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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 05 Issue 03
Volume 5, Issue 3 Atari Online News, Etc. January 17, 2003
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2003
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Kevin Savetz
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #0503 01/17/03
~ Fighting Spam Advice! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Erased Hard Drive?
~ Copyright Case Truce! ~ Sobig Worm Gets Bigger ~ NoSTalgia Updated!
~ HP #1 PC Makers Again! ~ Kazaa Suit Approved! ~ HP Hindered Probe?
~ Internet Tax Ban Fight ~ Morpheus Gets Upgrade! ~ Dog Daze Site Is Up!
-* AOL Falling Behind the Times *-
-* Microsoft Settles California Suits! *-
-* Microsoft, Sun At Odds Over Java Orders! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
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Okay, I'm ready to head to warmer climates! Boy has it been cold this past
week! With the wind chill, it's been in the teens all week during the day
and in the single digits (if lucky!) at night! I surrender! It's time for
that typical January thaw! Yeah right - no warmth in sight.
Speaking of warmth, I wonder if politicians across the country are buying
their flame-retardant longjohns! They're certainly feeling the heat over
this on-again, off-again battle over levying sales taxes for internet sales.
It's amazing that politicians will learn about and discover ways to gain new
revenue streams, but can't find a way to make sure kids get a proper
education, or have enough food to eat, or take care of the homeless. Funny
how when the economy was "good", no one wanted to go after internet sales
taxes because they were concerned about hurting this "new" industry. Maybe
if they worried more about controlling excessive spending and balancing
their budgets, things would improve. Then again, who do I think I'm
kidding? I better not get started or I'll give myself a stroke! Then
again, once my blood pressure starts to rise, I'll feel more warm.
Hey, how about the ongoing saga at AOL? I'm really surprised that it's
taken this long for things to start to sour there. Don't get me wrong, I'm
an AOL subscriber (mostly so my father can have access), but it seems like
they've been coasting for awhile. Just because AOL has been the number one
internet service for some time now, eventually things start to spiral
downward. Whether or not the merger with Time-Warner had a role in this, I
don't know. Obviously things have been souring; I was surprised when I heard
Steve Case resigned. The proverbial writing on the wall?
Well, I've reached my saturation point for serious discussion for this week.
There's a lot of things going on in the computing arena today that can try
one's patience. Tons of spam, threats of viruses, pop-up ads, etc. It's
almost not fun any more! I guess we'll prevail, eventually.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
NoSTalgia 1.2 Released
NoSTalgia 1.2 is out.
- Mac OS X only.
- New Speed control.
- New 'Auto frame' code.
- Fixed some bugs in the MMU code.
- New I/O, HDD code.
- New ST mouse driver.
- Use less CPU.
- Hard disk images compatibles with DiskCopy.
- Lots of internal changes.
- Disks detection is now working (fixes Aladin and NAES).
- Information messages are in the console.log
http://users.skynet.be/sky39147/
Dog Daze Web Site
Gary Chang, author of the 8-bit games Claim Jumper and the APX programs
Dog Daze, Dog Daze Deluxe, and Bumpomov's Dogs, has set up a Web site
about those games. Descriptions, short histories, and reviews of the
games are included. All four games are available for download.
http://www.concentric.net/~Ktchang/
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. I don't expect any sympathy from any of
you, but it's been cold as all get-out here this past week. I'm sure that
it's colder in many other parts of the world right now, but this little
cold snap is a bit unusual for us.
I don't pretend that this is the most important problem in the world.
Heck, I'm one of those people who actually likes the cold. I'm lucky
enough to have a nice warm apartment and a car that will start in the
morning, so I figure that I'm "good to go". But to listen to the local
news programs, you'd think that this was the beginning of a new ice age.
I guess they've got to find some way to fill their allotted time, but I'd
probably make other choices. That's easy for me to say since I don't
actually have to make the choices or find alternatives. The difference
between me and many others is...
I realize that.
I'm not talking about just this cold-snap, I'm talking about life in
general. Every day I see people (both personally and publicly) 'mouthing
off' about things that don't directly affect them or that they don't
understand well enough to have an informed opinion about. I must be
getting old, because I find it more and more annoying that people can't
understand that their little problems aren't the worst thing in the world.
I'm going to warn you now that this is going to be a short column. I've
got a migraine at the moment, and it makes it hard to concentrate. If
you've never had a migraine, all I can say is, you don't want one! While
there are a fairly wide range of possible symptoms, the one constant is
pain. The first time I had a migraine, both my doctor and I thought I was
having a stroke. But the migraine will go away eventually and I'll again
be able to see color and function without even a little bit of light or
sound causing me pain. All in all, it's not the biggest problem in the
world... at least not to anyone but me.
I've just spent about an hour staring at my usual utilities for putting
this column together, and I just can't concentrate enough to get it done.
I'm sorry folks, but there just won't be any NewsGroup stuff here this week.
I thought I could get it done. I really did. But, as is happening all
around the world right now, what I WANT to happen and what is GOING to
happen are two different things.
Since I'll be able to claim 'special circumstances' once the migraine has
passed, I'm going to take this opportunity to ask people to think more
and try to put themselves in other people's places before they render a
judgment. Start with the small things and work your way up. I'm not
saying that everyone has to be (or should be) a bleeding heart,
tree-hugging liberal, but understanding is becoming more and more
important. It used to be that people who were heard had already proven
themselves in the public arena (just think of the Douglas/Lincoln debate
or the orations of Socrates and Plato or any of a number of other 'great'
occurrences throughout history). But these days, all you need is a
computer (and ANY idiot can get one of those... I'm proof of that) or
something outlandish enough to attract the attention of the local media,
and you've got a springboard for getting your message out. While there's
tremendous potential for both good and bad, there's also a much more
subtle effect going on that I don't think we've even started to come to
terms with. We don't need to prove ourselves anymore. Intellectual
accomplishments are now less important than the glamour factor. And we,
as a whole, have less time available to think about what's going on
around us because there is so much more going on all at once. Sometimes I
think that the best thing that could happen to us is that something force
us to slow down.
