station manager for HOM-TV, the government channel for Michigan's Meridian Township, near East Lansing. She says the towns are not patently against moving to digital and tried to have a dialogue with Comcast about the transition before they took it to court. But Comcast was unresponsive and ultimately caused a lot of unnecessary confusion.

Deborah Guthrie: The people in our community - they were given so much different information, even Comcast admitted that they had problems with their customer service. And a lot of people were told different prices, a lot of people were told they had to have a digital cable subscription in order to even see the channels, when in actuality, you were only supposed to have the converter box, and it was very confusing.

Comcast wants more commercial channels on the basic tier. The company says it' s the only way they can compete with satellite TV. But Guthrie says they are missing a marketing opportunity.

Deborah Guthrie: I wish cable companies would see the commodity or see the benefits that they have. This is a niche in the market that satellite companies do not have. There are many people that called me and said, ÒYou know what, if I can' t see PEG, I can' t see my government access channel or my educational access channel, then I' m switching to satellite. It' s the only reason I have cable.

State legislators are taking notice of the problem and are now in the early stages of amending the franchising law to ensure PEG channels stay on the air. And Congress is also taking notice: House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, is holding a hearing on the matter on January 29.

Related Links:

Comcast Blunders in TRO Argument on PEG
- <http://www.bloggingbroadband.com/?p=115>

Comcast Can' t Move Local Channels, Judges Say
-<http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2008/01/15/daily.15/>

Reporting from the Trenches in the Battle over Future of PEG
-><http://www.app-rising.com/gdblog/2008/01/reporting_from_the_trenches_in.html>

ToC

Toshiba throws in the towel on HD DVD

Mayumi Negishi
Reuters
February 19, 2008 at 3:47 AM EST

TOKYO - Japan's Toshiba Corp. waved the white flag in the home movie war, giving up on its HD DVD format after losing the support of key studios and retailers to the Blu-ray technology backed by Sony Corp.

For more see:

<http://tinyurl.com/2bzzrf>

From the Reuters report:

Toshiba can also enter into an OEM deal with Blu-ray supporters Sony or Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. to procure Blu-ray products.

ToC

Common Ground:

Memory goes multicore

By R. Colin Johnson
EE Times
(01/14/08, 12:20:00 PM EST)
URL: <http://www.embedded.com/products/integratedcircuits/205800313>

PORTLAND, Ore. - In the 21st century, instead of depending on continually shrinking design rules, microprocessor makers are harnessing multiple cores for parallel execution. Memory chip architectures, however, have not kept up, according to a cryptographer who claims to have created a memory chip architecture for the 21st century-one that matches multicore microprocessors with parallel, concurrent access to multiple memory chips.

"My design borrows extensively from today's modern multicore CPUs," said Joseph Ashwood, an independent security cryptanalyst and design consultant residing in Gilroy, Calif. Ashwood was lead cryptanalyst for Arcot Systems in Santa Clara, Calif., before going independent in 2001. "As far as concurrency goes, my memory architecture shares some features with Fibre Channel."

According to Ashwood, his architecture provides parallel access to bit cells on memory chips, breaking the serial bottleneck that is strangling nonvolatile storage media like flash, with an architecture that can be applied to any memory chip bit cell. The Ashwood memory architecture works by integrating smart controller circuitry next to the memory array on a single chip, providing parallel access to the array for hundreds of concurrent processes, thereby increasing throughput and lowering average access time.

"We have a new way of assembling the memory, with a few new elements I was led to by my experience with cryptography. I am basically applying very deep cryptographic techniques to memory architecture, resulting in a unique new design that is very fast and compact. Bringing in these new elements enables a lot of good things, especially concurrency, permitting hundreds of simultaneous memory operations," said Ashwood.

"Compared to DDR, for instance, my architecture goes inside the chip and reorganizes how the bit cells are accessed, thereby utilizing them much more efficiently," he added. "Transfer rate is faster, too-for instance, right now, DDR-II for DRAM only goes up to 12 Gbytes per second, but our architecture can deliver 16 Gbytes per second when using flash memory and is compatible with PRAM or any other nonvolatile semiconductor memory cells."

[Editor's Note: For the rest of the article check out the link above.]

ToC

The PC Section:

WinInfo Short Takes

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

Windows Vista SP1 Goes Out to MSDN, TechNET Early

Those lucky enough to have access to MSDN or TechNet Plus subscriptions may be interested to hear that Microsoft has bowed to public pressure and released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 via those venues. This release is significantly earlier than the original plan, which saw Microsoft delivering SP1 to MSDN and TechNet much later in the month. Maybe they'll relent and let the general population download it early too. We can dream.

Mozilla Releases Firefox 3.0 Beta 3, Plans 4th Beta

Mozilla this week shipped the third major pre-release milestone of its Firefox 3 browser, Firefox 3 Beta 3. This release adds a number of new enhancements, but comes with some bad news as well: Mozilla is abandoning its plan to make Firefox 3.0 a native Vista application and will instead skin the browser with a horrible looking user interface that is basically identical across all platforms. Mozilla says that it is doing this so that it won't lose whatever branding identity it has, but I think it's a mistake: The upcoming Vista skin is ugly and a far cry from the mockups Mozilla had showed off last October. I realize that there's a lot more to Firefox than the look and feel, but Mozilla could have had the Vista poster child on their hands. Instead, they've given up. Anyway, a later Beta 4 release should include the final, craptacular, Vista skin.

<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html>

It's Official: Microsoft HD Photo Format Approved by JPEG

Microsoft's HD Photo format has been officially accepted by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) as the next JPEG photo format standard, which will be called JPEG XR. Maybe the EU should look into that one as well.

Blockbuster: Microsoft Offers $44.6 Billion for Yahoo

After years of rumors about a possible Microsoft/Yahoo buyout, merger, or partnership of some kind, the truth finally comes out: Microsoft this week offered an unsolicited $44.6 billion buyout of Yahoo, the ailing Internet search company. This is obviously a big, big deal, so I may be cutting Short Takes a bit short this week so I can spend time analyzing what's going on here. The nutshell version goes like this: As far back as 2006, Microsoft began approaching Yahoo to find out how the two companies could work together. In 2007, the Yahoo board rejected Microsoft merger and acquisition proposals, noting that Yahoo was trying to implement a comeback strategy. In an open letter to Yahoo this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said, "a year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved ... Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers." He then highlights the various ways in which the company's online properties could be combined. Yahoo announced that it has received the letter and will consider its terms. Wow. I mean, wow. More on this soon.

Office 2003 SP3 Becomes Mandatory in February

Beginning late next month, Microsoft will begin shipping the latest service pack for Office 2003 via Automatic Updates, essentially making it a mandatory upgrade for millions of users. Office 2003 SP3 has, to date, been an optional install. Customers not interested in installing the service pack are pretty much out of luck unless they're corporations that utilize blocking tools, as Microsoft is not creating an SP3-specific blocker. Microsoft highly recommends that Office 2003 users install SP3 as soon as possible as it includes important security updates as well as compatibility specific to Windows Vista and the Office 2007 document formats.

