News Humor Common PC Linux Mac CUCUG
The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, May 15th, at 7:00 pm, at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The Linux SIG convenes, of course, 45 minutes earlier, at 6:15 pm. Directions to the FBC-CS are at the end of this newsletter.
The May 15 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. The PC SIG will have Kevin Hisel doing a Vista demo. The Macintosh is open for anything anyone wants to bring in.
ToC
We'd like to welcome the newest members of our group, joining us in the last month: Joy George (Dell Laptop).
We'd also like to thank renewing members Tom Purl and Bryan Forbes.
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
Michele Raupp <illinoisdomainproject@uiuc.edu>
Public Affairs
URL: <http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/illinoisdomainproject>
On Tuesday (May 13), e-mail users at the Urbana campus will be able to use NetID@illinois.edu addresses. All users with a NetID@uiuc.edu e-mail address will be able to receive e-mail at NetID@illinois.edu. The virtual user tables at the CITES relays will be updated to allow the processing of e-mail sent to NetID@illinois.edu. No action is required of users at this time. E-mail sent to @uiuc.edu addresses will be forwarded automatically to the new @illinois.edu addresses. Users are encouraged to adopt the new address and use it on printed materials, in signatures, and anywhere else their e-mail address is used. Will your old uiuc.edu email address still work? Yes. All existing uiuc.edu email addresses will continue to work indefinitely.
Please Note: All existing NetID@uiuc.edu e-mail addresses will continue to function even after the illinois.edu e-mail addresses are enabled.
These changes do not yet apply to NetID@department.uiuc.edu e-mail addresses. After May 13th, departments running their own mail servers may begin the steps necessary to update departmental mail servers and clients to accept e-mail at NetID@department.illinois.edu.
Tentative completion date 12/31/2008.
So, why are they doing this? Well, here's what they say on the web site in their "Overview."
As we work to build the Illinois brand, one of the biggest challenges we face is the continued use of "uiuc" in e-mail addresses and Web site URLs. As long as we continue to use this terminology, we will lose the impact of consistently representing ourselves as Illinois.
The goal is for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to build its identity among key audiences by communicating consistent, quality visual images, messages and nomenclature. This supports the Chancellor's strategic plan and commitment to build the University's reputation as one of the preeminent research institutions in the world.
It's marketing. This applies to the Urbana campus only.
ToC
By Katy Human
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 05/09/2008 02:00:37 AM MDT
URL: <http://www.denverpost.com/ci_9199410>
BOULDER - Bluefire - neither dragon nor superhero - promises to be as fast and powerful as either one, according to the scientists who will soon use the new supercomputer.
On Thursday, the Boulder-based National Center for Atmospheric Research unveiled the new IBM computer, dubbed bluefire, which will be one of the 25 most powerful - and efficient - computers in the world.
The machine is capable of performing more than 76 trillion calculations a second, NCAR said.
"We're going to triple our computing capability and actually burn a little less energy," said Tom Engel, a high-performance-computing expert at NCAR.
NCAR researchers have relied on powerful supercomputers to model climate change, tornadoes, hurricanes and turbulence that can shake up airplanes.
"This will let our researchers add more physics, add more chemistry, add more realism to the models," said Aaron Andersen, also an NCAR high-performance-computing expert.
Last year, NCAR researchers were among the scientists sharing the Nobel Peace Prize for work with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The computer models used in the IPCC report and others are so complicated, it takes about two weeks to run one model 100 years into the future, Andersen said.
The climate predictions coming out of the computers have included that the Arctic and Western United States are among the world's fastest-warming regions and a global sea-level rise of between 7 and 23 inches by 2100.
With bluefire, NCAR researchers and their collaborators now can add more detailed information than in the past - because there had not been enough computing power, said Lawrence Buja, an NCAR climatologist.
That eventually will mean a better understanding of how climate change will play out in specific regions of the country, Buja said, and better predictions of storm tracks and intensities.
"We will use it to look at climate change here in Colorado - how warming temperatures will affect snowpack, the ski industry, is the pine-beetle kill going to be worse . . .?" Buja said.
Bluefire also should let researchers add changing landscapes - the expansion of cities and conversion of forests into cropland - into climate models, Buja said. This should improve their accuracy.
The new computer, an IBM Power 575, is made up of 11 closet-sized cabinets and will consume about as much energy as 600 to 700 typical households, Engel said.
That's significantly less than the energy consumed by NCAR's two supercomputers in use today, Engel said.
When those two computers are turned off in a few months, NCAR's supercomputing facility should require about 10 percent less energy, he said.
The trick to that energy efficiency is water, Andersen said. Bluefire is cooled by copper pipes carrying chilly liquid - not the energy-intensive air-conditioning units more common in recent years.
NCAR could not release the cost of the new IBM supercomputer, but in 2005, a supercomputer then considered state of the art cost "about $2 million," according to IBM. The company did not return calls Thursday.
Katy Human: 303-954-1910 or <khuman@denverpost.com>
Related link:
ToCNCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) - Bluefire
- <http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/computers/bluefire/#>Water-Cooled Supercomputer Set to Study Climate
by Christopher Joyce - Listen Now [2 min 44 sec]
- <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90309555>
Web payment firm Paypal has said it will block "unsafe browsers" from using its service as part of wider anti-phishing efforts.
Customers will first be warned that a browser is unsafe but could then be blocked if they continue using it.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7354539.stm>
For Firefox you need the following 'add-on':
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4828>
ToC
Commodore International is close to folding. The Dutch company that owns the brand was declared bankrupt this week, but a spokesman said it will appeal the court order.
<http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/04/18/commodore_lawsuits/>
ToC
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#927/05-May-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9595>
Microsoft plans to break their customers' ability to play MSN Music-purchased songs on computers other than those that are currently authorized after 31-Aug-08. When the Zune was introduced in late 2006, Microsoft abandoned its long-time PlaysForSure digital rights management (DRM) system that embeds information in media to control playback. You can read a lovely, snarky annotation of Microsoft's letter to its MSN Music purchasers at eWeek Microsoft Watch.
The Zune Marketplace uses a different DRM system that's compatible with only the Zune. Microsoft currently sells no unprotected music, while Amazon's entire digital music catalog is DRM-free, and a subset of the iTunes Store is sold without device and playback locks. Geoff Duncan wrote about the new and old DRM systems in "Of the Zune, DRM, and Universal Music," 2006-11-13.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8751>
Users can continue to play MSN Music audio indefinitely on any machine authorized before 31-Aug-08, and can transfer and authorize songs on up to 5 computers total for any one song until that date. However, because Microsoft's system works on a per-song basis, if someone transferred a large library to another computer, they would need to authorize each song - one source says by starting to play each song, which must be an overstatement - before the August 31st deadline. After that point, music will continue to play only on previously authorized computers. Anyone forced to reinstall Windows, upgrade, or add a new machine is out of luck.
Microsoft suggests burning songs to audio CDs, although it doesn't mention the necessary second part of that transaction, which is to rip the music back as unprotected MP3, AAC, or even lossless music files.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has challenged Microsoft's action as part of their long-running battle against DRM. The EFF is not against copyright, ownership, control of usage, royalties, or reasonable limitations. Rather, they believe DRM is an ineffective method to provide such controls, because DRM punishes only those who opt into it by broadly restricting personal use rights that are encoded in both law and judicial decisions. These rights include being able to make reliable backups, play media on any device one owns, and choose when and how to pause and resume playback; various DRM systems restrict different sets of personal use rights. [Editor's note: For a detailed academic look at the implications of how the content industries are encapsulating intentionally fluid laws into rigid DRM technologies, see Tarleton Gillespie's "Wired Shut." -Adam]
<http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/04/28/microsoft-open-letter>
<http://www.eff.org/pages/customer-always-wrong-users-guide-drm-online-music>
<http://www.tarletongillespie.org/wiredshut/>
Microsoft is engaged in what many opposed to DRM view as the worst-case scenario: a company sells a lot of media with DRM, then prevents users from continuing to use the media within the constraints imposed on the system, and offers no recompense or reasonable option to work around the shutdown.
What's odd, of course, is that Microsoft is neither going out of business (obviously) nor shutting down MSN. Rather, they made a business decision to shift their entire protected music approach to a new one because PlaysForSure wasn't reliable enough for them to eat their own dog food. This also left in the lurch lots of their partners who had stuck with PlaysForSure through thick and thin.
It's a crummy decision. Microsoft could have used technology to unlock all the music purchased, even if that required them to make additional payments to the copyright holders. They could have chosen to run their DRM authorization servers indefinitely. They could have done lots of things. Instead, they chose the worst possible solution.
