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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 05 Issue 19
Volume 5, Issue 19 Atari Online News, Etc. May 9, 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:
Peter A. West
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #0519 05/09/03
~ Egale Is Now Freeware! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Atari Is Reborn?!
~ Who Buys Spam Offers?! ~ eBay Libel Suit Dumped ~ Surfin' In the Loo??
~ Sega, Sammy Deal Dead! ~ AMD Ships New Athlons! ~ Longhorn in 2005!
~ New eMacs Released! ~ MSN Goes After Spam! ~ Will Spam Choke Web?
-* Tougher MS Penalties Urged! *-
-* Earthlink Wins $16 Million Spam Suit *-
-* California Is Closing In On More Web Taxes *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, the weather has been better lately, teetering on seasonal. That's a
good sign as far as I'm concerned. Flowers are coming up, the grass is
growing, and the pollen counts are rising - sure signs of Spring! It's a
nice feeling to see nature's version of revitalization. Already my barbecue
has been getting a workout; all's well in the world!
Speaking of revitalized or re-births, by now many of you have probably heard
the news that the Atari name has just been adopted by Infogrames as their
new company name (see the article elsewhere in this issue). Even before the
announcement was official, speculation of a "re-birth" of Atari began in the
newsgroups and various Atari fan-site message boards.
Folks, I've been a long-time supporter of Atari, in its various
incarnations. Want proof? Look at our masthead above! My enthusiasm
started with the 2600 console; my "activism" started with the 520ST in 1987.
It was already too late for Atari before their last gasp efforts with the
Falcon. Looking to return to its gaming roots failed with the Jaguar. Atari
died a long time ago even though its fans continue to support the various
Atari platforms.
But since those years, every time some event occurs regarding the Atari
name, there are people who pop up and start talking about how these events
will lead to the rebirth of Atari. When JTS Corp. merged with/bought Atari,
the speculation started. Nothing happened. When Hasbro Interactive bought
the rights to the Atari name, the speculation began anew. Nothing happened.
When Infogrames bought the rights to Atari, more speculation. And now
Infogrames - a company who has not been doing that well these days - has
decided that perhaps by changing their name to Atari Inc., their luck will
change. Perhaps. But if anyone is seriously thinking that Atari, the game
company; or Atari the computer maker, will once again become a player in
today's world of computing or gaming - you need your head examined
immediately! It ain't gonna happen!
Infogrames understands the history of the Atari name. Atari, in its heyday,
was synonymous with gaming. There is no argument there. You might be able
to debate the same for computing - at least for a short time. Even today,
some 25 years after the release of the 2600, people still remember the catch
phrase: "Have you played Atari today?" And you know what? The phrase is
still used today. That's what Infogrames is counting on, and why they chose
the name change. Nothing more. Infogrames/Atari is a game publisher with
no illusions of grandeur to become a game console or computer company. If
you want to be able to buy computer or console games again with the name
Atari printed on the package, you'll be in luck. Will those titles run on
your ancient Atari machines? No. Atari is dead. It has earned its place
in the history books, but the history will never be re-written. Sorry to be
the one to tell you the bad news.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
Egale Now Freeware!
Egale, the file comparison program, which used to be Shareware is now
Freeware, using a public registration key. The latest (and last) version,
4.1, adds long filename support and has several other improvements.
Registration keys from previous versions, or their EGALE.INF files, will
continue to work with egale 4.1. However, as the author has now left the
Atari platform, support and updates are no longer available.
Egale uses an enhanced GEM interface, runs on ST, TT and Falcon030
computers at all screen resolutions from 640x200 pixels (ST medium) upwards
and supports multitasking systems.
A new, full English bundle, prepared by xlator of DDP Translations, is now
available from author David Reitter's webpage:
www.reitter-it-media.de
This includes full updated documentation both in text and hypertext formats
(for ST-Guide).
For those who don't know the program, égale can compare two text or binary
files side by side (to allow changes and additions to be seen easily) and
if desired align them manually or automatically. It can be used as a binary
editor as well.
égale also has a file tree check function for comparing complete
directories and sub-directories or even partitions (useful for checking if a
copy or backup is intact), and a file tree generator to produce directory
listings (including folders and optionally show various file data); the
results are written to a log file.
Furthermore Egale can be used to generate patch programs for updating
binaries and other files that have been corrected, translated or updated;
if the changes only form a small part of he file, downloading a patch is
far faster than downloading the complete program.
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. Yet another week has come and gone.
While things this week don't seem much different than they were last
week, I can't help feeling that things ARE different somehow.
It's not like there has been some watershed event that changed things
forever... more like a realization that small changes happen all the
time, and that those small changes are what really matter.
Well, my intro is going to be short this week because I really haven't
got much to say. It's been a tough week for me on my 'day job' and now
that it's almost done, I have to wonder what I've really accomplished.
Sure, there are things that I did actually get done, but none of those
things really seem to matter in the 'big picture'. But since I've
always been of the opinion that its not the big things, but all the
little things grouped together that are important, I guess I can take
some comfort in the fact that I did get some things accomplished.
Well, let's get on with the news and stuff...
From the comp.sys.atari.st NewsGroup
====================================
Martin Tarenskeen posts this about the Adamas browser:
"Some of you may not have noticed, but the Adamas browser is still being
developed, quite actively lately, and is freely downloadable these days.
Adamas has been criticized a lot in the past in this newsgroup, but Jens
Heitman deserves our support for not giving up on this browser. While
CAB's development has stopped, and Highwire still has the "very promising"
status, Adamas latest pre-release versions show several improvements. I
have been trying it with MiNTnet/mgw and it works pretty good. For
javascript support it's still without competition on the Atari platform,
even if it's not perfect.
Have a look at http://draconis.atari.org."
Mark Duckworth tells Martin:
"The installer usually doesn't work for me, however this time it did. I
tried under aranym. the Gethostbyname isn't working so the browser
won't load for instance www.google.com. I can however point it to an
IP but then it freezes on loading images. The basics aren't done.
Course i was using mgw-024c which was meant for MiNT 1.15, I actually
have 1.16 alpha but 031b won't work for me at all. Seems like a great
idea, but how come I can't get it to work on a variety of platforms and
situations?"
Martin tells Mark:
"Jens has recently installed Aranym, and will also use this for testing.
Things will improve. And he doesn't mind getting bug reports. He has
responded on my bug reports quite quickly with new releases.
Jens is aware of that (the problem with 031b) but hasn't found the
problem yet. The sources are available (Freemint CVS) so if there is
anyone who know how to fix the newer mgw, he will be welcomed.
My point is: anyone who is willing to put a lot of time and effort in
creating a better and free browser for the Atari platform deserves our
support. Highwire or Adamas: a little competition won't hurt."