AMD Posts Massive Loss, All Related to ATI Purchase

Microprocessor maker AMD posted a massive net loss in the fourth quarter of 2007, virtually all of which were related to $1.86 billion in charges related to its purchase of video card maker ATI. Factor out that purchase, and AMD almost broke even from an operation standpoint, so the company was able to at least claim some progress. (Well, it lost $9 million in the quarter, compared to a $576 million loss in the same quarter a year ago. I guess that's progress.) AMD has other issues to deal with, of course. Aside from being a perennial also-ran in the CPU wars, the company has had difficulties shipping its quad-core microprocessors, which provide four processor cores on a single chip package. In December, AMD had to admit to a design flaw in the chips which will delay their wide scale release until sometime in the first half of 2008.

PC Makers Ship About 270 Million PCs in 2007

And finally, PC makers sold approximately 270 million PCs in 2007, growing sales about 13.5 percent year over year, according to figures from IDC and Gartner. Thanks to a weakening US economy however, sales there were only up 9 percent. Dell was the world's number one PC maker, followed by HP, Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba, but Dell's shipments actually fell, year over year, in the US. Meanwhile, while Apple didn't place in the top five worldwide, a 30 percent year over year increase in sales in the US vaulted the company to the number three position there for the fourth quarter, behind HP and Dell. I'd again like to highlight that Microsoft only selling 100 Vista licenses through the end of a year in which 270 million PCs were sold is a big and obvious problem.

ToC

Microsoft Net Surges With Help From Vista

By ROBERT A. GUTH
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 25, 2008; Page A3
URL: <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120120200992914097.html?mod=googlenews_wsj>

Microsoft Corp. offered a bullish forecast for its business in the coming months despite increasing signs of a weakening U.S. economy, following record earnings and revenue in the company's fiscal second quarter.

The Redmond, Wash., software maker said that, for the three months ended Dec. 31, sales of Windows Vista -- the latest version of its operating system -- helped lift revenue to $16.37 billion, a 30% increase from the year-earlier period. Net income rose 79% to $4.71 billion, or 50 cents a share, from $2.63 billion, or 26 cents a share, for the year-earlier quarter, which included deferral of some revenue and operating income from a coupon program.

Microsoft also raised its earnings forecast for the fiscal year ending June 30, saying that sales of its Office software suite and its videogames are better than previously expected. Microsoft now expects per-share earnings in a range of $1.85 to $1.88 for the year, compared with a forecast in October of $1.78 to $1.81. The company also said it now expects revenue in the range of $59.9 billion to $60.5 billion for the year. That compares with an October forecast of $58.8 billion to $59.7 billion.

Microsoft expects strong growth across its five major businesses in coming quarters, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said in an interview after announcing the results. "We feel optimistic going into the second half," he said. Mr. Liddell also said that Microsoft's geographical spread -- it generates approximately 60% of its revenue outside the U.S. -- will help it weather a downturn in the U.S. economy.

"For all of our businesses, clearly, there is a scenario where a slower economy could seep through to slower sales," Mr. Liddell said. "But our overall growth, we believe, is very healthy."

One root of his optimism, he said, was an unexpected $500 million jump in Microsoft's unearned revenue for the second quarter. That number refers to sales to mostly large businesses that were booked in the quarter but that will be recognized in coming quarters. Strong unearned revenue at Microsoft can indicate strong spending by businesses on technology.

Microsoft shares were up 5.3% to $35 in after-hours trading after closing at $33.25, up 4.13%, in 4 p.m. Nasdaq Stock Market trading Thursday.

Microsoft's results belie concerns about the tech sector sparked earlier this month when Intel Corp. -- another tech bellwether -- forecast a tougher business climate despite a surge in profit in the fourth quarter. Intel's shares dropped while disappointing earnings at other chip makers added to jitters about the broader economy. Apple Inc.'s forecast this week, meanwhile, raised concerns that sales of its iPod music players and Mac computers might slow in coming months, sparking a sell-off of its shares.

Microsoft's results offer evidence that Windows Vista is selling well despite concerns that negative reviews and some early problems with the software could slow sales. For the December quarter, Microsoft said sales at its client division, which makes the Windows software, rose 67% to $4.34 billion. Operating income at the group -- Microsoft's largest source of profit and revenue -- reached $3.36 billion in the quarter, an 83% jump from the same period a year earlier.

ToC

Office 14 to add more online document sharing

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:27 am
February 13th, 2008
URL: <http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1178>

Microsoft won't be turning Office 14 into a completely Web-ified productivity suite, a la Google Docs. But it's practically a given that Microsoft will add more online collaboration/sharing capabilities to the individual point products that will comprise the client-based Office 14.

Microsoft execs are beginning to drop a few hints about the company's plans to provide more document collaboration/sharing options for its PC-based desktop-productivity software.

Microsoft is beta testing an adjunct to Office (and non-Microsoft office suites) known as Office Live Workspace, which adds document collaboration/sharing capabilities to Word, Excel and PowerPoint (the XP, 2003 and 2007 releases). But Workspace doesn't provide online/offline sync for Access, OneNote, Publisher or other more business-targeted members of the Office product family.

OakLeaf Systems blogger Roger Jennings noted that Microsoft is working on a way to make its Microsoft Access client database product more Web-friendly.As Jennings noted, Chairman Bill Gates, who spoke at this week's Office System Developer Conference, made references to Microsoft's plans to turn Microsoft Access, its desktop database product, into more of a Web-ified product. In a video interview, Gates said:

Now [with Access] 2007, they did a great job where you could replicate from SharePoint down to Access lists back and forth, but that still didn't let you run your logic up on the server. So the next step is to take that base of Access users and literally let them write things that connect directly up to SharePoint and so it's server-based. So it's a logical step for Access.

Gates said the same way Excel moved to the server (via Excel Services) with the Office System 2007 release, so, too, will Microsoft Access.

"In no sense are we leaving the Access people behind," Gates also said.

In addition to Excel Services, Microsoft already has InfoPath Services and Groove Services, which allow users to store and desktop data to/from Office SharePoint Server.

Microsoft hasn't offered a timing update on Office 14 for some time. Latest I've heard is that the company is still aiming to roll out Office 14 in 2009.

ToC

XP SP3: The test-build parade continues

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:24 am
February 8th, 2008
URL: <http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1167>

Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 1 is done. But Microsoft's other major Windows service pack, Windows XP SP3, continues to wind its way through the testing process.

On February 7, Microsoft delivered a new test build of XP SP3 to its inner circle of 15,000 pre-selected testers, company officials said. The newest test build is labeled as XP SP3 Release Candidate (RC) 2.

Microsoft's statement (sent to me via e-mail on February 8):

Yesterday, we released Windows XP SP3 RC 2 to private beta testers. This release catches the build up on previously released hotfixes and responds to critical feedback from previous betas. We are targeting 1H 2008 for the release of XP SP3 RTM, though our timing will always be based on customer feedback as a first priority.

The RC2 build of XP SP3 follows the XP SP3 RC1 Refresh 2 build Microsoft provided to the same 15,000 testers in late January.

I asked Microsoft this week if there was any truth to a post circulating that claimed the company has decided to release the final XP SP3 bits in mid-March. A spokeswoman said the company's official word on XP SP3 availability, as some time in the first half of 2008, is all that will be said on the planned release date.

ToC

Vista SP1 rolls up 551 bug fixes

Posted by Ed Bott @ 3:05 pm
February 11th, 2008
URL: <http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=366>

No wonder the Wow had so much trouble getting started. By Microsoft's own count, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 rolls up 551 separate hotfixes, in addition to 23 security updates rated Important and already delivered via Windows Update. A handful of those hotfixes were previously released via Windows Update, but most were available only to corporate customers and OEMs.