The EFF suggests that Microsoft either refund all purchases or provide DRM-free replacements. They also make the implicit point that given the aggressive tactics used by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which includes filing suits against dead people and grandmothers without computers, Microsoft should provide full documentation of purchases so that if their users choose to burn music to CD, they could later prove that they legitimately purchased that music.
I don't know of any individuals who enjoy DRM; this move certainly strengthens the hands of all DRM opponents by providing a case in point: the day the music died.
ToC
Producer - Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer - Candace Clement
Media Minutes April 25, 2008
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/files/MM 04 25 08 SCRIPT.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/audio/download/38909/MM+04+25+08.mp3>
The issue of Net Neutrality has been front and center for Congress and the Federal Communications Commission in the past week.
Last Thursday, all five members of the FCC were at Stanford University to hear testimony on the future of the Internet. Comcast, AT&T and other Internet service providers want to eliminate longstanding Net Neutrality protections so they can block, slow down or speed up Internet traffic whenever they like.
Commissioners listened intently to more than eight hours of testimony by academics, technology experts, economists, and representatives from public interest and political groups as well as the public. More than 600 people turned out for the event..
Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig cautioned against changing the open and transparent nature of the Internet.
Lessig: We should be skeptical, we should have a Missouri attitude here - show me, right? Show me that innovation won't be harmed from this change, show me investment won't be choked, show me competition will continue. And until you show me that, don't allow this to change. (Applause)
Michele Combs of the Christian Coalition of America told the Commissioners to make it clear that lawful speech rights of citizens will be upheld.
Combs: We believe that organizations such as the Christian Coalition should be able to continue to use the Internet to be able to communicate with our members and with a world-wide audience without a phone or a cable company snooping in our communications and deciding whether to allow a particular communication to proceed, slow it down, block it, or offer to speed it up only if the author pays extra to be on the fast lane. (Applause)
Five days later, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on "The Future of the Internet." Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota -- who has co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to restore Net Neutrality protections -- expressed dismay at those trying to put an end to the open Internet.
Dorgan: We're trying to determine how we might legislate here to restore that which always existed in the creation of the Internet. I find it unbelievable that this is controversial. Who on earth is standing up for discrimination? This is unbelievable to suggest that this is some sort of intensive regulation. It is not. It is a restoration of something that has great common sense.
Related links:
ToCSenate Network Neutrality Hearing Recap
- <http://benton.org/node/10612>'Future of Internet' Debated at FCC Hearing
- <http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=7784>Lawrence Lessig to FCC: 'Preserve What Has Worked'
- <http://freepress.net/lessig_stanford>Web Hearing Finds Common Ground
- <http://freepress.net/node/38666>
Producer - Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer - Candace Clement
Media Minutes May 9, 2008
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/files/MM 05-08-08 TRANSCRIPT.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/audio/download/39672/MM+05+09+08.mp3>
A House subcommittee held a hearing this week to consider legislation that would ensure all broadband networks will be open and free from discrimination.
The Internet Freedom Preservation Act -- House bill 5353 -- would prevent Internet service providers from blocking, slowing or degrading legal content over the Internet. Democrat Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced the bill with Republican Chip Pickering of Mississippi in February.
Markey opened the hearing by deflecting arguments against Net Neutrality. He said the debate is not about whether carriers can perform necessary network management, or about fighting piracy, prioritizing emergency communications or dealing with copyright issues. Net Neutrality - and his bill - only applies to keeping lawful content accessible to the public and the Internet open to new innovation.
Edward Markey: And so this whole idea that this legislation helps piracy is 100 percent wrong, it's a red herring. We should actually put an aquarium out here, there are so many red herrings that are floating around to mislead about what the intent of Net Neutrality is.
Pickering said the bill is balanced and consistent with Republican principles.
Chip Pickering: It clarifies network management, or strengthens it, and it clarifies lawful to unlawful uses. And this is a good ground on which to start on this committee of getting the consensus to promote American values and ideals in a good way.
Walter McCormick, president of the U.S. Telecom Association and the National Cable & Telecom Association's Kyle McSlarrow weighed in against the bill. Both denied that there's a problem with broadband providers controlling content.
Rep. Anna Eshoo of California disagreed.
Anna Eshoo: There are cases of degradation. And I think it always ends up being in the interest of growing and larger companies to be tempted to protect what they have and not let another foot in the door.
Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott warned the committee that media giants could not be trusted to operate in the public interest and keep the Internet open to everyone.
Ben Scott: Internet policy making is premised on a simple idea: We will remove regulation from network operators, but we'll draw a line to protect consumers in their access to an open Internet. A duopoly market of phone and cable companies will not discipline itself.
For more information on the hearing and the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, go to savetheinternet.com .
Related links:
ToCHouse Takes up Net Neutrality Debate
- <http://www.internetnews.com/government/article.php/12268_3745181_1>Few Are Neutral in Net Neutrality Battles
- <http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/05/hr_net.html>Consumer Groups Champion Internet Freedom Preservation Act
- <http://freepress.net/node/39552>What Is Net Neutrality FAQ
- <http://savetheinternet.com/=faq>
By Ryan Singel
May 07, 2008 | 1:22:28 PM
URL: <http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/internet-archiv.html>
The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning.
On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a controversial National Security Letter (.pdf) on the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity on the site.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive's lawyers, fought the NSL, challenging its constitutionality in a December 14 complaint (.pdf) to a federal court in San Francisco. The FBI agreed on April 21 to withdraw the letter and unseal the court case, making some of the documents available to the public.
The Patriot Act greatly expanded the reach of NSLs, which are subpoenas for documents such as billing records and telephone records that the FBI can issue in terrorism investigations without a judge's approval. Nearly all NSLs come with gag orders forbidding the recipient from ever speaking of the subpoena, except to a lawyer.
Brewster Kahle called the gag order "horrendous," saying he couldn't talk about the case with his board members, wife or staff, but said that his stand was part of a time-honored tradition of librarians protecting the rights of their patrons.
"This is an unqualified success that will help other recipients understand that you can push back on these," Kahle said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning.
Though FBI guidelines on using NSLs warned of overusing them, two Congressionally ordered audits revealed that the FBI had issued hundreds of illegal requests for student health records, telephone records and credit reports. The reports also found that the FBI had issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs since 2001, but failed to track their use. In a letter to Congress last week, the FBI admitted it can only estimate how many NSLs it has issued.
The Internet Archive's case is only the third known court challenge to an NSL, all of which ended with the FBI rescinding the NSL, according to the ACLU's Melissa Goodman.
"That makes you wonder about the the hundreds of thousands of NSLs that haven't been challenged," Goodman said, suggesting that the FBI had collected sensitive information on innocent Americans.
The EFF, joined by the ACLU, initially used the letter to challenge the constitutionality of NSLs generally, saying the gag order violates the First Amendment. They also argued that the specific NSL used was illegal since the Internet Archive is a library, not a communications provider.
The settlement with the government (.pdf) puts an end to that challenge and still keeps Kahle and his lawyers from discussing -- even in the most general terms -- what the FBI was after and what public information the Internet Archive turned over to the FBI. For instance, the lawyers declined to say what kind of information the target was looking at or uploading -- such as animal rights information or Muslim literature.
The ACLU has successfully quashed two other NSLs, including one request to a library system asking for web surfing histories of patrons and another to a small New York hosting provider asking for data about a website it hosted. The Internet Archive case is only the second time the courts allowed the recipient of a Patriot Act National Security Letter to reveal his or her identity.
In the case of a NSL sent to a small ISP in New York, a judge ruled that the entire NSL statute is unconstitutional because of the gag order, but that ruling is under appeal. Though the FBI withdrew the request for information on one of the websites the ISP hosted, the target of that letter is still bound by a gag order, though he did write an op-ed for the Washington Post about the experience.
Though Kahle wouldn't say what the feds were after, he stressed that the Internet Archive stores very little non-public information -- only an unverified email address for those who choose to provide it -- and does not log IP addresses.
Related link:
ToCLetter of the Law
Last November the FBI used a top secret National Security Letter to demand user information from the Internet Archive, an online library. Internet Archive co-founder Brewster Kahle decided not to comply. Instead he sued and the FBI backed down. Kahle describes what it's like to challenge an NSL.
Text: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/05/09/02>
Audio: <http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm050908b.mp3>
I am only sending this to my smart friends. I could not figure it out and had to look at the answer. See if you can figure out what these words have in common.
1 Banana
2 Dresser
3 Grammar
4 Potato
5 Revive
6 Uneven
7 Assess
Are you peeking or have you already given up?
Give it another try . .
You will kick yourself when you discover the answer.
Go back and look at them again; think hard.
OK . . . Here You Go . . Hope You Didn't Cheat.
This Is Cool.
Answer: No, it is not that they all have at least 2 double letters. (Thought I had the answer, but I did not go far enough.)
In all of the words listed, if you take the first letter, place it at the end of the word, and then spell the word backwards, it will be the same word.