Mike Freeman asks about ZIPping with long file names:
"I designed a web site for our church group, using my Falcon, and our
church's network guy asked me to put it in a zip file and e-mail it to
him to upload onto the church's web site. However, when I tried to use
ST Zip to do it, it couldn't read the long filenames, and consequently,
the zipped files used 8+3 format. This kind of destroys my links, and I
would have to go through and either explain how to rename the files
(and hope he gets it all correct) or switch all my links to 8+3 (which
I really don't want to do). Is there a way to get ST Zip (version 2.6)
to accept long filenames, or is there a newer version I should be
using? Or is that yet another area where we are still stuck in the dark
ages? Your help would be appreciated!"
Greg Goodwin tells Mike:
"STZip has several weaknesses, the inability to deal with long
filenames among them. (That said, I still use it.) You might try
Info-Zip 2.3 (http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/Zip.html), perhaps
with a shell. If it works well, kindly email back to this discussion,
since I've never tried it."
Djordje Vukovic adds:
"A serious weakness is the inability to have more than a limited number
of files in the root directory of the archive (don't remember the exact
number but it is something between 100 and 200- not a large number at
all!) If there are more files in in the root directory, STZip creates
(without warning) a corrupted archive.
Infozip's zip/unzip package works well, and have some very useful
functions, such as the option to repair (as much as possible) a
corrupted .zip archive. However, it has some bugs too- at least the
single-TOS version of unzip has problems in putting the listing of
archive contents on the screen I suspect an incorrect line ending (not
<CR><LF>) was coded.
By the way. there is a port of infozip pack which works in single-TOS
and there is also another port (of the same version) which *requires*
mint."
David Bolt adds this interesting tidbit:
"If you're using MiNT, or Magic and have added a MiNT cookie to the
cookie jar, STZIP will handle long filenames. Otherwise it will only
produce archives with the names in 8+3 format."
Mike asks David:
"I use Magic. How do I add a MiNT cookie to Magic's cookie jar?"
David replies:
"I ended up writing a small program that added an extended cookie jar
and added the fake MiNT cookie at the end. There's a copy of it, and the
assembler source, at:
<URL:http://www.my-ste.demon.co.uk/files/fakemint.zip>
There's no docs with it since it was a quick-and-dirty "give me long
filenames" hack. IIRC it works with STZIP and LZHSHELL."
Grzegorz Pawlik adds:
"You can add this cookie by using FakeMint.prg utility that I have just
sent you.
But if you just want to make ZIP archives with long filenames, you don't
need to have anything to do with MiNT [;-)] It's enough to use
Jinnee's zip plug-in. Select the group of files, click with a right
mouse button, choose Plug-ins -> Create ZIP archive and you will get a
ZIPped file with long file names. At least this is the way it works for
me."
Dave Burns asks a question that comes up every so-often about high
density disks in a double density drive:
"Will a high density disk, formatted in an atari double density double
sided drive be stable? I can understand how formatting a double
density disk to high density would be bad but.... ?"
Greg Goodwin tells Dave:
"No, but your mileage may vary. DD disks are still available. Try
Viking Direct."
'Damon1281' asks a really interesting question about a modern monitor
for his Falcon:
"I was considering the purchase of an LCD monitor for my Falcon. Does
anyone have any "do's or don'ts" they can share on this subject? Any
help is greatly appreciated."
Kenneth Medin tells Damon:
"I use a 15' 1024*768 Samsung LCD with my TT and a ET4000 card. Works
great and is really superior to a CRT.
But this is only true at just 1024*768, any other resolutions are
terrible. This monitor is also more sensible to errors in the signal
compared to my CRT. It needs more precise values to sync.
I also have it running at 800*600 and 640*480 and the important 640*400
for booting. All these at 60 Hz.
So, note that LCD monitors only works really well in the optimal
resolution. On the other hand you get a perfect flicker-free screen at
60 Hz which a Falcon might benefit from."
Greg Goodwin tells Kenneth:
"I'm not sure I agree with the superior part. I still think a $400 CRT
will beat a $400 LCD.
That said, LCD monitors are a tad more finicky about syncing (IMHO),
so I'd be reluctant to buy one unless the place had a real good return
policy!"
Derryck Croker adds his thoughts:
"Make sure that you can match scan rates and resolution to that which
the LCD will accept. I couldn't get anything but 640*480 to work with
the one that I tried, bought for another computer system."
Martin Tarenskeen adds:
"My Falcon030/CT2b is connected to a 15" iiyama AX3817UT DBK monitor.
I can use all standard Falcon 640*480 and ST 640*400 modes. But the only
extended resolution that my CT2b+Centscreen offers and that works on
this monitor is 640*480*TC. 800*600 or 1024*768 are refused [:-(]
Only for 640*480*TC I have to change the "clock" setting on my monitor
from a value of 50 (factory setting) to 43 to get a perfect image."
Well folks, that's all for this week. Tune in again next week, same
time, same station, and be ready to listen to what they are saying
when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Infogrames Is Now Atari!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Sega, Sammy Merger Dead!
New Pricing for Xbox Live!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Infogrames Changes Name to Atari
Franco-American video game publisher Infogrames Inc., reaching back into
gaming history, said on Wednesday it would change its name to Atari Inc. in
an effort to boost its profile with consumers.
To mark the new Atari and the new ticker symbol 'ATAR', Chief Executive
Bruno Bonnell opened the Nasdaq on Wednesday. The newly named shares
soared, up more than 26 percent at $6.50 at the close of trading after
having climbed as high as $7.02.
The Atari name is the most storied in video gaming, dating back to the
early 1970s when Nolan Bushnell and a team of engineers at Atari created
"Pong," the arcade video game that was so popular that machines sometimes
jammed because they were overflowing with quarters.
"What we have decided to do, following a very precise strategy, effectively
is to adopt this brand Atari," Bonnell told Reuters. "Clearly we feel like
it is the symbol of the global company that we became during the last two
years."
Over the years, Atari went through many incarnations. At one point it
operated as a subsidiary of what was then called Warner Communications and
is now part of AOL Time Warner.
It ceased to be a stand-alone company in 1996, when it was acquired by JTS
Corp. In early 1998 JTS sold the Atari rights and assets to toymaker Hasbro
Inc.
Infogrames, founded in France in 1983, acquired the rights to the Atari
brand in early 2001 when it bought Hasbro Interactive. In October 2001 the
company relaunched the brand and began using it as a games publishing
label.
Although its origins are French, Bonnell said 65 percent of the company's
business is in the United States. Last year the company cut 60 percent of
its French work force, and Bonnell said he is dividing time evenly between
the two sides.