If that sounds like a lot of bugs to be stomped in one service pack, well, 551 is a pretty big number. But it's not out of line with the number of fixes that went into the two service packs for Windows XP. The first XP service pack was delivered in September 2002, about 14 months after the original RTM date; its list of fixes included updates from 24 security bulletins and 297 hotfixes. XP Service Pack 2 covered a longer period of time (23 months), but still, its list of fixes was staggering, with updates identified by 60 security bulletins and a whopping 666 (no, I did not make that number up) fixes. (If you want to do a fair comparison between the first service packs for Vista and XP, you need to exclude a few fixes from the Vista list. Back in 2002, XP Media Center didn't yet exist, nor did Tablet PCs, Windows Sidebar gadgets, or the .NET Framework, just to name a few categories that collectively include more than 60 fixes in Vista SP1 but weren't needed in XP SP1.)

In Microsoft's release notes for SP1, the list of updates is stuffed into a barely formatted table that goes on for 35 mind-numbing pages (out of a total of only 55 pages). Each entry in the list consists of a Knowledge Base (KB) article number, the article title, and a general category name. Now, the categories that Microsoft's developers use to categorize KB articles might make sense in Redmond but they aren't very helpful from a Windows user's point of view. So, over the weekend, I imported that list into Excel and went through it article by article, breaking it down into categories of my own devising. Here's the list:

Fixes Category
75 Internet Explorer
41 Sleep/Hibernation & Power Management
38 Storage
35 Hardware and Drivers
35 Networking
28 Desktop and Shell
25 Printing & Scanning Technologies
25 .NET Framework, Data Components, Development Tools
24 Setup, Deployment, Backup, and Activation
24 Windows Media Center
23 International/Localization
20 Computer Management, Administration, and Tools
19 Application Compatibility
19 Multimedia
16 Performance and Reliability
16 Startup/Shutdown
13 Time Zone/Daylight Saving Time
13 Windows Media Player and Related Technologies
12 Security
12 Remote Access, VPN
8 IIS and WebDAV issues
7 Wireless Networking
7 Offline Files
6 Windows Mail and Web-based Software
5 Windows Sidebar and SideShow
5 Windows Portable Devices

Personally, I wasn't surprised to see Internet Explorer at the top of the list, nor was I shocked to see how many separate issues addressed problems with sleep, hibernation, and power management.

I'll look at a few of these categories in more detail later this week, probably starting with the many fixes for sleep/hibernate/power issues. Which categories are you most interested in?

ToC

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

ToC

The Windows Easy Transfer Companion

URL: <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931696>

The Windows Easy Transfer Companion (WETC) is a program that you can use to help transfer programs from a computer that is running Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) to a computer that is running Windows Vista. WETC does not replace Windows Easy Transfer. Instead, WETC is an independent program that complements Windows Easy Transfer. You can use WETC to transfer many kinds of programs between two computers that are connected by an Easy Transfer Cable or by a network connection.

WETC is designed to transfer installed programs from one computer to another computer. WETC does not transfer files, settings, or user profiles.

Note The Windows Easy Transfer program that is included with Windows Vista is designed to transfer files, settings, and user profiles.


WETC does not transfer the following kinds of programs:

[Editor's Note: This is the little ditty that Richard Rollins was trying to remember the name of at the last meeting. Thanks Richard for the follow-up.]

ToC

Jon's Picks

[Editor's Note: Below are the many items of interest sent in by Jon Bjerke this month. A veritible feast of information. My thanks to Jon for submitting all the articles here in "Jon's Picks."]

Microsoft Faces Two New European Antitrust Cases

BULLETIN: The European Commission is looking into complaints involving bundling and interoperability.

The complete story can be found here:

<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141326/article.html>

Windows Server 2008, Vista SP1 RTM

<http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid1_gci1297541,00.html?track=NL-118&ad=622324&asrc=EM_NLN_2996554&uid=277279>

Nvidia to acquire Ageia

<http://extended64.com/blogs/news/archive/2008/02/04/nvidia-to-acquire-ageia.aspx>

Update Improves Encryption Tool for Al-Qaeda Backers

A recently released tool that allegedly was designed to help al-Qaeda supporters encrypt their Internet-based communications is a well-written and easily portable piece of code.

<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142149/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>

Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3: Official Release

<http://bink.nu/news/windows-vista-sp1-and-windows-xp-sp3-official-release-dates.aspx>

Apple's iPod Dominates Amazon

Eight of the top 10 MP3 players sold on Amazon are iPod models.

[Jon says: "I don't understand Apple's dominance. The players are overpriced and iTunes sucks big time."]

<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142221/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>

New Vista SP1 Code Leaks to Web

<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142231/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>

Microsoft to End Digital Downloads for Vista Upgrades

<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142285/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws>

Truecrypt 5.0 is out and it's free

<http://www.hackinthebox.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=25735>

Microsoft Under Third EU Investigation for OOXML

<http://bink.nu/news/microsoft-under-third-eu-investigation-for-ooxml.aspx>

HDHomerun

VistaNews, Vol. 2, # 1 - Jan 10, 2008 - Issue # 10
URL: <http://www.vistanews.com/?id=10>

"If you buy a product called the HDHomerun, you can get free HD content from Comcast without paying the extra 10 dollars a month. Comcast broadcasts the QAM signal "free" over the line. The HDHomerun takes that QAM signal and broadcasts it over the Ethernet to your media center PC, which sees the HDHomerun as two separate digital tuners...voila, 2 simultaneous HD recordings at once and no extra monthly HD content cost. Plus if you split the cable (put one into the HD Homerun and the other into your analog tuner card) you can record those same two HD channels PLUS an analog one or a STB signal for a total of three simultaneous recordings."

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

Vista SP1 vs. XP SP2 - Benchmarked

<http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1332>

Mozilla's T-Bird 3 to get calendar, search, UI, config, add-on improvement

<http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2032&tag=nl.rSINGLE>

Windows XP SP3 Reaches RC2

<http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/operating_systems/windows_xp_sp3_reaches_rc2.html?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535>

ToC

The Linux Section:

Nokia acquires Trolltech -- the biggest little company you've never heard of

* Trolltech is the maker of Qt, a cross-platform application framework used in many Linux apps and in the embedded market. *

Posted Jan 28th 2008 3:57AM by Thomas Ricker
URL: <http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/28/nokia-acquires-trolltech-the-biggest-little-company-youve-ne/>

In a move meant to bolster its software development prowess, Nokia just announced the acquisition Trolltech. Who's Trolltech? Well, its software can be found in some 10 million devices. In fact, Trolltech's Qt is used by such familiar applications as Skype, Google Earth, and Photoshop Elements while their Qtopia was spotted on a hacked Archos 5 series earlier this month. By acquiring Trolltech's software development frameworks and application platforms, Nokia hopes to help developers create Internet applications that work on PCs and across Nokia devices. Specifically, Nokia claims that the move will "further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40." The deal also grandfathers Nokia into the LiMo Foundation and its attempt to bring open-source to your handset. Hear that Android? The $153 million offer must still be processed through regulatory channels and approved by shareholders -- all expected before June in out.