Did you figure it out? Even if you didn't, don't worry. Just send it to
more people and stump them; then, you'll feel better, too.
Also....race car spelled backwards is race car!
[Editor's Note: My thanks to David Stevens for submitting this articles
for the newsletter.]
URL: <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89928839>
Morning Edition, April 25, 2008 - Studying Charles Darwin's documents has evolved from visiting the library at Cambridge University to accessing the information online. The British university has just made a trove of about 20,000 papers from Darwin's life and studies accessible on the Web.
Readers can even see his wife Emma Darwin's recipes for pea soup and heavy Victorian puddings.
"It's really unprecedented that so much new material by and about Charles Darwin is suddenly made available to the public," John van Wyhe, director of the Darwin Online collection, tells Renee Montagne.
<http://darwin-online.org.uk/>
The material has been available to scholars for years at Cambridge.
"What we've done is taken much of that material and made it available for free to the whole world," van Wyhe says. "The amount of material is so vast that you could click on it for months and not see all of the images."
The items range from tiny scraps of paper with Darwin's notes to entire books and pamphlets - there are 90,000 electronic images in all, van Wyhe says.
The collection includes Darwin's first pencil sketch of his species theory, from 1842.
"You notice that it's messy," van Wyhe says. "That shows that it's a working document. Darwin has crossed things out, changed his ideas."
And there are Darwin's "bird notes" from the voyage of the Beagle, including his first recorded doubts about the stability of species. They also include a sketch of his cabin aboard the ship.
ToC
December 18, 2007
Update: If you are looking for a guide to Dual Boot Windows Vista and Mac OSX Leopard, please follow this guide Hack Attack : Dual Boot Leopard and Windows Vista. The Dual Boot Guide is a comprehensive guide and it should work for most of you with a little bit of hard work.
Here is a complete guide to install Mac OSX Leopard 10.5.1 (9B18) on your PC, in just one step that is as easy as it could possibly get. Just pop in the DVD and you are good to go, running Leopard in no time, with all the 300+ features at your fingertips.
index_hero20071016Its been nearly two months, since I last wrote my guide to Install Leopard on your PC in just 3 Steps. Well I wanted to write a better How-To that would answer many questions that people had from my previous How-To.
I am writing this guide for a novice user, who doesn't know much about the various commands that went into my previous article. This is a one step process that almost anybody in this world would be able to follow.
Here are the basic requirements for you to proceed with the installation of Leopard:
Before I tell you, how to install OSX I would like to tell you why this release by Uphuck and Eskurza is an important milestone in the OSX86 Project.
With the EFI patch, the hackintosh can boot off VANILLA UNMODIFIED OS X kernel and use vanilla kexts, which gives a more clean room and great peace of mind for future system updates.
To Know more about PC-EFI visit the OSX86 Wiki
Now lets proceed with the installation of Leopard. Before that here are few conditions your CPU must satisfy to use this installation method..
Ok now, lets proceed with the installation : Step 1: Installing Leopard
Step 2: That is all my, my Friend
That's it for now. I will be updating this post in the future, when the AMD patch is released. If you have any questions, please drop in a comment, or ask your questions in the Uphuck Forums.
A big thanks to Uphuck and Eskurza for this amazing release. A lot of credit for all this hardwork goes to them. And ofcourse to Netkas for the development of PC-EFI. Cheers!
Related link:
ToCFrankenmac! What's in a Mac clone?
One man's search for the sum of a Mac's parts
by Rob Griffiths, Macworld.com
Apr 18, 2008 2:01 am
<http://www.macworld.com/article/133028/2008/04/building_mac_clone.html>
Friday, May 2, 2008
URL: <http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/05/02/cell_phone_tv/>
Don't wanna wait to get home and watch the Daily Show episode you TiVo'd. No problem. Watch it live on your cell phone. This weekend AT&T launches its Mobile TV service. Other companies have similar services. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports.
Renita Jablonski: This weekend, AT&T will launch a mobile TV service in parts of the U.S. Now car potatoes can watch everything from ESPN to CNN on their cell-phones. The service will cost about $15 a month. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports.
Voice of a comedian: There's an awful lot going on in the world right now. I'm not going to lie to you. It's mostly bad things. (audience laughs)
Stacey Vanek-Smith: Comedy Central is one of nearly a dozen channels that will be offered on AT&T Mobile TV. Porter Bibb with Media Tech Capital Partners says small screen programming has a huge future.
Porter Bibb: There's no question. Mobile TV is going to hit very big, particularly with the iPhone, because of the good definition on the screen.
Small-business owner Tim Brown makes time-lapse recording software. He's in the market for a new cell phone and says video capabilities will be a huge selling point.
Tim Brown: I can imagine watching video podcasts and saving a video of my kid, or I make lots of short, 30-second cool videos, which would look really good on there, because you could just show it to people.
Networks are getting excited about the possibilities, too. They've been developing "mobi-sodes," three- to five-minute shows, especially designed for mobile viewing.
I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith for Marketplace.
ToC
May 02, 2008
Text: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/05/02/06>
Audio: <http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm050208f.mp3>
This week's release of Grand Theft Auto IV provoked a frenzy of media coverage heralding the game's design, touting the record-breaking sales and of course, examining the threat the game poses to our children. But Lawrence Kutner has authored a new book suggesting violent video games do not create violent children.
[SOUND OF VIDEO GAME - GRAND THEFT AUTO IV]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Oh, wow!
BOB GARFIELD: Brooke?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's bad.
BOB GARFIELD: Brooke?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yeah. Hold on a second here. I think I just crashed into somebody.
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Okay. I'll read it. Grand Theft Auto is, of course, the video game that involves carjacking, drugs, prostitutes and a virtual city with every last detail.
[SOUND OF VIDEO GAME - GRAND THEFT AUTO IV]
MAN: Ooh!
WOMAN: Ow!
BOB GARFIELD: Brooke is murdering her way through the fourth installment, which is expected to pull in 400 million dollars this week, after it was released to blindingly glowing reviews.
MAN ON VIDEO GAME: Ugh!
[SOUNDS OF GRAND THEFT AUTO IV CONTINUE]
BOB GARFIELD: Brooke, you were supposed to actually have done this last night.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yeah, Bob, but what happened last night is I got stuck in a loop and I was just wandering the streets of the city and I got so lonely. The only way you can communicate with people is by punching them, and I just punched for two hours.
BOB GARFIELD: Play. Just play.
MAN ON VDEO GAME: Ugh!
BOB GARFIELD: The ecstatic reviews for the game have been matched by stories warning parents about the extreme violence - and the sexual content.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Oh, forget about it. I give up. Turn it off.
[GRAND THEFT AUTO IV SOUND OFF]
The Chicago Transit Authority is removing ads for the games from their buses, and pundits have spent the week weighing in on how the game will activate the inner child psychopath. But is there any proof that violent video games breed violent children?
Lawrence Kutner, co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media at Harvard, conducted a two-year study, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, looking into the relationship. After interviewing 1,200 middle school students and 500 parents, his short answer is - no.
LAWRENCE KUTNER: Well, when we look at violent youth crime, that's been going down significantly over the past 10 to 15 years, and video game play has gone up, and gone up exponentially. So for the general population, there clearly is no relationship there, that one does not cause the other. And probably one does not prevent the other, either. They're just independent.
We did find that those boys and those girls who played almost exclusively M-rated or violent games at age 12, 13, 14, were at greater risk for getting involved in fights and being bullies and things like that.
But for boys, what we found is those who did not play video games at all - it's still a small number of them - were also at greater risk. And that's fascinating.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So for certain kids, if you play a lot of violent video games, you could be in trouble. And for other kids, if you don't play any video games, then that could be a marker for trouble. So there's some sort of sweet spot of video game playing that suggests everything's going to be okay?
LAWRENCE KUTNER: Well, most kids play some video games, and most 12-, 13-, 14-year-old boys play some M-rated games. But if you go to the extremes, you would seem to be looking at kids who aren't fitting in one way or another.
And it was interesting. A year ago, when you had the shootings at Virginia Tech, immediately after that you had the politicians and pundits on the air talking about how this was clearly caused by video games.
Well, if you look at the actual report issued by the State of Virginia that investigated this, when Seung-Hui Cho was nine years old, they say that he didn't like violent video games. His suitemates, the kids that he shared a dorm room with, said that he didn't play video games at all, and that really surprised them, because everyone else did.
And that was right in line with our findings, that the boys who don't play video games at all are left out socially. It's a marker that there's some social problems there.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Did your research suggest that, in fact, violent video games could help some kids resolve issues that might otherwise result in violence?