So sit down for a few minutes and read through the magazine. Relax a
little bit for a little while and actually think. No, I'm not calling you
stupid. All I'm implying is that we need to start looking past the front
page again and thinking about what happens, how it happens, and why it
happens.
Well, That's it for this week. Next week we'll be back to the usual news
and stuff from the UseNet. Thanks for indulging me a little. It's knowing
that there are still a few people out there who appreciate our labors
(even if they don't find it particularly useful to themselves) that makes
A-ONE worthwhile for us.
'Till next time, keep your ears open so that you'll hear what they're
saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Playstation 2 Hits 50 Million!
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
PlayStation 2 Hits Another Milestone
Production of Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 2 games console has
passed the 50 million unit mark, the company said Thursday.
Total worldwide production of the console, which was first launched in
March 2000 in the Japan market, stood at 50.03 million units as of
Wednesday, SCEI said in a statement. Of that, 43 percent of all consoles
produced were models for the North American market, 32 percent for the
European market, and the remaining 25 percent for the Japanese and South
Korean markets.
Production of the PlayStation 2 reached the 50 million unit mark after 2
years and 10 months from its initial debut, which is 1 year and 2 months
faster than it took the original PlayStation console to get to the same
point, said SCEI.
It also comes just 4 months after PlayStation 2 production passed the 40
million unit mark and the quick jump was helped by record sales of the
console over the holiday period.
SCEI said it sold a total of 8.5 million PlayStation 2 consoles during
November and December, a jump of 24 percent on the previous year. Of those
sales, 4 million were in the North American market, 3.4 million were in
the European market, and 940,000 units were in the Japanese market. End of
year domestic sales were down 27 percent, however those in North America
and Europe were up 42 percent and 27 percent respectively.
Along with the console there are also more than 1,500 software titles
available, production of which has passed 300 million units, said SCEI.
The company also recently started selling network adapters for an online
gaming service. Sales of the PlayStation 2 network adapter in North
America had reached 400,000 units by the end of December 2002 while
production of adapters for SCEI's service in Japan stood at 190,000 units
at the same time, the company said.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Once-Mighty AOL Slipping Behind the Times
Long before the departure of Steve Case, signs were abundant that America
Online had fallen behind the times.
As rivals move from dial-up to high-speed access, offering online games and
dating services with video, AOL remains king of a stagnant and increasingly
low-tech empire of phone users.
"We have to ask, 'Can they go forward?'" said Jakob Nielsen, principal of
Nielsen Norman Group, an Internet think tank. "They have to come up with
something new."
Case, who co-founded AOL in 1985, announced Sunday that he would resign.
The Hawaii native rode AOL's skyrocketing fortunes to a mega-merger with
Time Warner's media empire in 2001. But with Case piloting the ship, AOL
Time Warner succumbed to a dogged post-merger hangover that laid low its
share price and toppled Case's stewardship.
AOL's parent got another jolt Monday as CNN chief Walter Isaacson, a former
Time magazine executive, quit after losing a ratings battle with Fox News
Channel. AOL Time Warner shares fell 15 cents to close at $15.03 each on
the New York Stock Exchange.
Analysts say AOL's kingdom of 35 million global subscribers will soon
shrink without a big infusion of ingenuity - and a painful push that takes
them away from very profitable but increasingly outmoded dial-up
subscriptions.
According to Jupiter Research, by 2004 revenues from broadband Internet
subscriptions will surpass those of dial-up. AOL currently owns about a
third of U.S. dial-up accounts, but just one in 30 broadband subscriptions,
said Jupiter's Dylan Brooks.
"This is a classic case of someone being on top of the hill and not seeing
the horizon," Forrester Research's Chris Charron said. "AOL developed a
killer app for dial-up. They never developed a killer interface for the
broadband environment."
As AOL fumbles with merger foibles, competitors forge ahead with new
technology.
Yahoo! Inc. announced Sunday that it will let users of its online dating
service submit video clips. Amazon.com is increasingly morphing into an
online store for consumer electronics goodies.
And last week, There Inc. introduced an online universe in which
participants will assume cartoon-like characters that many believe trumps
the chat rooms and message boards at AOL.
Worse, perhaps, is the fact that AOL loses its last booster in the
corporate office when Case waves aloha in May.
The division's fate then rests solely in the hands of old-line media
executives from Time Warner. Some of those executives are thought to be
stewing over a company that, from their perspective, was laid low by the
merger with AOL.
"That doesn't bode well for AOL," Nielsen said.
Since Time Warner's Pathfinder Internet venture went south years ago, the
New York media empire hasn't been credited with much online prowess.
With AOL expected to be tied for third place in 2003 revenues among Time
Warner's six divisions, the corporation's moguls might not be in the mood
to lavish it with funds and attention.
"From the corporate Time Warner perspective, that could become their
decision - sit back and cash in your monthly subscriptions and not do much
innovation for (AOL subscribers)," Nielsen said.
Were that to happen, AOL might become "an irrelevant corner of the
Internet" like CompuServe, the once-strong service it overtook and later
bought, Nielsen said.
Though the parent company has so far failed to find the formula for
effectively distributing Time Warner content on AOL, there are less
pessimistic scenarios.
They may yet succeed - with the right mix of cajoling and cooperation,
said David Joyce, a financial analyst with Miami investment bank Guzman &
Co.
A captive audience of 35 million is nothing to sniff at, Joyce said. "It's
still a valuable asset, and it can help unite the other parts of the Time
Warner empire."
HP Takes No. 1 PC Maker Spot Back from Dell
Hewlett-Packard Co. took the No. 1 worldwide personal computer maker spot
back from Dell Computer Corp. during the fourth quarter in what has become
a tight race, research group IDC said on Thursday.
In what has become a quarter-by-quarter struggle for dominance,
Hewlett-Packard ended up with 16.1 percent of the market, while Dell held
15.7 percent, IDC said.
HP's market share increased because more of its business comes from
consumers, who bought PCs during the holiday season. Dell's customer base
has a larger percentage of corporations in it and they held back on buying
new computers because of concerns about profitability.
HP bought Compaq Computer in May of last year, catapulting it over Dell
into the No. 1 personal computer spot. Then in the third quarter, Dell
regained the spot.