[Note: Qt is the underpinning of the KDE desktop system for Linux.]

ToC

The Macintosh Section:

AT&T Adds ExpressCard 3G Cell Data Option for MacBook Pro

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#915/18-Feb-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9461>

MacBook Pro owners have typically had to rely on USB-based modems to use third-generation (3G) cellular networks. Nova Media offers an ExpressCard HSUPA option which can work with a MacBook Pro on AT&T's U.S. 3G network (and tons of networks in Europe), but which costs ¥299 ($438). The advantage of an ExpressCard is really the form factor, which hides most of the device other than the antenna - sometimes with an external booster option.

<http://www.novamedia.de/e_pages/e_produkte_gt_express_72.html>

AT&T has now introduced what looks to be the same item from device maker Option, but fully within its subsidized grasp. AT&T's GT Ultra Express works with Mac OS X 10.4.10 and later, and costs nothing (after two rebates are sent in) with a two-year subscription to AT&T's data service; that subscription runs $60 per month for unlimited usage. The card will cost $49 with the same contract terms after the second rebate stops being part of a limited-time promotion.

<http://www.option.com/images/presskit/LR_GT_Express_401.jpg>
<http://www.option.com/products/globetrotter_express_hsupa.shtml>
<http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/02-14-2008/0004755866&EDATE=>

In an unrelated move, Nova Media announced at the same time that their launch2net software (¥75/$110) can provide a bit more control over these "new" devices from AT&T than does the free downloadable Mac OS X software. The Nova Media software provides statistics to monitor bandwidth rates and usage, as well as various connection controls.

<http://www.novamedia.de/e_pages/e_produkte_mac_l2n.html>
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-02/l2n_main_back_en.jpg>

The timing is nice, because this new card coincides with AT&T's announcement that they would increase upload speeds and add 80 cities (for a total of 350 cities) to their American 3G network deployment. (See "More Mileposts Along Road to 3G iPhone," 2008-02-06. For an explanation of the various technology used in AT&T's network, see "Starbucks Deal Brewed with AT&T Has Hints of Apple," 2008-02-12.)

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9448>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9458>

The GT Ultra Express, along with an identically priced PC Card version called the GT Ultra, is tri-band for 3G flavors and quad-band for EDGE. This lets it work in what AT&T describes as 140 countries - watch those international roaming fees, however!

The Mac OS X software - in one version for 10.4.10, and another for 10.4.11 and 10.5.0 or later - can be downloaded from AT&T's support site.

<http://support.option.com/att/>

ToC

Leopard Emerges from Beta as 10.5.2 Ships

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#915/18-Feb-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9455>

I don't mean to be cruel with my headline, but Apple's release of Mac OS X 10.5.2 marks the real beginning of Leopard for me, although testing will be required to bear this out. While I'm using Leopard full-time at home on an old PowerBook G4, I haven't been ecstatic about it due to rough edges.

I beta tested Leopard, and while much was fixed at the last minute to work properly for the 10.5.0 release, using 10.5.0 and 10.5.1 was at times feeling like an extension of that beta program. Most egregiously, I had to re-install Leopard due to a known problem that resulted in an inescapable Setup Assistant at startup (see "For Want of a File, an Operating System Was Lost," 2008-02-01). With 10.5.2, I may be ready to upgrade my primary work computer.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9436>

The 10.5.2 release is available through Software Update as a universal incremental release, updating 10.5.1 to 10.5.2, and weighs in at 180 MB on my PowerPC-based PowerBook, but Apple notes size will vary from machine to machine. No incremental updater was available from Apple's site as I write this. The universal Combo updater, which combines 10.5.1 and 10.5.2, is 343 MB for the desktop version, and 382 MB for Leopard Server. There's also a 49 MB Leopard Graphics Update 1.0 to install, but only after 10.5.2 is installed and the computer restarted. The graphics update has a generic note that it improves stability and compatibility.

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1052comboupdate.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosxserver1052comboupdate.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/leopardgraphicsupdate10.html>

With the release of 10.5.2, Apple has fixed a number of things that I, other reviewers, and legions of actual users have complained about. Plus, 10.5.2 makes it possible to stop using utilities and hacks created by developers and Terminal-level clever folk to work around problems in earlier releases.

The update takes an inordinate amount of time to install - it took nearly 30 minutes on my PowerBook G4, and, for some reason, powered the laptop down even though it was fully charged and plugged in. The startup took another good 10 minutes to complete.

Let's walk through the big stuff first from the extensive release notes.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307109>

Setup Assistant and Login Problems Fixed

While Apple's notes are rather brief, they speak volumes. "Addresses an issue in which Setup Assistant could unexpectedly appear each time Mac OS X 10.5 starts up" is one; the other, "Improves stability and performance during log in."

The first resolves the problem I experienced, in which a particular setup file failing to be updated correctly would lead to Setup Assistant launching repeatedly at startup. Apple had posted a technical note on fixing the problem using Safe Boot, but this didn't work for me, nor for several readers who wrote in to me with similar problems; for many others, Apple's technique did fix the error.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107392>

What's clear from this note is that the login routine is now checking more extensively as to the state of the computer, especially if an upgrade fails - the root of the infinite Setup Assistant bug.

AirPort Landing Gear Finally Retracted

Apple's and other forums are full of people finding that their Wi-Fi networks mysteriously work ever more slowly the longer they use Leopard. I haven't been able to find or determine the cause of this, but Apple promises 10.5.2 "Improves connection reliability and stability" and "Resolves certain kernel panics." Let's hope that does the trick.

Applying Lipstick

Two cosmetic choices by Apple irked a lot of folks, TidBITS editors included. Perhaps the title "Transparent Menu Bar, Die Die Die!" (2007-11-16) in an article by Matt Neuburg wasn't quite direct enough about his feelings. Tell us what you really think, Matt.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9320>

The translucent menu bar was a misguided effort at showing off alpha transparency - or something. We're still not sure what. But it sure made the menu bar less useful. In 10.5.2, there's a checkbox to disable this feature: System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver, Desktop tab, uncheck Translucent Menu Bar. Ah, that's better!

The other irksome change involved disabling a simple list of items when clicking on a docked folder. The Stacks feature was supposed to show us everything at a glance. But it also showed folders as a pile of documents, and wasn't an efficient way in any of its modes to scan through a lot of stuff. (Matt explained his displeasure with that, with less mortality involved, in "Six Things I Hate about Leopard," 2007-10-26.)

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9265>

The 10.5.2 release restores Tiger goodness by adding the option to display a folder as, you know, a folder (instead of a stack), and to view items as a list. Even in the Tiger-familiar mode, you can still sort items by kind, or date added, modified, or created.

<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-02/folder_options_1052.png>
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-02/folder_list_1052.png>

No, Really, Get Back to My Mac

My particular focus in Leopard is Back to My Mac, which has worked erratically or not at all for some people, due to the necessity of having particular router and Internet service provider configurations. (I wrote about this in "Punching a Hole for Back to My Mac," 2007-11-17.)

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9322>

Version 10.5.2 ostensibly adds more compatibility through support for more routers, but it's not clear how that will translate into actual use. I'm hoping for more reader reports, please.

Bits and Pieces

Time Machine now offers a menu in the system menu bar to show the status of backups, note the date and time of the last backup, start a backup immediately, and open the preference pane. Hold down the Option key and a menu item changes so you can browse to find other Time Machine backup disks, too. If your last backup was several days ago, an exclamation point appears within the menu's icon to emphasize the point.