LAWRENCE KUTNER: In the interviews we did, several of the kids said that they would be angry at a particular classmate or other kid at the school and go into a video game, set up an avatar that looks kind of like that kid, and have a fight with them in the game. And at the end, they said, you know, I felt better. And several of them also said that, you know, now I didn't feel the pressure to actually fight the kid.
Now, that's a hint. We don't know if that's what's going on. But most kids, when they play a game, feel better at the end of the session. They're more relaxed.
If your child is more wound up or more angry at the end of a session, that's a sign that there may be something wrong, that it's something you should pay attention to as a parent. That kid's at greater risk for other issues.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What about the difference among different ages? Surely playing Grand Theft Auto is going to affect a 17-year-old differently than a 12-year-old.
LAWRENCE KUTNER: We were studying 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds. And when we've talked to the boys, and you ask them, should you playing this game; what age is okay? - and they give a predictable answer. You know, they give their age or a year younger. [BROOKE LAUGHS]
And we knew that. And then we'd say, well, what if you had an eight-year-old brother or sister? Would you let them play the game? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, why not? And they give exactly the same reasons that their own parents give about them, that they can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, they might act impulsively.
But what was really interesting - what they were protective of, and that was cursing. That's what they wanted to shield the younger kids from, because that's what they knew their siblings could actually do.
One other thing we asked these 12-, 13-, 14-year-old boys, is there any game you should not be allowed to play? And a response we got several times was The Sims. Well, you know, The Sims? That's sort of weird. And they said, well, they kiss.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Ah.
LAWRENCE KUTNER: Well, that's something that's scary in the real world to a 12-, 13-, 14-year-old boy. They had no problem, again, with blowing up buildings or, you know, driving around fast cars, but being kissed -!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay Larry, let's talk about sex. With games [LAUGHS] like Grand Theft Auto, one of the biggest complaints is violence, but there is sexual content, and people worry about that, too. And although the effects are hard to measure, there can't be anything good about 12-year-olds playing a game that involves sex with prostitutes - followed by running them over.
LAWRENCE KUTNER: The impression that a lot of people have is that it's all about violence and sex, whereas what we've found from the kids is that they were not attracted to the violence and graphic sexual content in the game. As a matter of fact, the games that were purely violent games, like Postal and Manhunt, not a single kid said they liked playing. They found it boring. What they want is complex characters and very interesting, intricate plots, and a lot of those games happen to be M-rated.
And many of the kids we talked to who played Grand Theft Auto were not familiar with some of the sexual stuff that gets touted about by the pundits. You know, there are so many ways of playing the game that they didn't, you know, they didn't run across that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What about the less dramatic, potential negative consequences? I think a lot of parents worry that playing too many video games could make your attention span shorter or maybe even spark ADD or ADHD.
LAWRENCE KUTNER: I know of no evidence that shows that playing video games causes ADD. What we do find is that those children who have ADD will often be able to spend much more time concentrating on a video game than they can in a classroom because they can sit still for this more than in a traditional school situation.
And what it seems to be is the game is nonjudgmental. This is very different from what they interpret is going on in school. And so they can make a mistake, recover, and not feel like they're being blamed for something because the computer, or the console, is infinitely patient in their eyes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There is a history of new forms of youth entertainment getting vilified as they go out of the gate. We spoke last week about the hearings regarding the safety of comic books in the '50s. Is this another parallel moment in history?
LAWRENCE KUTNER: It seems to be that. In the 1930s, the big concern was gangster films. You were not allowed to show the dynamiting of trains in those films out of fear that teenage boys would blow trains up all over the country.
In the 1890s, the big concern, especially for teenage girls, was the new medium of that time, and that was the paperback novel.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How much do you think this fear of video games has been fueled by the media and how much have the media simply been reflecting the concerns of parents?
LAWRENCE KUTNER: I think it works both ways. You know, there has been a lot of concern by very, very well-intended people. The problem has been - are we really focusing on the main causes of violence or is this just an easy target? And it's such a great political issue if you're running a campaign that it's hard to resist.
But the scientific data do not support the dramatic claims that have been raised. It's a much more nuanced issue.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Lawrence Kutner is co-author of Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth about Violent Video Games. Thank you very much.
LAWRENCE KUTNER: Oh, my pleasure.
[Editor's Note: In response to concerns raised by some in our gaming community to a previous article in the newsletter, we hope this one balances the scale somewhat.]
ToC
May 02, 2008
Text: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/05/02/04>
Audio: <http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm050208d.mp3>
Consuming the same media as your peers is what social scientists call homophily, better known as Ôbirds of a feather flock together'. Ethan Zuckerman, blogger and internet theorist, has been trying to fight this instinct online. He offers techniques for surprising and challenging readers with news that they didn't know they wanted.
BOB GARFIELD: Rushmore Drive and BlackPlanet hope to capitalize on the collective interests of a particular group on the principle of "birds of a feature flock together," what social scientists call homophily.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Behaviorists say it's human nature, but Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, observes that homophily is amplified on the Net, and that ought to be cause for concern.
In an age where TV news offers more and more opinion and less and less international coverage, the Internet would seem to be the logical place to find diverse views, surprising voices and news we need. But, he says, we don't find that because we don't know where to look, and mostly because we prefer to flock.
ETHAN ZUCKERMAN: I'm a little worried about homophily because I think homophily has the danger of making us stupid. And I mean that quite literally. I think that in a digital media world where we have the ability to pick and choose whatever it is that we want to look at, we've gone from a supply problem to a demand problem.
In the age of broadcast media, where we had four television networks and, you know, most cities had one or two major newspapers, you were trusting that media outlet to give you a wide view of the world, to let you know about stories you might not otherwise find, and there was a really big, strong editorial function there.
And one of my questions is how do we build an Internet that doesn't just show us what we want to see but also does a pretty good job of showing us what we need to see?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what are the ways that have been devised on the Internet to deal with this demand problem, by which you mean getting people to want to demand [LAUGHING] things that are outside of their comfort zone?
ETHAN ZUCKERMAN: My friend Danah Boyd, who studies Internet and sociology, believes that probably the most powerful force on the Internet is boredom. The Internet briefly made Moldovan pop music enormously successful because there was this wonderful YouTube video of a young man singing along to a Moldovan song called Dragostea din tei. And so some number of Internet users found out much more about Moldovan pop music than they ever intended to.
There's a lot of sites emerging out there that try to help you stumble upon sites that you might not have been looking for but are likely to be interesting to you. One, of course, is called StumbledUpon. Another is called Digg. [BROOKE LAUGHS] Another's called Reddit.
What most of these sites work on is a pretty simple principle. The people who are reading the site will suggest links that they think will be interesting to the audience. People will vote them up or down. If they make it to the top, you are likely to see it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yes, but as you've written, the users of those sites are usually birds of a feather. It's not going to get us out of our box.
ETHAN ZUCKERMAN: So one possibility is if you feel like you're in a box, it would be to find a different way to find a different flock.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What if we don't know we're in a box?
ETHAN ZUCKERMAN: [LAUGHS] I think this is a place where there's still a need for editors. Mainstream journalists have a lot of responsibility, to a greater extent than ever before, to get voices from the developing world and tie them into stories that we pay attention to in this country.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But more than ever before, we have the opportunity to ignore those voices, to never encounter them, to never hear an opinion with which we don't agree or a fact that doesn't stand in accordance with our opinions.
ETHAN ZUCKERMAN: I think we're at a break point. A lot of people realize that there's something broken in the media environment. The problem is we're not yet in a position to pass the baton onto participatory media on the Internet because we haven't really thought through these issues yet.
Could we build a news portal where 80 percent of the stuff is pointed to by people like you and 20 percent pointed to by people very much unlike you? It would be interesting if we could get sort of our different echo chambers to agree to have sort of an exchange program.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, how do you try to lure people into paying attention? You wrote that you have a short list of arguments - actually you have three appeals - to guilt, to fear and to greed.
ETHAN ZUCKERMAN: I think greed is probably the strongest of the three. Greed is what I use when I get on stage and talk to venture capitalists, and I say, you know, did you know there's an emerging middle class in Africa and you know nothing about their consumer behavior? If you would only go out and read the blogs of these middle-class Africans who are involved in the tech industry, you might learn something about how you would sell a car or a computer or a bottle of beer to this new emerging market.
That one, at least, is somewhat positive. I think the other two are actually a little bit scarier. The fear one essentially says, hey, remember Central Asia? That's where some of those guys who blew up the Twin Towers on 9/11 trained. Shouldn't we continue paying some attention to that? And while that's a very real argument, it sets people looking for information with a very specific tone.
I also think guilt is a very dangerous one. I think a lot of people right now are paying attention to the Sudan and Darfur out of residual guilt over Rwanda. And while it's better than not paying any attention at all, it's a very specific, very narrow, very focused form of attention.