In the interim, Bonnell said, the parent company shares trading on the
French bourse will continue to be known as Infogrames Entertainment SA
because the process for changing the company's name there will take longer.
Infogrames/Atari shares have been on a run of late, rising nearly 220
percent on the Nasdaq since April 18, when the company said it had
completed work on "Enter the Matrix," the hotly anticipated video game
companion to the forthcoming Warner Bros. film "The Matrix Reloaded."
Both the game and the movie will be released May 15. Bonnell has in past
said he expects the game could be an international mega-hit, selling
millions of units.
On Tuesday, Infogrames said it plans to ship 4 million units of the game,
across the various gaming platforms, to retailers worldwide. The success of
the game is widely seen as the key to the company meeting its sales
forecasts.
Sega, Sammy Scrap Merger Plan; Namco Pulls Out
Struggling Japanese videogame maker Sega Corp. suffered a major setback in
its search for a partner on Thursday after it scrapped a merger plan with
game machine maker Sammy Corp and peer Namco Ltd withdrew its merger offer.
The moves, for which analysts blame waffling by Sega's management, darken
the outlook for the industry's old-timer and narrow its survival options.
'The credibility of Sega's current management has taken a deadly blow,'
said Takeshi Tajima, analyst at BNP Paribas. 'Institutional investors and
most long-term retail investors have long avoided Sega's shares, but the
recent wavering by the company's management has done extra damage.'
Management at Sega, creator of 'Sonic the Hedgehog', has a record of
disappointing investors. The company scrapped a planned merger with toy
maker Bandai Co in the late 1990s and has repeatedly missed earnings
targets.
Tokyo-based Sega and Sammy, a maker of pinball-style 'pachinko' game
machines, said they had scrapped their merger plans, announced in February,
after failing to agree on terms.
'We and Sammy could not agree on what management style the merged firm
should take and other merger conditions,' Sega President Hideki Sato told
a news conference.
He said Sega would continue merger talks with Namco, creator of the popular
'Tekken' fighting videogames, but Namco said later it was withdrawing its
mid-April proposal for merger talks with Sega, dealing it another blow.
'Sega told us on Thursday that it was not in a situation to give a specific
answer to the proposal. And we decided that it is not the right time to
proceed with the merger discussions,' Namco said in a statement.
Sega's Sato hinted that other companies besides Namco had contacted Sega
on doing a deal, although he declined to provide details.
He also would not comment on speculation that Sega was in talks on an
alliance with Electronic Arts Inc, the biggest U.S. videogame publisher.
Analysts said Sega's management needed to focus on its turnaround plan for
its consumer game software operations and that it would not be wise to keep
wavering.
'The worst thing for Sega is to stay uncertain. Sega is not facing any
imminent financial risk now and management should just decide what they
should do to maintain employees' trust,' said Shunji Yamashina, analyst at
Morgan Stanley.
The announcement on the scuttled merger talks was accompanied by an upward
revision in Sega's annual earnings estimates.
Sega now expects a net profit of three billion yen ($25.8 million) for the
year ended March 31, up 500 percent from its initial estimate of 500
million.
It cited stronger-than-expected arcade game sales and solid game software
sales in Japan and the United States.
Sega's shares fell 4.66 percent to 675 yen while Sammy's stock jumped 4.28
percent to 2,560 yen.
'Investors are worried that Sega may not be able to survive on its own
unless it can tie up or merge with another firm,' said Koichi Kawata,
deputy head of equities at SMBC Friend Securities.
With the break-up of the Sega-Sammy merger plan, investors cast a wary eye
on Namco, whose shares lost 2.73 percent to close at 1,748 yen - but that
was before the company announced the withdrawal of its merger offer.
Microsoft Introduces New Pricing for Xbox Live
Microsoft Corp on Thursday introduced a more flexible pricing plan for its
Xbox Live online video game service, including a planned free trial period,
and raised the price on the basic starter kit.
The news was one of the first major announcements to come out ahead of next
week's Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, the games industry's main
trade show in Los Angeles.
Microsoft, which is expected to roll out a number of new audio and video
services related to Xbox Live at E3, said subscribers will have the option
of a $5.99 monthly fee in North America as of this fall.
A one-year renewal or new subscription will be $49.99, while the Starter
Kit, which includes a year's subscription, a headset for voice
communications and some bundled games, will sell for $69.99, a $20 price
hike.
Microsoft also said a two-month free trial for the service will be 'widely
available' this fall.
Xbox Live was launched in North America last November, allowing Xbox users
to compete against each other with the console's built-in Ethernet port and
the voice headset.
The company boasts hundreds of thousands of subscribers, all of whom got
one year of service with their starter kits, meaning the earliest
subscribers still have six months left on their accounts.
Microsoft also said it would begin to make the voice headset available as
a stand-alone item for $29.99.
Microsoft's main competitor in the console business is Sony Corp., which
dominates the international market with its PlayStation 2 console. The
company released an add-on networking adapter for the PS2 in North America
last August.
Microsoft bills centrally for the Xbox Live service and operates the
network for all compatible games. Sony, by contrast, has left billing and
server management to the publishers of individual game titles.
Sony U.S. Games Head 'Comfortable' With PS2 Price
The U.S. video game arm of Japanese conglomerate Sony Corp. is "very
comfortable" with the price of its market-leading PlayStation 2 video game
console despite rampant speculation that a price cut is imminent, its
president said on Tuesday.
In a telephone interview with Reuters, Kaz Hirai, the president of Sony
Computer Entertainment of America, said he also suspected that moves by
competitors to bundle games in with their consoles were not really helping
sales.
"We are very comfortable at the $199 price point," Hirai said. "The numbers
are very healthy for the PS2 at the $199 price point."
Hirai's comments came just days before the start of E3, the video game
industry's annual trade show, which kicks off next week in Los Angeles.
At E3 last year, Sony and competitors Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo Co. Ltd.
all cut their hardware prices. Sony and Microsoft took the PS2 and Xbox,
respectively, to $199 from $299, while Nintendo took its GameCube to $149
from $199.
Because price cuts occurred last year at E3 and resulted in a significant
sales bump, industry executives had been counting on another wave of price
drops at this year's show.
"My hope is that we'll get some significant price cuts (at E3)," Jeff
Lapin, the chief executive of leading publisher Take-Two Interactive
Software Inc., told Reuters last week, though he also conceded, "If I'm
Sony, I'd never want to cut the price."
Brian Farrell, the chief executive of games publisher THQ Inc., told
Reuters recently that the pricing of the PS2 does not matter so much as
Sony's meeting its unit shipment targets for the fiscal year to maintain
its dominant position in the installed user base.