There are also a number of security-related fixes in 10.5.2 that are sufficiently important that Apple also made them available to users of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger as Security Update 2008-001. It's available via Software Update and as standalone downloads for PowerPC- (16.7 MB) and Intel-based (28.8 MB) Macs.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307430>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2008001ppc.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2008001universal.html>

Numerous other small bug fixes - Apple lists over 100 changes in the release notes - should improve a lot of the little stuff in each program and service that was causing crashes or that didn't work quite right. It's worth reading the release notes to see if something bugging you is now corrected.

But, Apple, please, can't you give us more detail than "Improves general stability when running third-party applications"? Thanks loads! I'll look for General Stability and salute him the next time I see him walking down the street with General Protection Fault.

What's Not Fixed

Matt runs through what items were fixed out of his list of six things he hated in a companion article, "Leopard 10.5.2: TidBITS Complains, Apple Listens, Sort Of," 2008-02-12.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9456>

An item he didn't mention originally is something that both Jeff Carlson and I were incredulous about when Apple told us: the fact that you have to double-click a calendar event in iCal to see and modify its details via a pop-up menu. In Tiger, iCal offers the Info panel, which contextually displays details - that you can modify if it's a local calendar - about whatever you currently select, whether an entire calendar or an individual appointment. This "bug" is still in place.

ToC

Leopard 10.5.2: TidBITS Complains, Apple Listens, Sort Of

by Matt Neuburg <matt@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#915/18-Feb-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9456>

With the release of the recent 10.5.2 update (see Glenn Fleishman's "Leopard Emerges from Beta as 10.5.2 Ships", 2008-02-11), how does Leopard stand up under the criticisms I leveled at it in my article "Six Things I Hate About Leopard" (2007-10-26)? Is Leopard less hateful nearly four months after its original release, as it slowly emerges (as Glenn rightly expresses it) from what has felt like a public beta to some?

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9455>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9265>

Yes and no. Or, to put it another way, two out of six. Well, two out of six isn't bad, and, to be perfectly frank, one of the six (the loss of Classic) is something I never expected to be remedied; but one of the remaining three is so drop-dead awful that Leopard remains painful to use. Plus, some bugs I didn't bother to complain about in my "Six Things" article remain unfixed.

Positive Opacity

Let's start with the two things that are fixed. First, menu bar transparency. The way I decorate my computer's desktop with my own photographs, the menu bar's transparency rendered it all but illegible, the text in the menu bar being drowned out by the photo colors showing through from behind. For what seemed an eternity, this was just something I had to live with; then an ingenious hack was discovered for overriding the translucent menu bar, an achievement I reported and celebrated in "Transparent Menu Bar, Die Die Die!" (2007-11-16). In 10.5.2, however, you can turn off menu bar translucency by far simpler means - a checkbox! Yes, there's actually a preference now (in the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane), as there should have been all along.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9320>

If you've actually implemented the hack I reported in "Die Die Die!" be sure to remove it before installing the 10.5.2 update. Otherwise, there is a slight chance you might wind up with the system in an unpleasantly irregular state. The instructions are in that article, but I'll repeat them. Start with these lines:

sudo defaults delete
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer
'EnvironmentVariables'

Copy that into TextEdit and carefully remove the Return characters so that those three expressions are all on a single line, separated by a space (in other words, there should be a space after "delete" and a space after "WindowServer", but no return characters - make the TextEdit window really wide to prove to yourself that the whole thing really is on a single line). Now copy that line and paste it into the Terminal. If necessary, press Return. Enter your password when prompted. Immediately restart the computer. That's it! Now you can safely install 10.5.2.

Dock, Dock, Goose

Next, let's talk about stacks in the Dock. A "stack" is the new unpleasant behavior of a folder in the Dock. The old pleasant behavior was that a folder in the Dock looked like a folder, its menu contained a hierarchical display of its contents, and you could click it to open the actual folder. I reported a workaround in "Quay Sticks It to Stacks" (2007-11-27). Thanks to the 10.5.2 update, that workaround is no longer necessary; a folder in the dock can now behave like a folder once again. As Glenn has already explained, Control-click on the folder in the Dock to bring up its contextual menu, and make these choices: Sort by Name, Display as Folder, View Content as List. Now the folder looks like a folder; click it (without holding down the mouse) to bring up a hierarchical menu of its contents; Command-click it to open the actual folder in the Finder. This is not identical to the pre-Leopard behavior, but it will do just fine, thank you.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9332>

Those are the only two out of the "Six Things" that are fixed by the 10.5.2 update. The glittering, reflective Dock is still not officially fixed, so if you want a nice, dark, legible, compact, non-reflective Dock at the bottom of your screen, you'll have to go on using the hack I reported in "Six Things." The tiny, illegible type and icons in the Finder sidebar are still tiny and illegible, with no workaround in sight. And the absolutely horrible, frustrating, insanely brainless floating Help window, which lives in no particular application and blocks your view of the application you are trying to learn about, remains as a major blot on the Leopard landscape.

In addition, many bugs remain unfixed; for example, whether my computer, on waking from sleep, will automatically connect to my wireless network, or will even be able to connect to it, manually, without a restart or other drastic measures, remains a total gamble. And there are other bugs whose state I won't know until I've used the updated Leopard for a while longer. The jury is still out, for instance, on whether the first keystroke in a text field after a short period of inactivity will be randomly ignored, and on whether Spaces will continue to demonstrate occasional irrationalities such as lost windows or the wrong window coming forward when you switch from one space to another, and on whether certain applications, such as Photoshop Elements, will remain effectively unusable. Doubtless you have your own Leopard pet bugs for whose squashing your fingers will be crossed as you install this update.

Meanwhile, in a desperate attempt to end on a positive note, I should mention that menus themselves are now also considerably less transparent than before, which is a very pleasant improvement. Also, Time Machine now sports a status menu which, in addition to providing some status information about recent and current backups, provides two menu items - Back Up Now and Enter Time Machine - so you can safely remove the Time Machine icon from your Dock, knowing that you can still access the functionality that the application's Dock menu was providing.

ToC

iTunes Fails the Parental Rental

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#915/18-Feb-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9441>

My first reaction to Steve Jobs's announcement at the Macworld Expo keynote that Apple would offer downloadable rentals was, oh, good, my wife and I can finally give up on the pretense that we actually watch movies via our Netflix subscription, rather than simply let the discs gather dust for weeks at a time. (See "iTunes Movie Rentals and Apple TV, Take 2," 2008-01-15.) But after hearing the terms - 30 days after download to watch (an unlimited number of times), in any 24-hour window you choose - I thought, crud, we can't use it.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9403>

As many others observed that day, watching movies all the way through is the province of the young, the single, those without kids, or those with somewhat grown children. As the father of two kids (10 months and 3 1/2 years), my wife and I typically have at most 2 to 3 hours to ourselves in evening before collapsing in bed, and watching a 2-hour movie takes 2 to 3 nights.

We are not, my wife noted, Apple's target demographic.

For expediency, Apple accepted the odd terms imposed by the movie industry on all on-demand rentals. Movies are typically released to theaters, then on DVD, then to pay-per-view and hotel viewing, then on pay television like HBO, and - much later - on broadcast TV (usually with commercials). Digital downloads have been put into the pay-per-view category, with all the limitations and odd licensing that goes with it.