My hope is that there's another form of attention, which I refer to as xenophilia, basically this idea that what's most fascinating and what's most exciting out there is the diversity of the world, the diversity of perspectives.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's funny, but whenever I talk to deep thinkers about the Internet, you probe down a little and they always end up with these appeals to human nature. And [LAUGHS] it makes me sad.
ETHAN ZUCKERMAN: Well, I mean, there's the sort of Soylent Green response to this, right, which is to say, the Internet is people, because obviously it is. All these networks can do is bring us together. That's all they do. And what that means is that our behavior, the good and the bad, can get amplified within these networks.
When we're talking about the problem of homophily, this isn't an Internet problem. This is a human problem.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right. Ethan, thank you very much.
ETHAN ZUCKERMAN: Oh, it was my pleasure, Brooke. Thanks for having me.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Ethan Zuckerman is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and he blogs at My Heart's in Accra at Ethanzuckerman.com.
ToC
Paul Thurrott
URL: <http://www.wininformant.com/>
If I ever write a book about Microsoft, it will be called "Damned if You Do..." It seems like everything the software giant does is misconstrued and misunderstood, and nothing they do will ever make people happy. Windows Vista falls neatly in that second category. But focusing on the first for a second, let's turn our attention to the pending expiration of Windows XP sales, which will occur June 30, 2008. Despite what I see as a very clear bit of communication about this event, it seems that some customers still don't understand is happening on that day. So here goes: June 30, 2008 is the last day that users will be able to purchase XP at retail or via a new PC (aside from so-called Ultra-Low-Cost PCs, or ULCPCs, which will still offer XP Pro only for another year). But Microsoft is not ending support for XP on that day: It will continue to offer software updates, including security hot-fixes, for some time to come. In fact, XP's mainstream support period doesn't end until April 2009. But even after that, Microsoft will continue to support XP with free security updates, until April 2014. So rather than complain that Microsoft is killing XP "too soon," why not acknowledge that the company is actually doing the right thing? Which it is, by supporting Windows XP for an astonishing 12.5 years.
Remember that little bit from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, where he noted that his company would do the customer-centric thing and extend Windows XP's life cycle is there was enough demand? Yeah, well it turns out that was just a joke. Microsoft returned to its iron curtain ways today with the following statement issued in the wake of XP-Gate: "Our plan for Windows XP availability is unchanged," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "We're confident that's the right thing to do based on the feedback we've heard from our customers and partners." Well. There you go.
Remember the SPOT watch? You know, the Dick Tracy-looking thing that could connect to the MSN Direct service to wirelessly download sports scores and weather forecasts? The thing that was the size of a dinner plate strapped to your wrist? Ran a tiny version of the .NET Framework? Made the Timex Data Link watch look svelte by comparison? Ringing any bells? No? Oh then you won't care that it's dead. Neither do I.
ToC
This morning, Microsoft made the final release of the long-awaited Service Pack 3 (SP3) update to Windows XP available for direct download from the Web. XP SP3 will be the last XP service pack, Microsoft says, and it aggregates all previously released patches and fixes. The direct download version is 316 MB in size.
Windows XP SP3 follows the previous XP service pack, SP2, by some three and a half years. The delay, Microsoft says, is due largely to problems the software giant had getting XP's successor, Windows Vista, out the door.
Those using XP shouldn't expect much from SP3, however: The service pack includes no major new features and doesn't change the XP usage experience at all. Indeed, SP3 isn't really aimed at consumers at all, but is rather designed for the needs of businesses still deploying and managing XP in large environments. In my experience, there are no meaningful performance benefits to SP3 either.
Windows XP SP3 can be installed on 32-bit versions of Windows XP Home, Media Center, Professional, and Tablet PC editions that have already been upgraded to SP2. Users interested in a smaller download or a more automated experience should wait until June 10, when Microsoft will make SP3 available via Windows Update and Automatic Updates.
Additionally, my Windows XP Service Pack 3 Slipstreaming Guide will be made available on the SuperSite for Windows this week. This guide will explain how to create a Windows XP Setup CD that integrates XP with SP3.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) direct download link:
ToC
Posted by Michael Horowitz
URL: <http://www.cnet.com/8301-13554_1-9929300-33.html>
The Internet is littered with stories about the soon to be released third service pack for Windows XP. Here's an uncommon wrinkle. Don't install it when it's officially released on the 29th. Not yet, it's too soon.
I say this at the risk of not being a team player. Fellow CNET blogger, Robert Vamosi, recently wrote "Starting April 29, all Windows XP SP2 users should upgrade to SP3..." If this is my last posting, you'll know why.
A fundamental tenant of Defensive Computing is not to install newly released software. With Windows XP SP3, the reason to wait is software incompatibilities. Even though SP3 has underdone much testing, it's a big world and there are bound to be problems with some software. By waiting, you let everyone else find and fix the problems before you face them.
If you are using software that's impacted adversely by SP3, you don't want to be among the first people to call the software vendor for help. It's far better to call a couple months later when the problem and the solution are well known and grooved in.
Deciding when to install new software involves balancing the risk vs. the reward. While the risk with SP3 should be small, so too is the reward. In fact, the reward is pert near zero for anyone who is up to date on Windows bug fixes. Granted, this is one person's opinion, and reasonable people may disagree, but from what I've read, the new features added to XP by the third service pack are a big yawn.
The suggestion to wait on installing SP3 is not based on specific problems, issues or incompatibilities. That said, it's not hard to find them.
Just today, ComputerWorld noted that Mac users need new versions of Apple's Boot Camp and VMware's Fusion to be compatible with XP SP3. On The Personal Computer Show this week, the host, Joe King, told of problems using a Trend Micro anti-malware suite of software with SP3. If you go to TrendMicro.com and search for Windows XP SP3, there's nothing there about compatibility issues with the new service pack. It's too soon.
How long to wait? I'd give SP3 at least a couple months, maybe three or four.
How to Install a Service Pack
When the time comes to install SP3, the right approach is to first make a disk image backup of the partition containing Windows. Anything else is risky. No doubt SP3 was designed to be un-installed should the need arise, but putting your full faith in this would be a mistake.
Also, the installation process is going to exercise the heck out of the file system, so I suggest first running a thorough Check Disk. If you have any other hard disk diagnostic utilities, it would be good to insure the hard disk is healthy before installing the service pack. And a defrag can't hurt. At the very least, make a restore point.
Update - April 30, 2008: I told you so. On April 29th, Ina Fried wrote that Windows XP SP3 has been delayed to a newly discovered software incompatibility. See XP update delayed over glitch. As XP SP3 gets distributed to more and more people, we can expect still more software incompatibilities to surface.
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 12, 2008; Page A8
URL: <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120795829804109371.html?mod=googlenews_wsj>
Google, MoveOn.org and other comrades in regulation have been calling for more government control of Internet service for several years now. The good news is they've just suffered a setback. An agreement worked out recently between cable giant Comcast and BitTorrent, the creator of a popular file-sharing program, offers a private-sector alternative to "net neutrality" industrial policy.
Comcast gained villain status last year when the company tried to ease congestion on its network by slowing the transmission of high-bandwidth files that use the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent users trade large files that consume huge amounts of capacity and slow down Internet service for everybody else. Around 5% of the people on Comcast's network use 70% of the capacity.
BitTorrent was none-too-pleased, and Comcast's political detractors pounced, arguing that it was proof of a network owner discriminating among different types of content. Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who chairs a House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, chided Comcast executives for trying to turning "BitTorrent into BitTrickle" and called for a "national broadband policy." Mr. Markey is a Google fave.
Kevin Martin, who heads the Federal Communications Commission, accused Comcast of not being "open and transparent" about its network management practices. Mr. Martin apparently isn't finished piling on. He's holding yet another hearing to discuss "broadband network management practices" next week at Stanford University.
Comcast was engaging in a kind of content discrimination. But federal regulations and its "terms of service" agreement give Comcast the authority to use reasonable network management techniques. There's also no evidence Comcast acted to favor a Comcast service, or to shut down a political view, or for any other nefarious reason that net-neutrality advocates cite when demanding more government regulation. The company's justifiable goal was making sure that the vast majority of its users weren't receiving poor Internet service on account of a few bandwidth hogs.
The good news is that while politicians and MoveOn were busy exploiting the episode to push a pro-regulatory agenda, Comcast and BitTorrent were fleshing out a new network management plan. It will allow file-sharers to use Comcast's network without slowing service for everyone else. And it shows that the private sector is perfectly capable of handling these issues on its own.
Government's role here, properly understood, is not to tell Comcast how to manage its network. Rather, it is to make sure consumers have alternatives to Comcast if they are unhappy with their Internet service. Today, almost everyone in the country has the choice of receiving Internet service from a cable provider or from a phone company. And the percentage of people who don't have that choice is shrinking rapidly.