"They've traded the crown a couple of times," said IDC analyst Roger Kay.
"HP's overall mix is more consumer oriented than Dell's is, so HP benefited
from the consumer quarter."
Next quarter will be more focused on corporate sales, Kay said. "Maybe Dell
will take it back again."
Total worldwide PC shipments grew by 4 percent to 38.4 million units in the
fourth quarter of 2002.
Microsoft Settles California Suits for $1 Billion
Microsoft Corp. said on Friday that it would pay up to $1.1 billion to
settle class action lawsuits brought by California residents who claimed
the company had abused its market position and overcharged for software.
The settlement will be paid out to up to 13 million eligible California
businesses and consumers in the form of vouchers to buy computers and
software, including products made by Microsoft rivals, a lawyer for the
plaintiffs said.
The California lawsuits were the largest of their kind pending against
Microsoft, although the world's No. 1 software company, which admitted no
wrongdoing under the settlement, still faces claims it overcharged
consumers in other states.
The settlement came on the same day that a federal judge in Baltimore
refused to dismiss antitrust charges brought against the company by
competitor Sun Microsystems Inc. and two small software companies.
"We believe that this agreement makes a significant step forward to resolve
our antitrust legal issues," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith told a
conference call.
Final approval of the California settlement is still pending and subject to
approval by a San Francisco court later this month.
California consumers and businesses who purchased Microsoft's Windows
operating systems, or Excel or Word programs between Feb. 18, 1995, and
Dec. 15, 2001 will be eligible to receive the vouchers under the
settlement.
The amount of the rebate will be set per software license. Businesses,
which often buy Microsoft software licenses for many employees, could get
a substantial voucher payment, said Daniel Furniss, a partner at San
Francisco-based Townsend Townsend and Crew and co-lead counsel in the case.
"Businesses are going to have big claims," Furniss said.
For example, computer users will receive a voucher for $26 for each copy
of Excel purchased during the period in question. The voucher will be set
at $16 per copy of Microsoft's flagship operating system software and at
$5 per copy of its word-processing program Word or the now-discontinued
program Works, Furniss said.
Microsoft will also pay for plaintiff's legal fees, to be determined by
the court, and for administration of the voucher program.
The Redmond, Washington-based company has agreed to mail and e-mail
notifications to all of the California computers users in its database,
publish newspaper ads to publicize the voucher program and set up a Web
site to allow users to get claim forms, Furniss said.
Two-thirds of any unclaimed settlement proceeds up to $1.1 billion will be
donated to California's neediest public schools to be used for computer
equipment and related services in a program to be administered by the
state.
Microsoft would keep the remaining one third of any unclaimed portion.
A federal judge had scuttled Microsoft's previously negotiated settlement
in class action lawsuits pending against Microsoft in 35 states.
Lawyers for the California plaintiffs had also opposed the terms of that
settlement because it had not provided as much latitude for claimants to
use their vouchers for competing computer-related goods.
Microsoft said that it is working to resolve lawsuits remaining in Arizona,
Kansas, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Tennessee,
Mississippi, Florida, West Virginia, Montana, North Carolina,
Massachusetts, Vermont, and the District of Columbia.
"We are very focused on reaching terms whenever possible," Microsoft
General Counsel Brad Smith told a conference call.
The unclaimed money in the California settlement would go toward
cash-strapped California schools just as the state looks to cut back
sharply on its own spending and increase taxes to make up for deep budget
shortfalls.
"Coming at a time when California is in the middle of a significant budget
crisis, these funds and software will help to ensure that California's
school children get technology they can use," Jack O'Connell, California's
State Superintendent of Public Instruction said in a statement.
The vouchers can be transferred to another person up to a value of $650
under the settlement and a single person can acquire up to a total of
$10,000 in the vouchers. Claimants will have four months to claim the
vouchers after final settlement is approved by the court.
The first California lawsuit that became the basis of the class-action
claim was filed in February 1999.
State Says HP Frustrated Probes
California's attorney general has accused Hewlett-Packard Co. and its
lawyers of misleading investigators and frustrating state and federal
probes into potential defects in millions of computers, the Wall Street
Journal reported on Monday.
The newspaper said the state disclosed the "improper tactics" in court
documents unsealed within the last two weeks in the Superior Court of
California in San Francisco.
The Journal said the allegation surrounds $27.5 million in consulting fees
Hewlett-Packard paid to Phillip Adams, a computer expert who had alerted
law-enforcement officials about suspected flaws in floppy-disk drives in
Hewlett-Packard and other companies' PCs that can randomly delete or alter
data without users' knowledge.
As state and federal officials investigated his claims, the Journal said,
Adams abruptly switched sides and signed a lucrative consulting agreement
to help defend Hewlett-Packard in certain future litigation.
He also handed over his patented software "fix" to the company and pledged
that he wouldn't assist private plaintiffs' lawyers seeking damages from
Hewlett-Packard, the Journal said, citing the court documents.
According to the Journal, a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill
Lockyer said over the weekend that the state went after the "truly
extraordinary conduct" of Hewlett-Packard and Adams "to prevent
whistle-blowers from switching sides in (a case) midstream, colluding with
the defendants" for financial gain "and then undermining" state cases.
Microsoft, Sun at Odds Over Java Antitrust Order
A federal judge stepped in on Wednesday to referee a simmering dispute
between Microsoft Corp.and Sun Microsystems Inc.over a court order that
Microsoft start distributing Sun's Java programming language in its Windows
operating system.
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz summoned the two rival software
makers to a meeting in federal court in Baltimore the day after Sun
accused Microsoft of undermining Motz's order to include Java in Windows.
Motz ruled on Dec. 23 that Sun had a good chance of winning its antitrust
case against Microsoft, and said he would grant a preliminary injunction
forcing Microsoft to include Java in Windows. He ordered each side to draft
a proposal detailing how to carry out the Java "must-carry" directive and
then negotiate a compromise with each other.
But the two sides have been unable to agree.
Sun filed documents with the court on Wednesday saying Microsoft was trying
"to narrow and postpone its obligations to distribute the Java platform."