Each of those release windows is typically exclusive to maximize the profit from each segment. The time from theatrical to DVD release has become shorter and shorter over the last few years, sometimes being a matter of days instead of months. Pay-per-view release is typically about 30 days after the DVD ships to stores. (There's a blackout window, too, when the movie goes into premium cable, where you can't get it on pay-per-view or movie download services for sometimes as long as a year.)

This is also partly why digital downloads don't usually have any extras. Part of that is technology; part is file and download size; and part is how downloads are licensed compared to, say, DVDs. Hotels don't give you director's commentary options and deleted scenes, and neither do the iTunes Store, Vudu, Amazon Unbox, or CinemaNow, to name a few.

As we know, Apple often starts an industry and then sets the terms for it. iTunes music rights initially allowed a song to be played on up to 3 authorized computers and burned to an identical playlist up to 10 times. That later changed to 5 computers and 7 copies of an identical playlist. And now the big push is for unprotected music sales, as Apple and Amazon contend for the biggest library of such songs (see "Amazon MP3 Scores DRM-Free Music: What About Apple?," 2008-01-10).

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9394>

A couple of our colleagues have discovered that "24 hours" isn't exactly accurate, by the way, which may show some of Apple's negotiating strength. If you pause playback on a given supported device before 24 hours is up, you can resume playing after that period, according to Mark Boszko in "Extend iTunes Movie Rentals Beyond 24 Hours," 2008-02-18. So that's at least not as horrible as running out of time at 23 hours 59 minutes and having to repurchase and redownload the entire movie.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9462>

(Side rant: The 30 GB and 80 GB 5th generation iPods released in 2006 and sold through the middle of 2007 aren't capable of playing movie rentals, only the September 2007 and later models: the nano, classic, and touch, as noted in their document, "iTunes Store Movie Rental Usage Rights." See Apple's bird watcher's guide to iPod models. This fact eluded not just a colleague, trying to rent "Herbie" for her 3-year-old to watch on his birthday using her 30 GB 5G iPod, but also Apple tech support, which spent an inordinate amount of time before they asked what model of iPod she had. The iPod didn't inform her - though one might expect firmware could be configured to do so - that she had an unsupported model.)

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307246>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61688>

One can only hope that when Apple moves from its current set of roughly 150 movies for rental up to the thousands that other services offer, they'll become the biggest such seller, and be able to negotiate better terms. I'd be happy with a 15-day or even 10-day periods if I could have 48 or 72 hours to play the movie. Or a 50-cent surcharge to get 72 hours. Or something more esoteric like "watch once through with limited rewind but unlimited pause within 30 days." Who needs "watch unlimited times," anyway?

Whatever. All I know is that if Apple wants to eat Netflix's lunch and have a competitive edge against other services, just having the Apple TV and portability won't be enough to capture the entire audience. There are millions of parents in my position, and my wife and I are just waiting for the opportunity to pull the trigger.

ToC

Extend iTunes Movie Rentals Beyond 24 Hours

by Mark Boszko <mark@steamermedia.com>
TidBITS#915/18-Feb-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9462>

First, a quick summary of Apple's new movie rental option available on the iTunes Store (see "iTunes Movie Rentals and Apple TV, Take 2," 2008-01-15). The movie rental experience is good, even without an Apple TV. Of course the resolution isn't HD, though it is slightly above DVD standards by pixel size - 933 by 470 pixels for the particular film I watched, all picture and no black bars. Unfortunately, that's offset by the highly compressed low-data-rate H.264 codec, and the movie looked a bit soft for the resolution. (I'd still like to know just why we non-Apple TV owners are snubbed on the HD point, but I'm betting on it being a perceived piracy risk on the part of the studios.) However, the rental process itself is painless and your time remaining before the expiration is clearly laid out in the Rented Movies section of iTunes.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9403>

Transfer back and forth to portable devices (at least with the iPhone I tested) is also clearly laid out in the Movies tab of your media sync preferences for the portable device. The only pain experienced is waiting for a roughly 1 GB file to copy over USB, even when you're transferring back to your Mac from the portable device.

The one exception to ease of use would be that you can't get to your rentals from Front Row - you must play them from iTunes and swap into full screen mode by pressing Command-F if you want a big screen experience from your Mac mini jukebox. Then, at the end of the movie, iTunes doesn't kick you out of full screen mode either - it just sits there on the post-credit black screen until you press Escape to switch back to a normal window, but that's a trivial complaint.

Looking through the Rental Window

I've heard several people complain that they need at least a 27-hour window to account for starting a rented movie at 9 PM one evening, then having to pause it to deal with some interruption (like kids or the need for sleep), only to come back at 9 PM the next night and be out of luck because the rental has expired. To test this concern, I started watching a rental movie for a second time with only about 30 minutes left in the 24-hour rental window. Glenn Fleishman moans more about this problem in "iTunes Fails the Parental Rental" (2008-02-04).

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9441>

A good 70 minutes into the movie, and it's still playing. Does that mean you have 24 hours to start watching a movie, and once you've started, you get to keep watching it until it's done? Does it expire if you pause it in the middle or try to rewind? These are all good questions. But let's see if it lets me watch all the way to the end first...

Awesome. I was able to watch all the way to the end, credits and all, and then it stopped on the black screen as usual, with no alerts of any sort. Once I pressed Escape to leave full screen mode, I was greeted with this dialog, warning me that if I didn't resume watching, the movie would be deleted. In other words, I was easily able to finish watching the movie even though doing so put the total time beyond the 24-hour window.

<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-02/iTunes-rental-stop-resume.png>

With another movie, I tested the question of whether you could pause an in-progress movie and then resume watching after the 24-hour rental window had closed. It turns out that so long as you pause before the rental expiration, a paused movie remains accessible past the expiration time, so long as the movie window stays open. Keeping that window open requires that iTunes not be used to play back any other media until you choose to resume playback, after which you can continue playing at your leisure. When it's done, though, it's really done, and iTunes deletes the file.

<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-02/iTunes-rental-ended.png>

If you attempt to pause again after the expiration time has passed, the movie continues playing while you are presented with a dialog where iTunes notifies you that your rental has expired, and your only choice is to resume or delete your rental. However, you can rewind the currently playing movie even after the expiration time has elapsed, which could allow you to extend your viewing time a little further (or catch up if you have to visit the bathroom in the middle of the post-expiration viewing).

Chris Breen of Macworld has also discovered that there is an identical viewing time extension available if you have transferred your rental to a 3G iPod nano with TV playback. One might assume this would also apply to other iPod/iPhone models, although I've heard that the reason movie rentals aren't supported on 5G iPods is that it's possible to reset their clocks in such a way as to prolong rentals (something that reportedly doesn't work in iTunes).

<http://www.macworld.com/article/131790/2008/01/longerrentals.html>

The upshot of all this would seem to be that Apple is trying hard to provide a reasonable user experience, even while meeting the desire to limit the time in which a rental can be watched, presumably something that was necessary to get the studios to license their content for viewing in iTunes. Why Apple doesn't document this behavior, at least in a Knowledge Base article, is left as an exercise for the reader to ponder.