BitTorrent doesn't want resistance from the Internet service providers that its users depend on, and Comcast doesn't want to lose customers to telcos because of bad service, so both companies had every incentive to work out their differences. And whaddaya know? They did. Maybe someone should tell the FCC's Mr. Martin that markets work.
ToC
Agam Shah, IDG News Service
Wednesday, May 07, 2008 1:40 PM PDT
URL: <http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145608/amd_jumps_to_12core_chip_skips_8core_chip_plans.html>
Advanced Micro Devices plans to release processors with 12 cores, which changes its product road map and kills earlier plans to release 8-core chips.
The 12-core processor, code-named Magny-Cours, will be targeted at servers and is due for release in the first half of 2010, according to the company's updated road map announced Wednesday.
The chip will include 12M bytes of L3 cache and support DDR3 RAM, according to the road map.
AMD is jumping from a 6-core chip code-named Istanbul, due for release in the second half of 2009, straight to a 12-core chip the following year, an AMD spokesman said.
Until last month, AMD officials repeated plans to ship the 8-core server chip, code-named Barcelona, in 2009. Montreal has now been replaced by Istanbul, followed by a 12-core product in 2010, the spokesman said
Twelve-core chips will handle larger workloads better than 8-core chips and are easier to manufacture, said Randy Allen, vice president and general manager at AMD, during a conference call.
AMD is also planning to release a 6-core chip code-named Sao Paulo in 2010. The chip will include 6M bytes of L3 cache and support for DDR3 RAM. Sao Paulo chips could meet the need of systems that don't require 12 cores, Allen said.
The new chips will be more power efficient as they will be manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, an upgrade from the 65-nm process currently used to manufacture Barcelona.
AMD, which is struggling financially, is making financial and technical considerations in jumping from 6-core to 12-core chips. said Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research. That should allow the company to dump more cores on chips while delivering better product margins and lowering manufacturing costs.
AMD's 12-core chip will include two 6-core processors on separate chips in a single processor package, McCarron said. That is a more realistic goal than including 12 cores on a single chip, which can be expensive to manufacture, McCarron said.
The shift also allows AMD to avoid competition with Intel in 8-core chips, McCarron said. Intel is shipping a 6-core Xeon server processor, Dunnington, in the second half this year, after which it plans to jump to 8-core processors.
Even with AMD's altered road map, Intel will remain formidable. Intel shipped 78.5 percent of chips in the first quarter of 2008, while AMD held a 20.6 percent market share, a slight gain from the 18.7 percent market share it held in the first quarter of 2007.
The new product road map is a way for AMD to bounce back from recent chip and supply issues, said Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor at Illuminata.
AMD's most recent server chips, the quad-core Opteron processors code-named Barcelona, started shipping late last month after multiple delays and bugs.
"Obviously, AMD had some missteps over the past year, but they have a staple of OEMs and routes to markets with their processors. What you're seeing is much more public focus on what's going to happen in the next 18 to 24 months rather than longer term," Haff said.
AMD has had a string of recent problems. The company last month reported its sixth consecutive quarterly loss and plans to lay off 1,650 jobs by the third quarter.
ToC
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Kevin Hisel for submitting all the articles above in this section of the newsletter.]
ToC
[Editor's Note: Below are the items of interest sent in by Jon Bjerke this month. Thanks, Jon.]
By Ryan Paul | Published: April 24, 2008 - 08:56AM CT
URL: <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080424-the-heron-has-landed-ubuntu-8-04-officially-released.html>
Version 8.04 of the Ubuntu Linux distribution was officially released today. Ubuntu is released every six months with many new features and the latest versions of popular desktop software applications. Ubuntu 8.04, which is codenamed Hardy Heron, is the second Ubuntu release to offer long-term support, which means that security and maintenance updates will be available for this version for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.
Ubuntu 8.04 includes GNOME 2.22, the latest version of the popular open-source desktop environment. There are many new features and significant architectural improvements in GNOME 2.22, including GVFS-a completely redesigned virtual filesystem abstraction layer-and PolicyKit, a secure privilege elevation system that is safer and more flexible than the anachronistic gksudo mechanism.
Ubuntu now also includes PulseAudio, a powerful new sound server with support for network transparency and advanced mixing capabilities. Although PulseAudio has a lot to offer on the desktop, it still suffers from some transitional issues and integration weaknesses in this release that manifest themselves in certain configurations.
One particularly significant feature included in this release is Wubi, a Windows-based installer that allows Ubuntu and Windows to coexist on the same partition. Wubi installs a fully functional Ubuntu environment into a folder on the Windows filesystem and sets up a boot menu that allows the user to enter Ubuntu at startup. Wubi doesn't require the user to partition their hard drive and it makes it possible to uninstall Ubuntu directly through the Add/Remove Programs utility in Windows.
There are a handful of new applications included by default in this release, such as the Transmission BitTorrent client, the Cheese webcam application, and a new CD burning program called Brasero.
The next major version is Ubuntu 8.10, which is codenamed Intrepid Ibex and is scheduled for release in October. During the Intrepid Ibex development cycle, the focus will be on mobile computing and desktop scalability. The planning process will begin early next month at the Ubuntu Developer Summit.
Several popular Ubuntu flavors and derivatives have also been released today, including Kubuntu, Xubuntu, UbuntuStudio, Edubuntu, and Mythbuntu. The Ubuntu 8.04 server edition has also been released and includes an impressive set of enterprise-oriented features. It has already been certified on a variety of Sun server products and has ActiveDirectory integration, virtual appliance support, and improved AppArmor security policies.
Ubuntu 8.04 is available for download from the Ubuntu web site. The mirrors are already getting hit with heavy traffic, so we recommend using the torrent, which is available from the release page. We have been tracking development of Ubuntu 8.04 since the last Ubuntu Developer Summit in November, and have been testing the alpha releases extensively. You can look forward to seeing out full Ubuntu 8.04 review in the near future.
<http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download>
ToC
A complimentary review:
<http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Ubuntu-804-Is-Ready-to-Take-On-Windows/>
Ubuntu's deep software catalog, focus on usability and active community combine with long-term support to put desktop Linux's best face forward.
Table of Contents:
- Ubuntu 8.04 Is Ready to Take On Windows
- Desktop Support Options
- Hardware and Graphics
- Within and Beside Windows
Note: Ubuntu 8.04 now does in fact work with WPA2 WLAN encryption.
ToC
by Mark H. Anbinder <mha@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#926/28-Apr-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9589>
With an unusual Monday morning product announcement, Apple released an update to its line of aluminum-clad iMac consumer desktops. The 20-inch and 24-inch flat-panel all-in-one computers now sport faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors, replacing the previous slate of 2.0, 2.4, and 2.8 GHz processors with 2.4 and 2.66 GHz options in the 20-inch form factor, and 2.8 and 3.06 GHz processors in the 24-inch units (see "Apple Releases New Aluminum iMacs, Refreshes Mac mini," 2007-08-13).
<http://www.apple.com/imac/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9107>
The iMacs can be customized with up to 4 GB of RAM, as well as larger SATA hard drives, up to 500 GB in the $1,199 low-end configuration and up to 1 TB for the $2,199 high-end iMac.
Hard-core gamers will love the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS video card with 512 MB of video memory in the top-of-the-line iMac configuration (and available as a $150 option on the 2.8 GHz 24-inch model). Apple says its testing with Quake 4 demonstrates twice the performance from the Nvidia graphics card over the ATI Radeon HD in the other iMac configurations. (The first three iMac models offer varying Radeon cards with 128 or 256 MB of memory.)
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by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#925/21-Apr-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9570>
Apple has released Safari 3.1.1 for Mac and Windows, a security update that fixes a vulnerability exploited in the recent Pwn2Own hacking contest at the CanSecWest conference (see "Apple Becomes First Victim in Hacking Contest," 2008-03-28). According to the security release notes for Safari 3.1.1, the update tackles the JavaScript weakness in WebKit exposed at the conference by "performing additional validation of JavaScript regular expressions" to prevent a heap buffer overflow.
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/safari311.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9529>
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1467>
A flaw where a colon character in a maliciously crafted URL could lead to a cross-site scripting attack has also been repaired. Two other fixes are specific to the Windows version of Safari: a timing issue that opened up control of the address bar and a memory corruption issue.
Safari 3.1.1 is available via Software Update or as a 39 MB download. It requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or Mac OS X 10.5.2, or Windows XP or Vista on the PC.
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by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#927/05-May-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9602>
The Apple TV, the company's "hobby" (according to Steve Jobs) media playback device, added to its appeal last week with a pair of movie-related announcements.
<http://www.apple.com/appletv/>
First, it's now possible to purchase movies directly from the Apple TV; before, they could be bought only from the iTunes Store on a computer. Movies for sale are available only in standard-definition resolution, not HD, even when an HD rental is available for the same title.