"Whether Sony gets it at $199, $179 or $149, we're indifferent," he said.
"All we need is that 10.5 million units."
EA Announces Plans for The Sims Bustin' Out
on All Current-Generation Console Systems
Electronic Arts announced that The Sims - Bustin' Out is in development for
the PlayStation2 computer entertainment system, the Xbox video game system
from Microsoft, and the Nintendo GameCube. The Sims is making a big return
to consoles with The Sims Bustin' Out. For the first time, Sims console
players will have the ability to get their Sims out of the house and into
all-new locations to play, work, and meet a cast of outrageous new
characters. The Sims Bustin' Out PlayStation 2 console version will be
unveiled to industry insiders on May 13th at the Electronic Entertainment
Exposition in Los Angeles. The game is scheduled to be released
simultaneously on all current- generation console platforms in early 2004.
"We're giving our fans what they've been asking for, the excitement of
getting out of the house to explore new locations, meet wild new
characters, and experience new storylines," said Sinjin Bain, Vice
President and Executive Producer of the game at EA's Maxis- studio. "The
Sims Bustin' Out has ten times more replay value than the first Sims
console game."
The Sims Bustin' Out features an all-new neighborhood with over a dozen new
unlockable locations and a cast of over 40 new zany characters to socialize
with. Players will purchase a car or scooter in order to get out of the
house and head to the Gym to work out with exercise fanatic Goldie Toane or
to Club Rubb to rave with club owner Bing Bling. Players will be able to
crash parties, create havoc, or just drive their neighbors crazy!
Sims console players will be able to unlock and collect 80 new social moves
like "Towel Snap" and "Moonwalk Dancing" that will add to the distinct
character of a Sim. Players can unlock hundreds of new objects such as a
Climbing Wall and a High Dive to test their skills outside the house.
Players can choose from ten new careers including Mobster, Athlete, Mad
Scientist, and Fashion Victim. Depending on what career track you choose
there are now a variety of different ways to win the game. Players will
have the ability to go back and forth through different careers and levels
to unlock objects and locations. Players can play with or against friends
in two-player mode, which is available throughout the entire game. The Sims
Bustin' Out also features level-based gameplay.
Like never before, Sims characters on the console will have distinct and
noticeable personality that will affect gameplay. For example, a shy Sim
will do a timid dance at the dance club, but an outgoing Sim will be
rocking around the dance floor, showing off their moves.
The new controller-base game interface makes manipulating the Sims through
the triumphs and tribulations of their daily lives both easy and amusing.
All console versions will have memory card support so players can take
their Sims over to a friend's house.
Ex-Palm Officials Offer Portable Video Game System
A company started by former senior executives from handheld computer maker
Palm Inc. on Monday unveiled a handheld product code-named "Helix" that
combines video gaming, music and the organizer from the Palm operating
system.
The company, named Tapwave, was founded two years ago by former Palm vice
president of worldwide product development Peng Lim and vice president of
product management Byron Connell.
It plans to enter a marketplace - portable video gaming - that in the last
few months has ballooned.
Lim serves as president and chief executive of Tapwave, while Connell is
senior vice president of marketing. Other top executives are Marian Cauwet,
the vice president of engineering who held the same role at Palm; and sales
head David Wenning, also a Palm veteran.
Pricing and availability details for the Helix have not yet been made
public, but what is known is that the company boasts a high-profile lineup
of hardware and software partners.
Among the hardware companies contributing products and engineering to Helix
are ATI Technologies Inc., Sony Corp., Motorola Inc. and Yamaha Corp.
Games publishers who have already agreed to license some of their top
titles for the platform include Activision Inc., Infogrames Inc.and Midway
Games Inc.
The company has also licensed the PalmOS operating system from Palm
subsidiary PalmSource and game development tools from Fathammer.
Market research firms have pegged total video game hardware and software
sales at $10.4 billion in 2002 in the United States alone, and global
hardware and software sales in 2003 are expected to top $30 billion.
"Nobody was addressing the need of the more sophisticated gamer in a mobile
sense," Connell told Reuters recently.
Connell and Lim said the target audience for the Helix consists of people
18 years to 34 years old who have largely "graduated" from Nintendo Co.
Ltd.'s Game Boy Advance portable gaming unit.
The Game Boy platform has had a stranglehold on the portable gaming market
for well over a decade, handily defeating any and all comers, including
long-gone devices with names like GameGear, TurboDuo and Lynx.
But the portable market has become increasingly crowded again. Nintendo is
selling two Game Boys, the Advance and the Advance SP, and Finnish cell
phone maker Nokia is preparing to launch a cell phone and game deck
combination device called the N-Gage.
The Tapwave executives hope to compete with those two units on the basis of
superior technology.
The Helix boasts twice the color palate of the Game Boy and nearly 16 times
that of the N-Gage. It offers a screen resolution well sharper than either
one and a much larger screen size.
Connell said the device will play full-motion video in a number of formats,
as well as music in the MP3 format. It will also ship with a photo viewer
and all the productivity applications that are part of the Palm OS.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
States Urge Tougher Microsoft Penalties
Two states that refused to settle the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case sought
tougher penalties Monday, arguing that a deal negotiated with the Bush
administration was inadequate to constrain the software company.
Massachusetts and West Virginia urged a federal appeals court to instruct
the trial judge to impose tougher sanctions than those included in a
settlement the judge approved among Microsoft, the Justice Department and
17 other states.
In a case that began nearly a decade ago, lawyers for the states said the
settlement was profoundly flawed and "does not fulfill even the most basic
mission of stopping all of the practices" committed by Microsoft. Courtroom
arguments before the appellate judges were to begin in November.
"The district court's remedy will not restore competition, deny Microsoft
the fruits of its illegal conduct or otherwise satisfy this (appeals)
court's remedial objectives," the states wrote.
Microsoft noted that its legal filings were due next month.
"The district court thoroughly reviewed these issues last year and issued
comprehensive rulings that represent a fair resolution of this case,"
spokesman Jim Desler said. "These rulings have been agreed to by the
Department of Justice , virtually all the states that filed suit against
Microsoft and only two states and a couple of competitor groups are
pressing forward."
The long-running court battle - the most significant antitrust case in a
generation - culminated last November when U.S. District Judge Colleen
Kollar-Kotelly accepted nearly all the settlement provisions. She rebuffed
arguments by nine states and the District of Columbia that tougher
sanctions were essential to restore competition in the computer industry.
All the states except Massachusetts and West Virginia eventually joined in
the settlement, which gives Microsoft rivals more flexibility to offer
competing software features on computers running its flagship Windows
operating system.