Microsoft's plan would allow it to take up to a year before actually
including Java in versions of Windows it sells, Sun complained in its
filing.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has cautioned that it believes Sun's plan
would rush the incorporation of Java into Windows, disrupting the industry
and hurting consumers.
Sun's lawsuit charges Microsoft has tried to sabotage Java and plans to
dominate the market with its rival .NET Web services software.
Sun, based in Santa Clara, California, claims Microsoft views Sun's Java
software as a threat because it can run on a variety of operating systems,
not just on Microsoft's Windows.
Among tactics cited in the lawsuit, Sun alleges Microsoft promoted an
incompatible form of Java that worked best on Windows and, most recently,
dropped it from Windows XP, which was introduced last
year.
Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said Sun's proposal was "ambiguous, overly
broad and would mandate an unreasonable timetable" for getting Java into
Windows.
"Implemetation could result in great disruption to the industry as well as
undue harm to consumers," Desler said.
Microsoft responded with a lengthy counter-proposal.
"We have formulated a clear approach that will quickly achieve the court's
objectives without many of the adverse consequences that would flow from
Sun's proposed order," Desler said.
In its filing on Wednesday, Sun said Microsoft had added burdensome
provisions to the injunction that "would not be commercially reasonable."
"Not only would such provisions subject Sun to greater costs and
liabilities than necessary, some of Microsoft's proposed terms could serve
as loopholes undermining the relief that Sun has been granted."
Specifically, Sun complained that Microsoft's proposal would initially
require the company only to offer the Java software as a "recommended
update" on its Web site and in CD-ROMs distributed to computer makers.
Sun asked the judge to ignore Microsoft's proposal and impose its proposed
order.
Motz has been assigned cases arising from the landmark government antitrust
suit filed in 1998, including a private suit by AOL Time Warner and class
actions suits on behalf of consumers.
Two states, Massachusetts and West Virginia, have appealed as too weak a
settlement of the government case endorsed by U.S. District Judge Colleen
Kollar Kotelly in November.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in 2001, agreed
that Microsoft had illegally maintained its monopoly in the Windows
computer operating system but rejected breaking the company in two to
prevent future violations.
Judge Orders Microsoft to Add Java in 120 Days
Microsoft Corp. will have 120 days to release a version of Sun
Microsystems' Java programming language for Windows after a federal judge
issues his formal order against the software giant.
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz set that schedule Wednesday during a
lengthy hearing with lawyers from both companies. Sun had sought a 90-day
period, while Microsoft wanted a three-phase approach that would have
extended over 180 days.
"I want to provide the incentive to get this done," Motz said. He said
Microsoft could request additional time for its Java work later, with a
good reason.
Motz also said he would grant a two-week stay after he issues the order,
to give the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals a chance to hear Microsoft's
expected appeal.
Microsoft will have to release a version of Windows XP Service Pack 2 with
Java. That Windows version contains Microsoft's .Net initiative, which was
developed as an alternative to Java.
"We're not going to be happy with any order and, of course, that's why
we'll be going up to the court of appeals," Microsoft lawyer David Tulchin
said.
Motz asked the two sides to continue working toward an agreement and to
submit proposals on Monday, the day he said he'd like to issue his order.
Motz also rescinded two orders he made last week to dismiss two of Sun's
claims in its lawsuit against Microsoft. The judge said he'd misunderstood
what issues those orders concerned.
Earlier Wednesday, Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said Sun's proposal was
"ambiguous, overly broad and would really mandate an unreasonable
timetable."
Java is designed to let programmers write software to run on all types of
computers, whether they use Windows, Apple's Mac OS or some other operating
system. Users may run into Java without knowing it when they visit Web
sites that feature games or other applications.
Sun argues in its lawsuit that Microsoft has gained an unfair advantage by
shipping Windows - used by more than 90 percent of the world's personal
computers - with an outdated version of Java that's inconsistent for its
users.
Sun also wants Microsoft to notify customers of the latest Java through
all Microsoft update services for Windows and the company's Web browser,
Internet Explorer.
Sun claims Microsoft has been exaggerating the effect of Sun's proposed
order.
Microsoft has said it plans to appeal Motz's order once it is filed.
Internet Tax Ban Efforts Resume
Online shoppers may get a tax break, as members of Congress move to ban
taxes on Internet access, taxes on Internet transactions involving several
jurisdictions, and discriminatory taxes that treat Internet purchases
differently from other types of commerce.
Two bills introduced in the past week would make permanent a moratorium of
taxes on Internet access; the current moratorium is set to expire in
November. One bipartisan measure comes from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and
Rep. Christopher Cox (R-California); the other is sponsored by Sen. George
Allen (R-Virginia).
The two bills differ only on a few technical points, according to Carrie
Cantrell, Allen's press secretary.
"I am concerned that if this Congress were to allow discriminatory taxes
on Internet access it would allow state governments to exacerbate the
economic digital divide," Allen says. "For every dollar added to the cost
of Internet access, we can expect to see lost utilization of the Internet
by thousands of lower-income families nationwide--and loss of their use of
the Internet as a tool for education and opportunity."
Online merchants would suffer as much as the buyers if Internet access
taxes were allowed, the Congress members note.
"A decrease in consumption resulting from Internet access taxes could
destroy what glimmer of hope remains for many telecommunications and
technology manufacturers," Allen says. "We want to help create job
opportunities - not burden this important sector of our economy."
Both bills also aim to ban discriminatory taxes - namely sales tax on
Internet purchases from companies that have no physical presence in the
state where the buyer resides. The bills are separate from the Streamlined
Sales Tax Project legislation passed in November, which lets companies
impose sales taxes on purchases made online if their home states simplify
their fragmented sales tax programs.
Adam D. Thierer of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says many
states want to cash in on Internet commerce involving companies that have
no operations within their borders.
"The Internet is the purest form of interstate commerce you'll ever find;
by its very nature it defies boundaries, and yet states are salivating at
how to impose taxes," Thierer says. "This all amounts to a hill of beans
that is absolutely meaningless to helping states with their fiscal
situations."
Regardless of the effect on state coffers, Thierer believes sales taxes on
Internet commerce will eventually become commonplace. However, he expects
Congress will stand firm on banning Internet access taxes.