This feature appeared briefly several weeks ago, inconveniently the day I submitted the final version of my latest book, "The Apple TV Pocket Guide, Second Edition," to Peachpit Press. I wasn't able to successfully purchase anything on my Apple TV at the time, however, and Apple didn't get back to me with an answer before the capability disappeared.
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321563158/?tag=tidbitselectro00>
The other news from last week goes beyond the Apple TV. A collection of movie studios announced that movies would be available for the Apple TV and other on-demand services on the same date that DVDs are released. Previously, Apple's position was that movies would be available for rent or purchase 30 days after the DVD release date (no doubt a limitation imposed by the studios at the time). The participating studios include 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment, and First Look Studios.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/05/01itunes.html>
The new policy has been slowly adopted for weeks. The Oscar-nominated film "Michael Clayton" appeared for rent at the iTunes Store and on the Apple TV when the DVD was made available, but the timing also coincided with the Academy Awards. I'm guessing the success of that movie on iTunes (where it remained the top rental for several weeks) helped convince other studios that the 30-day limitation was silly.
Could this be the start of a clue among the movie studios? I'm not holding my breath. But it does show that they're finally realizing that although the main content may be the same - the movie - a DVD and a digital download are different offerings. People who purchase DVDs want higher video quality, something they can grab off the shelf that doesn't require an Internet connection, and the multitude of extras available on some DVDs. People who rent or purchase movies from direct services like the Apple TV are looking for near-instant gratification (depending on the capacity of one's Internet connection) and, most of all, convenience.
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#926/28-Apr-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9581>
Apple has released its Q2 2008 financial report, showing strong results pretty much across the board for the first three months of 2008. Quarterly revenues were $7.51 billion, leading to a net profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per share. In comparison, the same quarter last year saw revenues of $5.26 billion and a profit of $770 million, or $0.87 per share. That works out to a 43 percent increase in revenues year over year, and a 36 percent increase in profit.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/04/23results.html>
While revenue was high - down from the Q1 2008 holiday quarter that encompassed the last three months of 2007 but significantly above year-ago sales - it excludes an enormous amount of current iPhone revenue due to Apple's accounting practices. Apple chose to recognize iPhone revenue in its earnings more like a 24-month subscription than an outright purchase, as it accounts for Macs. Apple TV and AppleCare revenue is tracked the same way.
Apple further chose to defer all revenue for iPhones starting 06-Mar-08, the date they announced the iPhone SDK, until the iPhone 2.0 software ships. Their reasoning is that purchasers on and after that date bought their iPhones with the expectation of software that wasn't yet available. This is an extremely conservative method of deferring revenue, which now totals $3.8 billion for all money they're not yet counting. Some of that logjam will break in the next quarter as a result. (If you ever thought AppleCare was chicken feed, note that it has accumulated $1 billion in deferred revenue as of Q2 2008; that revenue is offset in part by the expense in fulfilling warranty repairs.)
Apple said in January 2008 that the iPod touch has all its revenue counted immediately, which was the justification for charging for a software update; the same will be true for the 2.0 software release for the iPod touch.
International sales accounted for 44 percent of revenues, slightly up from 43 percent in the year-ago quarter, but slightly down from 45 percent in Q1 2008. Japan showed the most strength, with a 49 percent increase in revenues from the year-ago quarter, compared to 45 percent for Europe and 46 percent for the Americas.
The strongest single segment growth, however, came from Apple's retail stores, which increased revenues by a whopping 74 percent over Q2 2007. The stores took in $1.5 billion, which averages $7.1 million each, calculated using the 205 stores open for most of the year. The year ended with 208 stores, and plans are to open 45 more in the 2008 fiscal year. In late 2006, one analyst figured that Apple was making far more per square foot than diamond retailer Tiffany and Co.; unless Tiffany has likewise experienced similar growth in sales, Apple now vastly outpaces all other retailers.
<http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/12/26/6395>
Apple's cash balance increased from $18.4 billion last quarter to $19.4 billion, giving the company more than enough working capital to introduce new products, or perhaps buy a small country. Microsoft, under pressure from shareholders, introduced the slightly-out-of-fashion idea of a quarterly cash dividend when sitting on a bit more than twice as much cash in 2003; Apple doesn't seem to have any truck with that idea.
Most compelling was the increase in Mac sales, up 51 percent in unit sales from the year-ago quarter and up 54 percent in revenue. As has become the trend, laptops led the charge, with 1,433,000 sold (up 61 percent), the most laptops sold in any quarter for the fourth quarter running, in comparison with 856,000 desktops (up 37 percent). Laptop sales even outpaced Q1 2008, which included the holiday season. Just two years ago, in Q2 2006, Apple sold only 498,000 laptops.
iPod sales were, of course, way down from holiday Q1's 22,121,000 units, with 10,644,000 sold in Q2, but showed only a slight 1 percent increase in unit sales. The iPod did post an 8 percent increase in revenue over the year-ago quarter, thanks to an increased volume of iPod touch sales. The iTunes Store (with iPod services and iPod accessories) accounted for $881 million in revenue, up 9 percent from Q1 and up 35 percent from the year-ago quarter.
Apple sold 1,703,000 iPhones, which is a drop of 26 percent from Q1, but interestingly, a 57 percent increase in revenue, which implies that Apple is making significantly more per iPhone, even though that excludes the deferred revenue noted earlier. The company has sold 5.7 million iPhones worldwide to date, and confirmed their forecast of a total of 10 million iPhones being sold by the end of 2008.
Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, said that the company expects to see revenues of about $7.2 billion and earnings per share of about $1.00 in Q3 2008. Meeting that goal would amount to about a 33 percent increase over Q3 2007.
The only notable negative in the report, other than the slowing growth in iPod sales, came from gross margins, or the percentage Apple earns from sales. For the current quarter they were 32.9 percent, down from 34.7 percent last quarter and 35.1 percent in Q2 2007.
ToC
by TidBITS Staff <editors@tidbits.com>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/bootcampupdate21forwindowsxp.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/bootcampupdate21forwindowsvista32.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/bootcampupdate21forwindowsvista64.html>
<http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/>
<http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/04/vmware-fusion-1.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbookproefifirmwareupdate151.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9554>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/firmwarerestorationcd17.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/javaformacosx105update1.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imacearly2008atiradeonhdgraphicsfirmwareupdate101.html>
<http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop>
<http://www.vmware.com/landing_pages/fusion2_beta.html>
<http://www.scriptsoftware.com/copypaste/>
ToC
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#928/12-May-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9608>
A clever Mac user who had her laptop stolen led the police to the alleged burglars using Back to My Mac. Three roommates in White Plains, N.Y., had about $5,000 worth of computer and entertainment equipment stolen 27-Apr-08. Then this last Tuesday, one victim who works at an Apple Store, Kait Duplaga, received a text message from a friend, who, spotting her on iChat, thought she'd recovered her computer.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/nyregion/10laptop.html>
She said no, and used Back to My Mac's remote screen sharing feature to monitor her laptop's built-in iSight camera to grab a photo of one of the alleged thieves. She then used remote file sharing to find a picture of the other stored on the laptop. The two men charged in the burglary were arrested with the equipment in their apartment, and are reportedly friends of a friend of the roommates who had their stuff stolen.
Fortunately for Duplaga, the alleged malefactors had a router with UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) or NAT-PMP (Network Address Translation-Port Mapping Protocol) turned on, without which Back to My Mac rarely works. And they left the victim's laptop signed into .Mac.
I'm finishing up a book on Back to My Mac, and one thing I've discovered is that the service can both be hard to get up and running and hard to eliminate from your system. (I address both in the book.)
While I've heard of people using tools like iAlertU to capture images of someone in the processing of using your computer without permission, this is the first remote sleuthing I've heard of with Back to My Mac.
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/ialertu/>
A commenter on this story at BoingBoing wondered if the Back to My Mac access goes both ways - and that's a supremely valid and freaky concern. Back to My Mac assumes that you control the .Mac account in question and any computers on which you've logged into .Mac. The alleged thieves could just as easily have monitored Duplaga, had she logged in to .Mac and enabled Back to My Mac on another Mac, just as she monitored them.
<http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/10/laptop-thieves-nabbe.html>
If you want to forestall this problem, use the .Mac preference pane to log out of your .Mac account, and then run Keychain Access in Applications > Utilities. Find all the .Mac referenced certificates and passwords attached to your login identity and delete them.