"Microsoft has been found guilty of predatory practices yet allowed to
continue to crush innovation, competition and consumer choice in the
computer software industry. This conduct harms consumers and companies all
over the country," the Massachusetts attorney general, Tom Reilly, said in
a statement Monday.
The two holdout states are carrying their fight to a U.S. appeals court
that has handed Microsoft considerable victories. It overturned another
judge's order that Microsoft remove its Web browser software from Windows,
and it threw out two of the government's three antitrust claims against
the software company. It also blocked a court-ordered breakup of Microsoft.
But the same appeals court also affirmed in June 2001 that Microsoft
repeatedly, ruthlessly and illegally used its dominance in the software
industry to protect its Windows monopoly from competition. And it has
already indicated that the entire court will rule on this latest fight,
rather than the traditional panel of three judges.
The appeals court also has indicated previously that it recognizes the
importance of moving quickly in an antitrust case tied so closely to
fast-moving technology.
"Six years seems like an eternity in the computer industry," the court said
in its last antitrust ruling on Microsoft - nearly two years ago.
Court Dismisses Libel Claim Against EBay
A California court has dismissed a libel claim against eBay Inc. by a
shopper who was criticized by a merchant on the auction site - a key ruling
that further limits eBay's responsibility for the actions of its users.
Judge Thomas L. Willhite Jr. of the Superior Court of California in Los
Angeles last week granted the company's request to dismiss the libel claim
by Roger M. Grace, who bought merchandise via eBay's Web site.
Grace received negative "feedback" - a form of commentary that eBay buyers
and sellers leave regarding each other after transactions - from Tim Neeley
who sells Hollywood memorabilia on the site.
According to the court ruling, Neeley wrote that Grace "should be banned
from eBay" and was "dishonest all the way" following Grace's purchase of
several items from Neeley.
Grace sued eBay for liable for publishing Neeley's negative comments on its
Web site. But the court ruled that eBay is immune to such claims under the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, which protects providers of "interactive
computer services" from liability for the online comments posted by their
users.
"We think it's an important ruling because it affirms the principle that
eBay is not responsible for the content of third parties," said Jay
Monahan, eBay's general counsel.
Grace also alleged in his complaint that eBay allowed California buyers to
make purchases without collecting sales tax and that it violated state
fictitious name registration laws. The court granted eBay's request to
dismiss both claims.
Grace, the editor-in-chief and general counsel for a Los Angeles company
that publishes legal newspapers, said called the ruling "wrong."
"I don't think there's any basis to read the statute the way the court
did," he said.
Neeley couldn't be reached for comment.
California Moves Closer to Taxing More Internet Sales
The California Senate passed a measure on Thursday that would force some
out-of-state businesses, such as the No. 1 personal computer maker Dell
Inc., to collect tax on sales made on the Internet to residents of the
nation's most populous state.
The amendment to the state's tax code, which passed on a 23-4 vote, would
require out-of-state companies that hire local firms to install or service
products such as computers to collect sales tax.
Passage of the bill, which now heads to the Assembly, comes as state
lawmakers attempt to plug a $35 billion budget gap over the next 15 months.
The new tax rules could increase costs for firms such as Texas-based Dell,
the top direct seller of computers, which until now has not had to collect
taxes for sales to California.
By contrast, Dell's top competitor, Hewlett-Packard Co., which is based in
Palo Alto, California, does have to collect state sales tax. The tax levy
can add more than $100 to the price of a more advanced computer, a
provision of the current tax code critics say penalizes California
companies.
Combined state and local sales taxes in California are among the highest in
the nation and range from 7.25 percent to 8.5 percent. State officials are
now considering a possible 0.5 percent hike in the state sales tax to help
cover a growing budget deficit.
The bill also toughens standards against firms which have Internet
subsidiaries that are linked to stores in California. It defines such
retailers as those with 'a substantial ownership interest, directly or
through a subsidiary, in a retailer maintaining sales locations in
California.'
Senate legislative aides say such language could apply to companies such as
barnesandnoble.com, which is partially owned by the book store chain
Barnes & Noble Inc, which has stores across California.
California tax authorities are auditing barnesandnoble.com to determine
whether the retailer improperly avoided collecting as much as $1.1 million
in state sales tax on Internet sales.
The new tax rules, if adopted by the state assembly and signed by the
governor, would not affect retailers without a physical presence in
California, such as Amazon.com.
Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a similar change in the tax rules three years ago
but said at the time that he was willing to reconsider the issue in the
future.
Apple Releases New eMacs
Apple Computer Inc. on Tuesday announced the release of a new family of
eMac all-in-one desktop systems.
"This has great appeal to a value conscious customer who is looking for a
complete system," Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of Hardware Product
Marketing, told MacCentral.
The new eMacs offer up to a 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor, a faster 4x
SuperDrive, high performance ATI Radeon 7500 graphics, up to 80GB hard
drives and internal support for AirPort Extreme wireless networking. The
eMac also has a 17-inch flat CRT display.
With the increased power of the graphics card in the eMac, Apple hopes to
appeal to consumers of all types including the gamers, who typically
require much more power in their graphics than average users.
"We think graphics are important to customers," said Joswiak. "Often times
they are surprised when they get a low-cost PC home and find out it's not a
very good game machine. Things like 3D gaming are important to the consumer
and we want to offer a great experience to them which means offering
dedicated video controllers and dedicated video memory."
After announcing in September 2002 that all Macs made in 2003 would only
boot into Mac OS X, Apple announced in mid-December 2002 that certain Macs
would continue to boot into Mac OS 9 until June 2003. Two of the new eMac
models - the low-end and mid-range - will boot into Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X.
"The high-end model boots only into Mac OS X because of the SuperDrive and
iDVD 3 is a Mac OS X-only application," said Joswiak. "We think this model
really appeals to the customer who has already made the switch to Mac
OS X."
The new eMac family is available in the following configurations:
The 17-inch flat CRT eMac, for a suggested retail price of US$799
includes:
* 800 MHz PowerPC G4 processor;
* CD-ROM optical drive;
* ATI Radeon 7500 with 32MB video memory;
* 128MB of system memory; and
* 40GB ATA hard drive.
The 17-inch flat CRT eMac, for a suggested retail price of $999
includes:
* 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor;
* 32x Combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW optical drive;
* ATI Radeon 7500 with 32MB video memory;
* 128MB of system memory; and
* 60GB ATA hard drive.
The 17-inch flat CRT eMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,299
includes:
* 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor;
* 4x SuperDrive DVD-R/CD-RW optical drive;
* ATI Radeon 7500 with 32MB video memory;
* 256MB of system memory; and
* 80GB ATA hard drive.