[Mark Boszko is a broadcast TV editor, film buff, and Mac addict living in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. In his "copious spare time," he produces HowTube, a fun tech how-to podcast, and BeerMediaTech, a spirited fortnightly discussion of tech and media news.]

<http://howtube.com/>
<http://beermediatech.com/>

ToC

Starbucks Deal Brewed with AT&T Has Hints of Apple

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#915/18-Feb-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9458>

I'm not an oenophile, but I do like wine. I've never mastered the vocabulary of oaky, brawny, tannic, and so forth. But I do know a whiff of fruit when I smell it. The recent announcement that Starbucks would switch its in-store Wi-Fi provider from long-time partner T-Mobile to AT&T had a strong smell of Apple about it. (You can read my coverage of this event at my Wi-Fi Networking News site, or in the article I filed for The Seattle Times.)

<http://wifinetnews.com/archives/008175.html>
<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004177549_starbucks12.html>

In fact, I think the putative 3G iPhone plays a part here as well, and that we'll see the 3G iPhone rolled out as part of a larger play that involves downloading movies in Starbucks over AT&T's new network. That puts the 3G iPhone launch between March and June of 2008. Let me back up a minute first.


AT&T Brings Millions of Subscribers to Starbucks

The deal brings Wi-Fi at 7,000 U.S. company-owned Starbucks stores at no additional cost to 7 million AT&T DSL and U-Verse fiber subscribers - all DSL customers with 1.5 Mbps downstream or faster connections - and 5 million business customers who use a remote-access service from AT&T. It also offers free Wi-Fi for two hours a day for a period of 30 days starting each time you make a purchase of any amount using a Starbucks Card, the company's stored-value swipe card.

Pay-as-you-go service costs $3.95 for two hours, down from $6.00 per hour or $10.00 per day with T-Mobile.

Monthly unlimited service is also available, although that requires a little explanation. AT&T splits its hotspot network into Basic and Premier tiers. The Basic network currently includes McDonald's (8,500 stores), Barnes & Noble, and several airports; Starbucks will be added to that tier. Qualifying DSL and all fiber customers get Basic service for free.

<http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=5949>

The Premier tier adds access to roughly 1,000 locations in the United States, such as hotels, airports run by other providers, and convention centers, as well as to 53,000 international roaming locations. Premier costs $19.95 per month for everyone except the qualifying DSL and all fiber customers, who can upgrade to Premier by paying an extra $9.95 per month.

Subscribers to aggregator hotspot services like Boingo Wireless that already have a roaming relationship with AT&T will get Starbucks access at no additional cost, too. Boingo charges $21.95 for unlimited U.S. access, which includes pretty much all domestic airports and tens of thousands of other U.S. locations, making it the best bargain. (Boingo hasn't updated their software client for Leopard, but a company spokesperson told me some months ago that nearly all Boingo partner locations allow a Web page login with Boingo credentials.)

<http://boingo.com/>

The rollout starts in the second quarter of 2008 in major cities, and will continue through the year. (This deal covers only U.S. company-owned Starbucks, not the kiosks found in airports or licensed purveyors in places like Barnes & Noble, and also doesn't affect T-Mobile's arrangements with Starbucks outside the United States.)

Starbucks has never publicly expressed dissatisfaction with T-Mobile, which purchased a bankrupt firm's assets and took over the Starbucks Wi-Fi buildout in early 2002. It's quite clear that the company made sure existing T-Mobile HotSpot subscribers wouldn't be disconnected when AT&T takes over: anyone with a T-Mobile data subscription that includes Wi-Fi or who uses their Wi-Fi/cell plan to place calls using special handsets has unlimited, long-term access to all Starbucks locations.

Rather, T-Mobile couldn't offer Starbucks anything particularly special, and couldn't further its relationship with Apple. When Apple announced that Starbucks would be a partner in a special branded service available on the iPhone and iPod touch and within iTunes to extend the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, the press release didn't mention T-Mobile or AT&T, Apple's multi-year exclusive iPhone reseller in the United States.

<http://www.apple.com/itunes/starbucks/>


Overwhelming 3G

AT&T operates a 3G (third generation) cellular network, and last week announced that the telecom firm would be expanding and upgrading that network this year. (See "More Mileposts Along Road to 3G iPhone," 2008-02-06.). The company also owns a huge amount of copper and fiber-optic cable in its territory stretching - with a southwestern gap - from California to Florida. (Qwest owns the Northwest, mountain time zone, and Midwest; Verizon, the northeast down to Virginia.)

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9448>

The company is using Wi-Fi as a bridge between wired service, which increasingly includes fiber-optic connections to neighborhoods, and its wireless service. You can push a lot of data over copper and glass, and have essentially as much of that as you want to build. Wireless spectrum is finite, and there's never as much as you want.

The current set of auctions for retiring analog television frequency shows how much interest there is: $20 billion and counting for an excellent swath, which includes nearly $5 billion for a single set of national licenses suitable for broadband wireless. AT&T just finalized a separate purchase of about half the amount of national spectrum currently up for bid from a firm that bought it in a previous auction.

The long debate over whether 3G or Wi-Fi is "better" ignores the fact that Wi-Fi has a far higher carrying capacity. While most hotspots backhaul no more than 3 to 6 Mbps downstream, and most are closer to 768 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps downstream, an 802.11g Wi-Fi network can push 20 Mbps across a single base station, and the new 802.11n standard tops out at rates over 90 Mbps. (The raw data rates for G and N are 54 Mbps and 300 Mbps, respectively; the rates I'm citing are for real-world throughput in close proximity to a base station.)

AT&T's current flavor of 3G, HSPA, can carry only 3.6 Mbps downstream and about half that upstream; each phone or device in range is likely to see the upper 100s of Kbps downstream and half that upstream, with higher peak rates for sustained transfers. And the more people using 3G connections, the less likely peak speeds will be achieved.

Reports state that when the current iPhone models were released, usage of EDGE - a moderate speed "2.5G" network standard that straddles second- and third-generation standards - tripled in cities like San Francisco. You can imagine that the release of a 3G iPhone might bring AT&T's still-expanding 3G network to its knees.

Which is where Starbucks comes in. AT&T and Apple clearly cut a deal where Starbucks benefits from becoming a digital media hub: It's going to be the place where people congregate to use Wi-Fi as part of the monthly service fee that they already pay AT&T - this wasn't announced yesterday, but it's absolutely coming - and where they download media from Apple.


It's Not about EDGE, It's about the Edge

Here's where it all comes together. Starbucks already has media servers in its stores. These servers host the songs that Starbucks plays. But they aren't simply jukeboxes. They also have magic that allows a customer in a Starbucks cafe to purchase a song they just heard or that was recently played and have that song downloaded locally - not downloaded over the Internet from Apple's iTunes Store. That means that Apple is wrapping DRM (digital rights management) around songs that require that protection in each store. Neither Starbucks nor Apple had previously discussed this, but I interviewed Starbucks's chief technical officer Chris Bruzzo yesterday for The Seattle Times.

Even though there was no mention of Apple in this deal, Bruzzo and I spoke about the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store arrangement in Starbucks. I asked him if there were any plans to stick media servers in the stores, and he said, "Right now in our stores that have the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, you go and buy the song that's playing directly overhead, and see how fast it transfers."

He wasn't being coy; the company isn't talking explicitly about this. But he said, compare the transfer speed between songs that were recently played and those available through Apple's broader iTunes catalog, and you can see the difference.