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#928/12-May-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9605>
I'm always a little depressed when someone beats me to writing a cool article, and this one was on my list. In this case, however, Adam Pash at Lifehacker has done a fine job of explaining a neat hack for many consumer-grade Canon point-and-shoot digital cameras. CHDK, for Canon Hacker's Development Kit, is a non-destructive firmware enhancement that adds six categories of features:
<http://lifehacker.com/387380/turn-your-point+and+shoot-into-a-super+camera>
<http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK>
CHDK works with a number of Canon models, though not all of them, so you'll need to check the compatibility list before going any further (and no, as far I can tell, no other manufacturer's cameras have any CHDK-like hacks). What's especially nice about CHDK, apart from all the useful functionality it provides, is that it modifies the camera's firmware only when you explicitly load it, and everything is back to normal when you next power up the camera. Have fun hacking!
<http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#Q._What_camera_models_are_supported_by_the_CHDK_program.3F>
ToC
reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>
April 17, 2007 -- President Rollins began the April meeting with the traditional introduction of officers.
Kevin Hopkins publicly thanked Kevin Hisel for his continuing contributions to the newsletter, a notice that was accidentally omitted from this month's newsletter.
Richard noted the upcoming Champaign County electronics recycling event on April 19. from 9 AM to 3:30. Joe Dewalt added that the Apple store on campus sponsoring will be conducting another electronics recycling one week later.
<http://blogs.the217.com/face2face/>
Wayne Hamilton mentioned Vintage Vinyl 2008 is coming up where you can get rid of working equipment and help out WILL. The sale will be Saturday, May 17, at Lincoln Square in Urbana from 8 am to 7 pm.
<http://www.will.uiuc.edu/community/vv2008.htm>
Ed Serbe asked about the overhead projector which still isn't working. Richard said it was damaged by a lightning surge. It should be fixed by next month's meeting.
Jim Berger said has an optical mouse that skips. Richard said try running it on printed paper.
Jim then asked about windows that extend below the Toolbar. The solution is to go to the top edge, the cursor changes to resizer, scrunch the window down, let cursor change back to an arrow and drag the window up again until you can get to bottom corner. Kevin Hisel recommended a utility he uses called "ZMover", a Windows layout manager from Basta.com.
<http://basta.com/ProdZMover.htm>
Joe Dewalt asked about how get a window down on a Mac when it screws up and puts the top of the window under the menu bar. Edwin Hadley said drag the lower corner up, then click on the bottom frame and drag the whole thing down. On a Mac you can drag a window from the top or the bottom.
Keith Peregrine said to check MacFIxit about the sleep problem Joe was having with his Mac.
<http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20050301010110876>
<http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070129234938244>
Norris Hansell asked about what our members think on topics Wall Street Journal tech writer Walter Mossberg raises.: Apple OS has less malicious software, XP is better than Vista, and get Wireless N. Kevin Hisel leapt to the challenge stating that Wireless G is faster than most people's Internet connection. Kevin said, "Mr. Mossberg knows a lot about many things, but computers are not one of them." Continuing, Kevin said Vista works fine. Spirited discussion followed. George Krummins talked about his new laptop, stating he couldn't go back to XP if he wanted to because there are no drivers for the new sound hardware. Paul Neubauer said only 6% of enterprises have gone to Vista and Microsoft is worried about it. Addressing hardware compatibility, Russ Gillen said he has two machines. The older one is Vista compatible, but the newer one isn't. He thought that was funny. Keith Peregrine runs Vista on his Mac. Keith installed Service Pack One on his Mac, which took about two hours to install and required three reboots. Kevin Hisel and George Krumins discussed SP1 on PC. Keith can't get accustomed to the new way of doing things (the look & feel). Kevin Hisel said Microsoft does give you an opt out to make Vista look like XP or whatever you like. Richard Rollins talked about reinstalling a machine with XP. He said he had to download 93 updates, then 24 more, then 7 more, then finally 4 more to get it up to snuff.
Harold Ravlin asked about external hard drives, "Got a favorite?" This sparked quite a discussion. The resulting consensus was "Watch for the Sunday Best Buy ads. They're pretty much a commodity now."
Todd Anderson reported that June is the end of XP on the new machines. By January it will be gone from the shelves. XP Home id the only version going forward on cheap third world computers.
There was then a discussion of Vista versions. Remote Desktop Protocol was mentioned.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol>
Home Premium is the preferred version for home users.
Norris Hansell asked about which is better glossy or matte when it comes to monitors. The verdict was matte if you are a lot of stuff in your environment, glossy if you are at home. Glossy has higher contrast, blacker blacks, and is brighter.
Richard talked about his travail with Comcast and replacing his cable modem from a perfectly functioning Linksys to a Motorola 5101.
Wayne Hamilton had a similar problem. For those that may need it, the Comcast service number is 384-2500. General Internet service is routed to Oklahoma.
In keeping with the season, Kevin Hopkins asked about free tax filing services. Tax Act is free to go direct for the Federal taxes. Russ Gillen recommended <www.freetaxusa.com> which he has used for his kids for years. There is free electronic filing for your state taxes.
<http://www.revenue.state.il.us/Individuals/>
<https://www.revenue.state.il.us/app/ifile/>
reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>
Bryan began his presentation this evening by asking, "What do you do if your Blue Tooth will not appear on your Mac laptop? It's grayed out." He said this is a problem he had had recently. The answer? Power down your laptop and pull out the battery for a minute. He said he had found this solution at MacFixit.
Next, Bryan informed everyone of an offer from MacUpdate where they throw together a bundle ten sometimes very expensive programs for $49, $65, or $85. The current one goes through April 9th.
Byran then showed SoundByte which is a program that works similarly to a cart machine in a radio station - it plays timed selections - 30 seconds, etc. SoundByte is $39 from Black Cat Systems.
<http://www.blackcatsystems.com/software/soundbyte.html>
Bryan then directed our attention to an article that reports NBC may want back into iTunes.
"NBC wants anti-pirate iTunes"
<http://news.softpedia.com/news/NBC-Wants-Anti-Pirate-iTunes-83688.shtml>
Lastly, Bryan talked about his Ericson phone and making his own ringtones.
Then as a parting gift, Bryan put us on to a couple of web sites he likes: yugster.com (yours until gone) for bargains and hulu.com for TV and movies.
<http://yugster.com/>
<http://www.hulu.com/>
reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>
The April meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, April 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, Kevin Hopkins, Rich Hall and Kevin Hisel.
Richard Rollins: Richard thought the meeting was really good. The Question and Answer lasted a long time which is great. Kevin Hopkins remarked the General meetings are beginning to take on the character of the Board meetings.
As for programs at the upcoming General meetings, Richard said he had a couple of ideas: a Vista Demo has been asked for by Jim Berger and Richard might address Hamanchi again. Kevin Hisel said he could do something on Vista. During the discussion that followed it was believed that most people seem to like the utilities and tools demos.
As an aside, Kevin Hopkins (KH2) asked Kevin Hisel (KH1) about a widget he was using on his computer. KH1 said it was the Vista CPU Meter. It comes with Vista but you could probably get something similar from Yahoo widgets.
Kevin Hopkins: Kevin reported that we had three memberships this last month: one new and two renewals.
Rich Hall: Rich had nothing new to report.
Kevin Hisel: Kevin reported that GoDaddy has had some speed issues on the CUCUG Forums, but they appear to be taken care of now.
ToC
The CUCUG is a not-for-profit corporation, originally organized in 1983 to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users. We've grown since then, now supporting PC, Macintosh and Linux platforms.
Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The FBC-CS is located at 1602 N. Prospect Avenue in Savoy, on the NE corner of Burwash and Prospect. To get to the the First Baptist Church from Champaign or Urbana, take Prospect Avenue south. Setting the trip meter in your car to zero at the corner of Kirby/Florida and Prospect in Champaign (Marathon station on the SW corner), you only go 1.6 miles south. Windsor will be at the one mile mark. The Savoy village sign (on the right) will be at the 1.4 mile mark. Burwash is at the 1.6 mile mark. The Windsor of Savoy retirement community is just to the south; Burwash Park is to the east. Turn east (left) on Burwash. The FBC-CS parking lot entrance is on the north (left) side of Burwash. Enter by the double doors at the eastern end of the building's south side. A map can be found on the CUCUG website at <http://www.cucug.org/meeting.html>. The First Baptist Church of Champaign is also on the web at <http://www.fbc-cs.org>.
Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.
Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by email. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.
For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):
President/WinSIG: Richard Rollins 469-2616 Vice-Pres/MacSIG: Emil Cobb 398-0149 Secretary/Editor: Kevin Hopkins 356-5026 Treasurer: Richard Hall 344-8687 Corp.Agent/Web: Kevin Hisel 406-948-1999 Linux SIG: Allen Byrne 344-5311
Email us at <http://www.cucug.org/contact/index.html>, visit our web site at <http://www.cucug.org/>, or join in our online forums at <http://www.cucug.org/starship/> .
CUCUG
912 Stratford Drive
Champaign, IL
61821-4137