"It just becomes another tax on talking and communicating, which is
something people will find very offensive," Thierer says.
Seven states currently have the right to tax Internet access because those
states levied taxes on Internet access before Congress passed the first
moratorium in 1998. However, the states - New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio,
South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin - have largely respected the
moratorium and refrained from imposing the access taxes.
File-Swapping Lawsuit Gets OK
A federal judge has given record companies and movie studios the go-ahead
to sue the parent company of Kazaa, a popular online file-swapping service.
U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson refused to dismiss a copyright
infringement lawsuit against Sharman Networks Ltd., which had argued that
it could not be sued in the United States because it is based in Australia
and incorporated in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu.
In a 46-page ruling issued Friday, the judge said Sharman is subject to
U.S. copyright laws because it has substantial business dealings in
California and its actions are alleged to contribute to commercial piracy
within the United States.
Kelly Larabee, a Sharman spokeswoman, said that while the company was
"disappointed" with the ruling on the case, "we fully expect to prevail on
the merits."
Larabee said Sharman would be filing a counterclaim that will "set forth
the full story for the first time."
The Sharman case is one of the largest in the recent online copyright wars
testing the international reach of U.S. courts. The plaintiffs maintain
that Kazaa provides free access to copyrighted music and films to about 21
million U.S. users.
Morpheus Update to Offer Easier File Swapping
StreamCast Networks is preparing an upgrade to its Morpheus file-sharing
software that will allow users to search further across the peer-to-peer
network for songs and other files, making it easier to locate obscure or
rare recordings, the company's chairman and chief executive officer said
Saturday.
The company also is preparing a Web-based, "remote control" version of its
software for PDAs and mobile phones. While away from home, users will be
able to instruct the Morpheus client on their PC to locate and retrieve
files for playback when they return, said Steve Griffin, StreamCast's
chairman and chief executive officer. Both enhancements are due by
mid-year, he said.
Like some other file sharing services, when Morpheus scours the Internet
for a file it looks at a "cluster" of only about 15,000 PCs, even though
as many as a million Morpheus users may be online at any given time.
Griffin said. While that's often enough machines to find a popular song,
for example, more obscure files sometimes don't show up.
By mid-year the company will introduce an upgrade to its client that allows
"cluster-hopping." If the Morpheus client doesn't find what it's looking
for in the user's local cluster it will hop further afield to other
clusters of PCs until it finds the file, Griffin said in an interview at
the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The update will likely include other tweaks intended to boost the
performance of the software and make it easier to use, he said. It will
also be made smaller and therefore easier to download, Griffin said.
The new features may be welcomed by users but the recording and motion
picture industries will probably be less than enthusiastic. They are suing
StreamCast, along with other popular file-sharing services, in a U.S.
district court for allegedly contributing to mass copyright infringement.
On Friday, the judge overseeing that case ordered that Sharman Networks,
which offers the Kazaa P-to-P software, can be included in those
proceedings. Kazaa had argued that it lies outside of the court's
jurisdiction because the company is incorporated in the South Pacific
island nation of Vanuatu and has no substantial ties in the U.S. Grokster,
another popular file-sharing system, is also a target of the lawsuit.
Morpheus had as many as 35 million active users in December, according to
Griffin. He said that's about the same number it had amassed just prior to
February of last year, when it had to rebuild its user base from scratch
after losing its customers when it switched to a new P-to-P technology.
StreamCast so far has incurred some $3 million in legal costs to battle
the case, Griffin said, and for a time last year its future looked
"suspect" because of the burden imposed by the fees, he said. It makes
money selling advertising and would be profitable were it not for the legal
costs, he said.
With motions seeking to conclude the case now filed by both sides, much of
the legal "heavy lifting" work has been completed and StreamCast is on
more solid ground financially, he said. If the case goes to trial, however,
the legal fees could start climbing once more, he acknowledged.
Friday's order about Kazaa may clear the way for the judge to make his
next move in the case, Griffin said. He can approve a motion by StreamCast
to dismiss the suit, approve a motion by the entertainment industry to have
Morpheus shut down, or send the case to a jury trial. A ruling on that
could be made in as little as six weeks' time, Griffin said.
If the judge were to rule that Morpheus should be shut down, StreamCast
has no sure way of ending the service, according to Griffin. Unlike the
ill-fated Napster service, Morpheus does not rely on a central server for
a list of the files in its P-to-P network, making it harder to pull the
plug on its users' activities, he said.
One potential option would be to offer a software update to users that
"breaks" their Morpheus client, rendering it unusable. But word of such an
update would likely be spread quickly among users, meaning few would
actually download it, Griffin said, adding that it's not an option he
would like to have to resort to.
He stopped short of saying that his company's users are breaking the law
by sharing copyright-protected material, but acknowledged that some may be
making "bad choices." He argued that those choices are not StreamCast's
responsibility.
"Once the software is downloaded, that is the last involvement they have
with me," he said. "We don't have anything to do with what they trade."
Unfortunately for him, the entertainment industry doesn't see things the
same way.
RIAA Says Worm Advisory Was A Hoax
An advisory sent Monday to security mailing lists claiming the Recording
Industry Association of America had contracted a group of hackers to create
a worm to infect peer-to-peer file-swapping networks is a hoax, the
organization that represents music publishers said Wednesday.
"These claims are absolutely false," says a spokesman for the RIAA.
The security group, which calls itself Gobbles Security, sent the hoax to
Symantec's BuqTraq mailing list and the vulnerability-tracking site
VulnWatch. In the advisory, Gobbles claimed it was "recruited by the RIAA
(riaa.org) to invent, create, and finally deploy the future of antipiracy
tools. We focused on creating virii/worm hybrids to infect and spread over
p2p nets." The group also claimed it had developed a hydra worm capable of
infecting many common media players, including Microsoft Media Player and
WinAMP.
"It took us about a month to develop the complex hydra, and another month
to bring it up to the standards of excellence that the RIAA demanded of
us," Gobbles wrote.
Users of these media players need not worry about the worm, as the claim
of its development is apparently false. However, Gobbles does say that it
found a vulnerability in an open-source media player known as MPG123.