"The eMac has been a hit with both education customers and consumers, and
we've made it more powerful and affordable than ever," said Greg Joswiak,
Apple's vice president of Hardware Product Marketing. "The eMac offers
customers a complete system that is the ideal entry point for today's
digital lifestyle."
AMD Prepares to Ship Athlon XP 3200+
Advanced Micro Devices is readying a new desktop processor that could see
the light of day as early as Friday as the chip maker tries to capture the
PC performance crown.
The company will increase the performance of its existing processor core
before introducing a brand-new 64-bit processor later this year. AMD's
Athlon XP 3200+ with a 400-MHz frontside bus could make an appearance
Friday, but will more likely be introduced next week, according to
distributors.
The processor will be AMD's first product to support a 400-MHz frontside
bus. It is the third desktop chip released with AMD's Barton core, which
increased the amount of cache available in the previous Thoroughbred core.
The Athlon XP 3200+ is available for preorder from several distributors.
One distributor suggests the chip will ship Friday, while others expect a
release in the middle of next week.
An AMD spokesperson declined to comment on unannounced products.
AMD cut the price of its current performance leader, the Athlon XP 3000+,
on April 22 from $588 to $325. Chip companies generally cut prices of their
most expensive chips prior to the launch of a new processor.
Intel is also preparing a new desktop processor and chip set technology.
The 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 will be Intel's second chip to feature the 800-MHz
frontside bus. The first was briefly delayed due to an unspecified issue,
but shipments of the 3-GHz Pentium 4 have resumed.
The 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 will also support Intel's hyperthreading technology,
which makes a single processor look like two processors to the operating
system, increasing the amount of instructions the OS sends to the chip.
Those extra instructions can be processed by unused execution units in a
processor. Intel is expected to bring hyperthreading down to slower chips
in the Pentium 4 product line.
Both new processors require new motherboards and chip sets to support the
increased frontside bus speeds. The frontside bus connects the CPU with
the main memory, and increasing the speed at which data travels down that
main pathway increases the overall performance of the chip.
Several AMD-affiliated chip set and motherboard vendors have already
announced products that support a 400-MHz frontside bus, and Intel is
expected to announce its Springdale chip set on or around the date of the
3.2-GHz Pentium 4 launch.
Springdale will be the second Intel chip set to support an 800-MHz
frontside bus. The chip giant released the Canterwood chip set in April.
The new chips will tide over the enthusiast market for the latest and
greatest processors until a pair of scheduled launches this fall. Intel
will release Prescott, its first chip based on 90-nanometer process
technology, in the second half of this year.
AMD's counterpart to the 64-bit Opteron, the Athlon64, is expected to
launch in September.
Microsoft Windows 'Longhorn' Version Due In 2005
Microsoft is gearing up for the next major release of Windows, code-named
Longhorn, and doesn't plan an interim release before that product launch,
which is slated for 2005, said Will Poole, senior vice president of
Microsoft's Windows Client Division.
Speaking to several hundred developers here Wednesday at the Windows
Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), Poole urged them to get behind
Longhorn. "The weight of the company and the weight of all the people in
the Windows Client Division and across the Platforms Division is around
Longhorn," he said. "We'd love to get you all pulling the same way so we
can come out with a huge wave of excitement for the industry when Longhorn
ships in 2005."
Microsoft is betting the company on Longhorn, Poole said, adding that the
product will "change the landscape" in terms of how businesses and
consumers use PCs. Still, the road to Longhorn is "not super short," he
noted. "We've got some work to do."
Microsoft conducted a Longhorn developer preview in March. The next
Longhorn development milestone will be in October at the Microsoft
Professional Developers Conference, where the company expects to provide
new details on Longhorn, Poole said. Microsoft plans several beta releases
of Longhorn in 2004, he said.
Some developers here said they're skeptical that Microsoft will be able to
meet the 2005 timetable. One software engineer for a California company,
who requested anonymity, said that if Microsoft is predicting a 2005
release, it's likely that the product launch could be as far off as 2007.
There is "a high probability" that the 2005 date will slip based on
Microsoft's past software development track record, he said. Other
developers here said that porting to Longhorn could be a challenge, in
part because of the operating system's 3-D capabilities.
Before Longhorn, Microsoft will have updates to Tablet PC and XP Media
Center, Poole said. Also at WinHEC, Microsoft detailed a Windows Server
2003 update road map--slated to include an iSCSI initiator, a key piece of
the vendor's storage virtualization effort. The iSCSI initiator is due out
in June. The company also unveiled NAS 3.0, a storage services product due
out in the second quarter; Small Business Server, slated for release in
the third quarter; Automated Deployment Services, part of its Dynamic
Systems initiative for server provisioning, due out in the third quarter;
Virtual Server, a technology for migrating applications to Windows Server
2003, expected to be launched in the fourth quarter; and support of
Advanced Micro Devices' 64-bit processor in Windows Server 2003 Service
Pack 1, due out at the end of this year.
David Thompson, corporate vice president of the Windows Server Product
Group at Microsoft, said the company's goal is to provide continued
innovation through software updates. "Innovation does not have to wait for
major releases," Thompson said. He noted that Microsoft is spending a
whopping $250 million to help drive Windows Server 2003 into the market.
World's First Internet Loo Planned
The world's first portable lavatory with internet access is due to be
unveiled in Britain this summer.
The "iLoo" is being built by Microsoft Corp's internet arm MSN which aims
to showcase its creation at Britain's summer music festivals.
"The internet is so much a part of everyday life now that surfing on the
loo was the next natural step," said MSN marketing manager Tracy Blacher
on Tuesday.
The converted lavatory will feature a wireless keyboard, plasma screen and
quick internet access.
In 2001, MSN installed an internet-enabled park bench in Suffolk, eastern
England.
EarthLink Gets $16 Million in Spam E-Mail Case
A federal judge awarded the Internet service provider Earthlink damages of
$16.4 million Wednesday and a permanent injunction against a Buffalo,
N.Y.-based sender of junk e-mail.
Howard Carmack, identified as the leader of a ring that used EarthLink
services to send some 825 million pieces of unsolicited "spam" e-mail in
the past year, is banned from sending spam - or helping others send it.
Neither Carmack nor an attorney representing him appeared at Wednesday's
hearing before U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr.
Carmack did not respond to messages left on his cell phone and with his
family.
EarthLink, the nation's third-largest Internet service provider, said
Carmack and others kept the bulk e-mail flowing through Internet accounts
opened with stolen identities and credit card numbers.
"The ruling gets these people off the Internet," said Pete Wellborn,
EarthLink's lawyer. "Carmack is not going to be spamming anybody else."