He noted of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, "That's a great example of a location-based service that's highly contextual. And the ability to use the superior speeds of 802.11g to deliver a file that's relevant to a particular environment." This isn't very subtle. They have servers in the stores.

If you were to put, say, a server with a couple of terabytes of storage, which is now maybe a $2,000 to $3,000 expense, and load that with the 100,000 most popular songs and the 500 most frequently rented films and the few hundred most recent and popular TV show episodes, suddenly people can download those files at the local network's speed, not at the speed of the Internet connection.

If I'm downloading a 1.3 GB movie file on my home network at 3 Mbps downstream, it's going to take about an hour. Not bad. If I instead purchase and download it over an otherwise non-busy 802.11g network, it's suddenly more like nine minutes. If that network were upgraded by AT&T, say, to use 802.11n, and I'm downloading it to my fancy MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro with 802.11n (Core 2 Duo versions), we're now talking about...wait for it...perhaps two minutes.

Did I mention that a 3G iPhone is likely to include a new low-power 802.11n chip as well? No? That's almost certainly part of the delay in producing it, as those chips are just hitting the market now.

The edge network, the network that feeds data locally at local network speeds, becomes extremely important in this scenario.

Your New Living Room

Starbucks has always cultivated an artificial living room: a place probably more comfortable and convivial than most of our actual living rooms (if we had them); for Generation Xers, it's also an extension of the ranch house they might have grown up in but can't afford to rent now.

It's not at all a leap that Starbucks, already a big music producer and seller, and one interested in revitalizing its business after a few years of drifting from its core coffee mission, would embrace the idea of being the place people who don't even like their coffee come to fill up on media, use the network, and hang out.

All Starbucks stores in the United States are closing later this month for three hours to retrain the staff on making coffee better. The baking ovens for breakfast "sandwiches" have started to be ripped out. And this deal is now in place. It's no coincidence.

Starbucks is poised to be the launch partner for the 3G iPhone, and they're getting their living rooms cleaned up for the coming hordes.

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The CUCUG Section:

January General Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>

January 17, 2008 -- President Rollins began the December meeting by welcoming everyone and introducing the officers. He noted the absence of our Corporate Agent, Mr. Kevin Hisel. A total of 19 members were in attendance this evening.

Richard's first order of business was to strongly warn everyone to update their Windows machines. A flaw had been found that goes to the core of WIndows 2000, XP and Vista machines and you really need to get it taken care of. "Do your updates," Richard said. "See Steve Gibbins site Security Now."

Keith Peregrine got a letter form Comcast about the upcoming changes in the internet service they are taking over. No difference in pricing was mentioned.

Jon Bjerke asked about the SciFi Channel which he said he is now getting on digital TV. Ed Serbe said it is not on analog.

Joe Dewalt talked about the internet speed at the Champaign government building. Comcast doesn't even know what the local Champaign government has.

Richard Rollins asked about Dish Internet. Initially noting that Dish internet is slower than cable internet, Todd Anderson provided other points of comparison. He also mentioned WildBlue, a provider of "fast, affordable two-way broadband Internet access via satellite to virtually any home and small business in small cities and rural settings.

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

Jon Bjerke asked if anybody was using wireless "N" yet? Richard Rollins said he's had a great improvement in range, but hasn't noticed any throughput gains as of yet. Jon then asked about power line networking, but drew a blank from the group there.

Our visitor asked about cellular modems. Richard said they were not bad - they're more like an ISDN line. Joe Dewalt said he thinks Verizon went 3G in December. The guest then asked about on campus. It was noted that campus is pretty much all wireless so connecting shouldn't be a problem.

Emil Cobb talked about Mac news. He said there had been an update of the "desktop" of the iPhone. There was an iPod Touch update. And, he talked about the MacBook Air.

Richard Rollins brought up the Eee PC. It has a 7" screen and sells for $399.99.

<http://www.mwave.com/mwave/asuseepc.hmx>

Jerry Feltner asked about the One Laptop Per Child that was featured in a previous newsletter. A discussion followed, during which Kevin Hopkins noted that Amiga Forever ran on it as pointed out in the January newsletter.

<http://www.amigaforever.com/news-events/20080105oapc/>

Richard Rollins wryly asked if anybody had "upgraded" to XP. Everyone had a good laugh.

The was a question about backing up your Mac and Vista files if you happen to have both running on your Macintosh. Do you need to do it once (for both) or twice (each separately). A DOS nibbler type copy might image the entire drive. The safest bet would probably be to handle each OS as separate entities. Richard noted that a virus on the Windows side can bring down the whole drive, so you definitely still need virus protection on you Windows side of the equation. A discussion of viruses on the Mac followed.

We then took our standard break and after that the meeting basically evolved into individual conversations and folks congregating on topics of interest. Richard Rollins and I kind of hung out together and talked about a couple of programs Richard liked and was using: Quicksilver, Mac Stumbler and the widget Network Stat. With regards to Quicksilver, Richard talked about one of his favorite video podcasts -- MacBreak <http://www.twit.tv/mb>. He showed me the one on Quicksilver, which is a program that allowed him to use a keyboard shortcut that I saw him use, eliciting a "What the heck did you just do?" If you'd like to check it out, here's the info:

July 26th, 2006
MacBreak 12: Quicksilver

Host: Leo Laporte

Guest: Merlin Mann

Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann show you how to turbocharge your interactions with your data and applications using Quicksilver.

<http://www.twit.tv/mb12>

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January Board Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>

The December meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, December 22, 2008, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Richard Rollins, Emil Cobb, Kevin Hopkins, Rich Hall and Kevin Hisel.

In the discussion prior to the actual meeting, Kevin Hopkins asked about the critical update to Windows Richard had talked about at the general meeting. He wanted to make sure he'd gotten it. Richard talked a little about "Golden Tuesday" - the second Tuesday of the month when updates come out.

Kevin Hisel talked about a new DLink router he got and the trouble he'd had with it. "Drivers are everything." he said. The problem turned out to be the drivers for his cards that were supposed to take advantage of the capabilities of the new router, but performance with the stock drivers were lackluster. So, he went to the website of Marvel, the chip set maker for the cards and sure enough, they had improved drivers for his gigabit NIC cards, and they boosted throughput by four times. Microsoft driver support is pretty good, but it pays to know who made the hardware.

The official meeting then began.

Richard Rollins: Richard said Thursday's meeting was slightly depressing because Mr. Hisel wasn't there. He told Kevin he was missed. The meeting had gone pretty much as usual - with people discussing things in small groups throughout the evening.

Kevin Hopkins: Kevin had nothing new to report.

Emil Cobb: Emil reported that Keith Peregrine gave the Mac SIG a presentation of Amadeus, a program for ripping vinyl to MP3s.

Rich Hall: Rich reported on our interest income. President Rollins reported that he had confused his instructions to Rich on the payment of our room rent. The price did not go up this year, so we overpaid the bill by $5 per month. Efforts will be made to correct this, either through a refund or a credit.

Kevin Hisel: Kevin related a personal story about accidentally purchasing a program key twice for the Goldwave audio editor when he moved from an old machine to a new one. He was unable to find the key until after he'd paid a second time.

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The Back Page:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CUCUG
912 Stratford Drive
Champaign, IL
61821-4137

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