Since last summer, the RIAA.org Web site has been hit with a number of
attacks, including a denial-of-service attack that made the site largely
unavailable for a few days. The site also has been defaced.
While users of the popular media players may not need to worry about
getting infected from the worm Gobbles claims to have developed, a bill
which would legalize system attacks by copyright owners is under
consideration. If a bill sponsored by Reps. Howard Coble, R-N.C., and
Howard Berman, D-Calif., makes its way into law, copyright owners would
have great leeway to do things that would currently send hackers to prison.
The bill would let groups such as the RIAA disable, block, or impair
publicly accessible file-swapping networks if copyrighted material was
being illegally traded on those nets.
Attacks against the RIAA Web site proliferated shortly after the
introduction of the bill in July.
Record Labels, Techs Call Truce in Copyright Fight
The recording industry and several high-tech groups battling over copyright
laws declared a tentative truce on Tuesday and said they would try to hash
out rules to govern how to protect digital movies and music from widespread
bootlegging.
The two sides hope to avoid a big lobbying battle this year in Congress
over whether to enhance digital copyright protection or preserve the rights
of users to make copies. They said they will try to settle their
differences and devise rules to govern how movies and music may be used,
instead of looking to Congress or the Federal Communications Commission.
But observers say a legislative fight is likely as movie studios and
consumer-electronics makers, two big players who have staked out opposing
positions, have not signed the deal.
The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the five
big record labels, said it would work cooperatively with the Business
Software Alliance and the Computer Systems Policy Project, two trade groups
whose members include IBM, Dell Computer Corp., and Intel Corp.
"It represents a sea change in the debate over digital content issues,"
said Ken Kay, executive director of the Computer Systems Policy Project.
"Private-sector developments, not heavy-handed government intrusion, are
the best way to protect content consumer choice and innovation."
But several key players in the debate are absent from the agreement,
including the Motion Picture Association of America, consumer electronics
makers and major consumer groups.
At issue are simmering disputes pitting content providers like record
companies and movie studios against the technology industry.
The record companies and Hollywood have lobbied Congress for new ways to
stop illegal piracy of their material. One bill introduced by Sen. Ernest
Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, would require Hollywood and Silicon
Valley to devise technology that would prevent computers and other
digital-media devices from playing back files that did not contain an
industry stamp of approval.
Computer industry groups, meanwhile, have been pushing for Congress to
bolster "fair use" rights, ensuring consumers retain rights to make limited
copies of books, movies and music for personal or academic use.
The three trade groups said they would promote more consumer education
about digital copying and more private and government enforcement against
copyright infringers.
They also agreed that technical measures dictated by the government "are
not practical."
But not everyone agrees.
Disney Corp.,, for example, called in a statement on Tuesday for the
government to help set content-protection standards that will be observed
by everybody.
"The private sector cannot solve this problem by itself," said Preston
Padden, a Disney lobbyist.
The new alliance drew praise from two Democratic lawmakers who have played
a large role in digital copyright issues, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy and
Michigan Rep. John Conyers.
But Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher, who has introduced a "fair use" bill
opposed by many media companies, pointed out that the Consumer Electronics
Association and other technology companies such as Sun Microsystems Inc.,,
Gateway Inc. and Verizon Communications, are not part of the agreement.
"These entities consistently have been in the forefront of promoting fair
use rights for digital consumers," Boucher said in a statement.
MPAA Spurns Digital Copyright Plans
Hollywood spurned a high-stakes agreement disclosed Tuesday between leading
music and technology companies aiming to protect copyrights on digital
movies and music without new government involvement.
The unusual compromise, brokered among the music industry and some of the
largest computer companies, lists seven "guiding principles" that the
companies hope lawmakers will take into account as Congress develops future
technology policies.
The agreement attempts to head off government intervention in the rising
debate between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over what consumers can do with
commercial music or movies they purchase.
Under the agreement, technology lobbyists will argue that record companies
should be permitted to use hacker-style tactics to disrupt Internet
downloads of pirated music and movies. They will caution that such tactics
must not be destructive to networks or to a user's computer data, and must
not violate a person's privacy.
They also will argue against efforts in Congress to amend U.S. laws to
broaden the rights of consumers, such as explicitly permitting viewers to
make backup copies of DVDs for personal use or copy downloaded songs onto
handheld listening devices.
In exchange, the Recording Industry Association of America agreed to argue
against government requirements to build locking controls into future
generations of entertainment devices to make it more difficult for
consumers to share music and movies. Technology companies have complained
that such controls are too expensive and complex.
"What we're saying is, we don't need our heads banged together," said
Hilary Rosen, chief executive for the music group. She said the agreement
will help stem "needless legislative battles, silly rhetoric about what
divides us and continuing disharmony in the public policy arena."
The powerful movie, television and home video industry, represented by the
Motion Picture Association of America, spurned the agreement. The MPAA has
aggressively supported new government requirements for built-in locking
controls on new devices, such as DVD recorders.
It is the primary supporter of a bill by Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., that
would prohibit the manufacture or distribution of "digital media devices"
- such as handheld music players - unless they include government-approved
copy restriction technology. The passage of Hollings' bill has been in
doubt since the 2002 election, because Republican John McCain of Arizona
replaced him as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee when the GOP won
the majority in the Senate.
The MPAA said that despite Tuesday's agreement, it was "not prepared to
abandon the option of seeking technical protection measures via the
Congress or appropriate regulatory agency, when necessary." It criticized
the music industry for opposing such controls, saying that "no reasonable
alternative course of action should be eliminated from consideration."
The MPAA also complained Tuesday about promises by the music and
technology companies to participate in "constructive dialogue." It cited
plans by the technology industry to spend $1 million over the next six
months on a new organization, the Alliance for Digital Progress. A bid
proposal for public-relations companies said the group's ambition was to
"counter Hollywood" on the debate over copyrights.
Technology executives responded that they had sought a six-month
"cease-fire" on any lobbying activity during a meeting with Hollywood
executives in Chicago in September.
"We thought it would be more productive without the motion-picture industry
holding a legislative gun to our head," said Ken Kay of the Computer
Systems Policy Project, which represents chief executives at IBM, Dell
Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co., among others.