Wednesday's award is not the largest that Earthlink has received against
spammers, said Mary Youngblood, EarthLink's chief investigator. Last year
the company was awarded $25 million in damages in a suit against another
big junk e-mailer, Kahn C. Smith of Tennessee. Youngblood said the company
hasn't collected that award.
But the monetary award, Wellborn said, is less of a victory than the
injunction.
Among other Internet providers, America Online has also sued prolific
spammers, winning a $6.9 million judgment in federal court in Virginia in
December. In that case, AOL sued a now-defunct company based in Rockford,
Ill., for sending pornographic spam.
AOL has won 25 spam-related lawsuits against more than 100 companies and
individuals, spokesman Nicholas Graham said.
In October, Verizon Communications settled a spam lawsuit against Alan
Ralsky and his Michigan-based company, Additional Benefits LLC, that
prevented Ralsky from e-mailing Verizon Internet customers. The suit also
required Ralsky to pay unspecified damages.
In the Earthlink case, Youngblood said Carmack used fake e-mail addresses,
which he changed every couple days to keep investigators off his trail.
Carmack's spam included offers for herbal Viagra, weight-loss products and
get-rich schemes, "one of which was 'hire me to spam for you,'" Youngblood
said.
Junk e-mail is a rapidly growing problem. The anti-spam company Brightmail
recorded 7 million instances of multiple junk messages being sent in April,
a 61 percent increase from the same month a year ago.
A number of federal lawsuits similar to the one filed by EarthLink are
pending.
Besides filing lawsuits, companies have developed mail filters to cut down
on junk mail. But spammers have so far been able to find ways to get around
those measures.
MSN Adds New Antispam Tools
Microsoft has added new spam-fighting tools to its MSN Hotmail e-mail
service, in a move that it says underscores its multitiered approach to
eliminating spam.
The new tools, announced Thursday, come as e-mail service providers such
as MSN and rivals Yahoo and America Online race to diminish users' spam
fury, which has heightened in the face of a seemingly endless tide of
unsolicited commercial e-mail messages.
Demonstrating the extent of the problem, Microsoft said Thursday that it
blocks roughly 2.4 billion spam messages a day, or nearly 80 percent of
e-mail messages that reach MSN servers, via layers of filtering and with
the help of several spam-fighting tools.
A new tool that was introduced as part of an upgrade to the Hotmail service
this week is a technology that prevents images in e-mail from loading
unless the e-mail sender is listed in the receiver's contact list. Aside
from clogging up users' networks, Microsoft said that many of the images in
spam messages contain "Web beacons" which send a message back to the sender
when the message is opened, allowing spammers to distinguish active e-mail
accounts.
Users can still choose to scan the text and manually open the images if
they wish.
Another recent antispam addition to the service is what Microsoft calls a
Human Interactive Proof technology, which requires customers to interpret
and manually retype a random sequence of letters and numbers in an attempt
to keep spammers from setting up computer generated accounts using bots,
scripts, and other automated methods.
The Redmond, Washington, company said that since the technology was
introduced last December, it has seen a 20 percent decrease in online
attempts to set up new e-mail accounts.
Microsoft made spam elimination a focus of its new MSN 8 service, which
launched late last year. At the same time, AOL put spam at the top of its
hit list while introducing AOL 8.
Microsoft and AOL aren't the only ones concentrating on canning spam, as
other industry players have also moved to take spammers to court and lobby
for tough penalties against sending spam.
In fact, EarthLink won a $16 million suit against a spammer Wednesday.
Additionally, major e-mail providers have recently banded together to
discuss initiatives that would further reduce the flow of spam.
Will Spam Choke the Internet?
If last week's FTC Spam Forum here could be reduced to a single sound byte,
it is Commissioner Orson Swindle's declaration that "e-mail is the killer
app of the Internet, and spam is killing the killer app."
It was a sentiment that everyone who attended the three-day event could
endorse. But agreeing how to find the killers and bring them to justice is
proving much more elusive.
This remarkable gathering featured more than 400 attendees from nearly
every side of the spam divide. It drew angry users whose in-boxes groan
under the load of unwanted mail; representatives of huge ISPs that spend
millions each year on blocking spam and suing spammers; legitimate
e-marketers whose messages get blocked despite following all the rules; and
bulk mailers tired of being blacklisted by ISPs and navigating 29 different
state antispam laws.
The conference illustrates both how complex the issue of spam is and how
hot a topic it has become. It drew media coverage from around the globe an
politicians from across the Beltway, who flocked to the TV cameras like
flies to honey.
In the forum's first hour, Senators Conrad Burns (R-Montana) and Ron Wyden
(D- Oregon) made unscheduled appearances at the dais, vowing to pass their
CAN-SPAM Act in the current legislative session. The act provides penalties
of up to $500,000 for individuals who knowingly send commercial e-mail
containing false information or invalid opt-out mechanisms.
Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-California) proposed a bounty to be paid to
anyone who turned in spammers that broke the law. The next day, Senator
Charles Schumer (D- New York) discussed his plan to create a Do Not Spam
registry containing the e-mail addresses of everyone who wished to opt out
of unwanted solicitations.
But the forum's attendees seemed far less confident than the politicians
that such laws would do any good. While nearly everyone agrees that some
form of federal legislation is necessary, most reacted to these proposals
with undisguised disgust.
For one thing, such laws may preempt stronger state statutes and make it
tougher to prosecute spammers. And by defining spam narrowly in terms of
fraud, they could legitimize all other forms of unsolicited bulk mail -
essentially making your in-box fair game to anyone who labels their mail
properly, doesn't falsify information, and provides an opt-out mechanism.
The only group on any panel that favored the CAN-SPAM Act was the Direct
Marketing Association, whose members have a significant interest in
preserving the right to send unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Lofgren's proposal received tepid support - antispam activists, who do this
kind of bounty hunting as a hobby, licked their chops at the prospect. But
many other attendees feel any laws would be ignored by spammers, who could
continue to operate with impunity offshore.
Instead, most spam opponents favor laws that provide a private right of
action, enabling them to sue a spammer and collect damages, as AOL and
Earthlink have done.
"Even without a spam law, we've got our guns loaded with a dozen bullets,
any one of which would get the spammer," says attorney Pete Wellborn. He
won a $25 million judgment on behalf of Earthlink in a spam suit last July.
Yet such suits are costly to pursue and relatively rare.
Technologists pointed to improvements in spam filtering and ambitious plans
to separate 'trusted senders' from junk purveyors. These schemes face a
long uphill road to broad deployment, if they're used at all.
Short of legislation requiring all commercial e-mailers to obtain the
permission of the recipient before sending mail - unlikely, given the
powerful DMA's long-standing opposition to such schemes - a quick fix is
not likely. Yet spam and the frustration it causes grow exponentially worse
each day.