Both sides said Tuesday they were willing to continue negotiations.
How to Put Spam Out of Your Misery
E-mail users are getting smarter about fighting spam. Some tips to keep
your inbox from getting flooded by junk mail:
* Try to keep your e-mail address private. Junk e-mailers, like postal
junk mailers, collect addresses that they then package and sell. One way
to collect them is to ''harvest'' them from the Web, using software that
recognizes e-mail addresses and copies them to a list.
Spammers also can get to your e-mail address when you give it out either
on purpose or by accident. Before giving out your e-mail address to a
company, either online or off, make sure the company is legitimate and
will not sell or share your e-mail address. Many company Web sites include
this information in a privacy policy posted on the site. Most legitimate
companies do not share customers' e-mail addresses. If you spend time in
chat rooms or post messages on online message boards, use an e-mail address
that you create specifically for that purpose -- and expect it to be
overrun with spam.
* So why are you getting spam if you've never put your e-mail out on the
Internet? If you use a large Internet service provider, such as America
Online, you might be a victim of random addressing. Some programs will
simply generate random names, and voila -- you have spam. The best way to
avoid that kind of spam is to create an e-mail address that is not composed
of real words. Of course, that also makes it harder to remember.
* Don't reply to spam. If it is truly spam and from a shady operator,
responding signals that it's an active e-mail address. If the company
sending it is legitimate, you can ask to be removed from its mailing list.
(Chances are that at some point you said it was OK to e-mail you, even if
you don't remember.)
* Report spam to your provider. Virtually every Internet service provider
has that option. And the larger the provider, the easier it is.
* You can set up your e-mail so your mailbox rejects mail from
correspondents you don't know.
* Use the delete key liberally.
* If you already are getting a ton of spam, you might consider changing
your e-mail address.
For more tips on how to avoid spam see the FTC's site, www.ftc.gov/spam.
MIT Conference Takes Aim at Spam
It's going to take the best and the brightest to slam the spammers.
Hundreds of programmers gathered Friday at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (news - web sites) to apply their collective brainpower to a
problem that has evolved from annoyance to menace: the rising flood of
unsolicited e-mail.
Companies and Internet service providers put up a fight with the latest
filtering programs, but spammers quickly bypass their defenses.
"This is the most dastardly thing I've ever seen," said attendee John
Graham, expressing grudging admiration for a technique he's encountered in
which spam messages are broken up then reassembled in order to elude
filters. "This is ingenious. There are some really clever people making
spam difficult to filter."
Organizers had expected a small gathering of 40 to 80 programmers, hackers
and Internet activists, but several hundred packed an auditorium to hear
the latest in spam countermeasures.
For the more clinical, spam simply poses a difficult technical challenge.
Others are downright offended by it.
William S. Yerazunis, an MIT computer scientist, compared spam to petty
street crime - cheap to carry out, profitable for the offender and
enormously expensive to halt.
"It's really theft," said Yerazunis, 46, a researcher at MIT's Mitsubishi
Electric Research Laboratories. "And the theft efficiency ratio is about
the same as stealing hubcaps and car radios."
The conference wasn't for the casual computer user.
The speakers threw around hacker-speak like "bit buckets" and "polynomial
hashing," occasionally tossing out terms like "spamacus interruptus" and
skewering unpopular software, sending chuckles through the audience.
But the tone was serious.
Spam traffic has grown from 8 percent of Internet e-mail in 2001 to as
much as 40 percent in 2002, according to Brightmail Inc., which provides
filtering products for several major Internet service providers.
Spam is costly for everybody. It costs about $250 to send a million spams,
but about $2,800 in lost wages, at the federal minimum wage, for those
million spams to be deleted, Yerazunis estimates.
Altogether, spam costs U.S. businesses $8.9 billion and European businesses
$2.5 billion annually, according to a study released this month by San
Francisco-based Ferris Research. Internet service providers in particular
are hounded by customers because they are the conduits for the pesky
messages.
Spam filtering software looks for patterns that suggest an e-mail is spam.
But the spammers are constantly evading them, finding new ways to arrange
text to make the messages unrecognizable as spam.
Yerazunis' presentation on his CRM114 Discriminator language was a
centerpiece of the conference. His filtering technique "hashes" the
messages, matching short phrases from the incoming text with phrases that
the user previously supplied as example text, catching spam that might not
exactly match standard spam text. He claims that the system has higher than
99.9 percent effectiveness; it can be downloaded for free and is compatible
with SpamAssassin or other spam-flagging software.
"This thing is even more accurate than humans," he said.
Jason Rennie of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab is writing code he says
eventually will help filter spam text that is manipulated to be
unrecognizable. For example, his program could recognize "mort!!!!gage"
used in the place of mortgage, a common spam word.
But filters must be finely tuned depending on intended recipients, Rennie
said, because one person's spam is another person's "ham," hacker-speak
for desirable e-mail.
"If you work for the company that makes Viagra, you probably don't want to
be filtering any e-mail with the word Viagra in it," he said.
Era Eriksson, an activist with the anti-spam Coalition Against Unsolicited
Commercial Email, said the only solution is legislation banning or
regulating the practice. There are several bills pending in Congress, but
none have been passed.
"Every second that I'm online it's costing me money, and to get unsolicited
e-mail costs me money. It's criminal," said Eriksson.
Even 'Erased' Hard Drives Hold Info
So, you think you cleaned all your personal files from that old computer
you got rid of?
Two MIT graduate students suggest you think again.
Over two years, Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat bought 158 used hard
drives at secondhand computer stores and on eBay. Of the 129 drives that
functioned, 69 still had recoverable files on them and 49 contained
"significant personal information" - medical correspondence, love letters,
pornography and 5,000 credit card numbers. One even had a year's worth of
transactions with account numbers from a cash machine in Illinois.
About 150,000 hard drives were "retired" last year, according to the
research firm Gartner Dataquest. Many end up in the trash, but many also
find their way back onto the market.
Over the years, stories have surfaced about personal information turning
up on used hard drives, raising concerns about privacy and the danger of
identity theft.
Last spring, Pennsylvania sold used computers that contained information
about state employees. In 1997, a Nevada woman bought a used computer and
discovered it contained prescription records on 2,000 customers of an
Arizona pharmacy.
Garfinkel and Shelat, who reported their findings in an article to be
published Friday in the journal IEEE Security & Privacy, said they believe
they are the first to take a more comprehensive - though not exactly
scientific - look at the problem.
On common operating systems such as Microsoft's Windows, simply deleting a
file, or even following that up by emptying the "trash" folder, does not
necessarily make the information irretrievable. Those commands generally
delete a file's name from the directory. But the information itself can
live on until it is overwritten by new files.
Even reformatting a drive, or preparing the hard drive all over again to
store files, may not do it. Fifty-one of the 129 working drives in the MIT
study had been reformatted, and 19 of them still contained recoverable
data.
The hard-to-erase quality of hard drives is seen as a good thing by some.
Many users like believing that, in a pinch, an expert could recover their
deleted files. Law enforcement officers can examine a computer and lift
incriminating e-mails or porno images from the hard drive.
The only sure way to erase a hard drive is to "squeeze" it: writing over
the old information with new data - all zeros, for instance - at least
once, but preferably several times. A one-line command will do that for
Unix , and for others, inexpensive software from companies such as
AccessData works well.
But few people go to the trouble. Many ordinary computer users toss their
old drives into the closet, or take a sledgehammer to it.
As it turned out, most of the hard drives acquired by the MIT students
came from businesses that apparently had a misplaced confidence in their
ability to "sanitize" old drives.
Tom Aleman, who heads the analytic and forensic technology group at the
accounting firm Deloitte & Touche, often encounters companies that get
burned by failing to fully sanitize, say, the laptop of an employee who
leaves the company for a job with a competitor.
"People will think they have deleted the file, they can't find the file
themselves and that the file is gone when, in fact, forensically you may
be able to retrieve it," he said.
Garfinkel has learned his lesson. As an undergrad at MIT in the 1980s, he
failed to sanitize his own hard drive before returning a computer to his
father. His father was able to read his personal journal.
Sobig Worm Getting Even Bigger
A new computer virus, Sobig, is spreading on the Internet, according to
alerts posted by a number of antivirus software companies.
Sobig is a worm that uses e-mail and shared network folders to infect
machines running Microsoft's Windows operating system, according to
information posted on the Web site of Helsinki antivirus company F-Secure.
The worm arrives in e-mail messages from a single sender, big@boss.com,
and is stored in attached executable files with names such as Sample.pif,
Untitled1.pif, and Movie_0074.mpeg.pif, according to F-Secure.
When opened, the worm places a copy of itself into the Windows folder on
the infected machine, creates a process to run the worm program, and
modifies the Windows Registry so that the worm program will launch whenever
Windows is started.
Once it has infected a machine, the worm searches for e-mail addresses in
a variety of text files on the computer's hard drive. It uses those
addresses to send out more copies of itself. Sobig also searches for any
shared folders on networks that the infected machine may have access to
and places a copy of itself in any network folder it can access.
Although the new worm does not appear to steal sensitive information from
the computers it infects, antivirus companies warned that the worm does
connect to a Web site hosted by Yahoo's GeoCities, from which it tries to
download and execute other files, according to F-Secure.
The GeoCities Web page used by Sobig was modified recently to instruct the
worm to download a Trojan horse program known as Backdoor.Delf that gives
the virus writer and others control of infected machines, according to
Mikko Hyppnen, manager of antivirus research at F-Secure.
GeoCities has been notified about the page by F-Secure as well as the CERT
Coordination Center, according to Hyppnen. Yahoo was not immediately
available to comment on the Sobig worm.
The worm first came to the attention of antivirus companies on Thursday
and began spreading slowly, Hyppnen said.
In recent days, however, the virus has spread more rapidly, and the number
of machines infected by Sobig has grown.
As of Tuesday, F-Secure gave the worm a Level 2 ranking, indicating that
it is "causing large infections" and putting it in a category with
well-known predecessors such as the Klez worm.
Other antivirus companies upgraded their threat ratings for Sobig as well.
On Monday, Symantec's Security Response upgraded Sobig from a category 2
to a "moderate" category 3 threat.
The success of Sobig since it first appeared surprised Hyppnen, who said
that Sobig is a comparatively simple worm that lacks many of the
sophisticated features that allow a new generation of viruses to spread.
For example, Sobig always arrives in e-mail messages from the same sender,
big@boss.com, unlike recent successful worms such as Bugbear or Lirva,
which generated their own sender addresses, swapped in trusted sender
addresses from sources such as antivirus vendors, or selected them at
random from a long list.
In addition, the Sobig e-mail messages use one of only a small number of
subjects--such as "Movie," "Sample," and "Document"--and attachment names.
Recent worms use a far larger list of possible subjects and attachment
names or generate their own at random, making it harder for antivirus
software to identify such threats, according to Hyppnen.
Finally, Sobig requires e-mail recipients to double-click on the attachment
containing the worm. Recent vintage
worms like Lirva and Bugbear often take
advantage of a Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook vulnerability known
as the IFrame exploit, which allows e-mail attachments to launch without
any user interaction when an e-mail message is opened or simply viewed in
an e-mail preview pane.
"I don't know why it's spreading. I cannot explain it at all," Hyppnen
said.
Most antivirus software vendors updated their software to be able to
identify Sobig by Thursday. With auto-update features standard on such
programs--and even without such features--the Sobig filter was available
to most users in plenty of time to stop the spread of the worm, Hyppnen
said
One possible explanation is that, while not widespread, Sobig may be
particularly effective at sending out copies of itself. Hyppnen said that
an analysis he conducted of 20 Sobig-infected e-mail messages led back to
just three infected machines.
A similar phenomenon was noted with the Klez worm when it first appeared,
Hyppnen said.
While Sobig's outbreak has probably peaked, the worm was likely to linger
on the Internet for a long time, Hyppnen said.
Antivirus software vendors posted instructions on their Web pages for
removing Sobig from infected machines and recommended that all users update
their virus definitions to protect against the new worm.
=~=~=~=
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