"Will somebody please come up with a way to give consumers the power to say
'no'?' pleaded Swindle. Camera shutters clicked. The audience cheered. And,
somewhere, a spammer just smiled.
Spam E-Mail Problem Worse Than Imagined
The volume of junk e-mail has reached a critical threshold that requires
swift action to protect the Internet correspondence millions of people take
for granted, regulators said Friday at the end of a three-day forum on
"spam."
"Things are worse than we imagined," said Eileen Harrington, the Federal
Trade Commission's director of marketing practices. "There is consensus
that the problem has reached a tipping point. If there are not immediate
improvements implemented across the board by technologists, service
providers and perhaps lawmakers, e-mail is at risk of being run into the
ground."
Harrington said that was the impression left by the dozens of technology
experts, government officials, industry executives and lawyers who flocked
to Washington to discuss the problem of unwanted commercial e-mail and what
to do about it.
In March, 45 percent of all e-mail sent was spam, according to Brightmail,
the San Francisco-based anti-spam company. That's up from 16 percent in
January 2002.
Most of the panelists at the FTC forum on Friday agreed that a strong
federal anti-spam law is needed and would be better than the mix of local
laws now in 29 states.
Steve Richter, an attorney with the E-mail Marketing Association, said the
current patchwork of laws is confusing and harmful. He gave the example of
a Washington state resident who receives spam from New York relayed through
a computer in Nevada.
"What law can you tell either of the parties - the sender or the recipient
- to follow?" he said.
Virginia enacted the nation's harshest anti-spam law Tuesday, giving
authorities the power to seize assets earned from sending bulk unsolicited
e-mail pitches while imposing up to five years in prison.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said this week she would seek federal
legislation offering rewards for individuals who help track down spammers.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., proposed a national "do-not-spam" registry
similar to an FTC service that is to begin blocking unwanted telemarketing
calls this fall.
A pending anti-spam bill proposed by Sens. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Ron
Wyden, D-Ore., would require spam to have valid return addresses.
Some were skeptical that the federal proposals would do the job.
"New laws that are unenforceable for myriad reasons or that are overtaken
by the advances of technology have the potential to do more harm than
good," FTC commissioner Orson Swindle said. "No single law, no single new
technology, no new initiative, no new meetings are going to solve this
problem alone."
John Patrick, chairman of the industry-supported Global Internet Project,
said any U.S. law would do little to stop spam from other countries and
the only solution is blocking it with new technology.
Earlier this week, AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced a joint initiative
to combat spam through techniques such as identifying and restricting
messages with deceptive headers.
Persistent spammers have found ways to dodge similar obstacles.
Harrington said the automated tools spammers use to "harvest" e-mail
addresses are "far more efficient and effective than we knew."
"Spammers are provided with an endless menu of new and fresh e-mail
addresses to send to," she said. "That accounts for a good deal of the
exponential increase in volume."
In 2001, the FTC received 10,000 junk e-mails each day forwarded by
complaining consumers. The agency now receives 130,000 messages daily.
Other topics during the forum included the potential for spam to migrate
to the
screens of cell phones and the effect of spam in other countries.
Motohiro Tsuchiya, a communications professor with the International
University of Japan, said Friday that about 80 percent of spam in Japan
comes from outside the country and most of it is in English.
"We are now importing more spam from the United States," he joked. "We are
actually learning what American culture is through spam."
Idiots Who Buy Stuff Off Spam...
Who is buying stuff from spammers?
This is what I want to know. Actually, this is what I want everyone to know
so we can hunt down these people and give them enormous wedgies.
For they are ultimately responsible for this relentless spam, which is
becoming the kind of biblical scourge Charlton Heston would've directed at
Yul Brynner, if e-mail had been around when God sent down the Ten
Commandments to the Paramount studios.
Fact is, spammers wouldn't send out junk e-mail if nobody - absolutely
nobody - ever clicked through to buy anything.
This is what the anti-spam crowd isn't saying. The politicians considering
anti-spam legislation, the Federal Trade Commission officials looking at
regulations, the companies scrambling to sell spam-killing technology -
all of them are aiming at the spam proliferators. Just last week, Virginia
became the 27th state to pass anti-spam laws. The attitude is: Prosecute
these spammers! Punish them! Defeat them!
Don't get me wrong - I'm all for it. I say we declare a "war on spamorism"
and send the worst spammers to Guantanamo Bay to mingle indefinitely with
the Taliban.
But to take such punitive action without attacking the other end - the spam
clickers - is like going after the Colombian drug lords without trying to
curtail drug use, or suing McDonald's because it makes fatty food when the
reason it makes fatty food is that billions of people buy
it.
To be effective, this has to be a two-pronged attack. People have to be
told: Never open spam, and if you do, never respond or click through to
the Web site it's luring you to - and if you go that far, never buy
anything.
Spammers only send out spam because it is successful. They send oceans of
it because e-mail costs almost nothing, and if one person in a million
responds, that's good enough.
The e-mail pitches don't have to be well aimed or well done, which means
any goofball can do it. This is proved, for instance, by the outfit
currently sending spam about an IQ test under the header, "From: Albert
Enistine." My guess is that Albert Enistine is the guy who came up with
the theory of revalitaty.
Who could possibly be buying from spammers? You might be thinking: "Sure,
my boss acts like a blowhard to compensate for his inadequate manliness,
but he can't be buying those enhancement devices, can he?"
Well, he can. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), whose members include
bulk e-mailers, said last week that 37% of consumers it surveyed have
bought something as a result of receiving e-mail.
Of course, those numbers might be as objective as the battle reports from
Saddam's information minister, but the point is on target: More than a few
consumers are supporting spam.
And it's not just the feebleminded or ignorant. It's people who should
know better. "Lord help me, I actually bought something as a result of
spam," David Rosen of New York consulting firm Walek & Associates writes
in an e-mail. "The perfect pasta pot. I've seen it on TV, gotten e-mail
spam on it and finally saw it at the New York Auto Show last week and
bought it! The pot works, but I HATE SPAM."
Well, duh.
So the spam grows and grows, filling our in-baskets the way Yao Ming would
fill a Mini Cooper. One survey by Public Opinion Strategies says spam is
up 21% since the first of the year. Deleting the overnight buildup has
become a morning necessity, like shaving. The stuff gunks up corporate
e-mail systems.
"If spam gets any worse, there will be an overall problem that might
threaten everyone's benefiting from e-mail, including spammers as a
group," says Larry Downes, author of business book The Strategy Machine.
Possible solutions pop up everywhere. Companies such as Surf Control,
IronPort Systems and MailWasher - the last based in New Zealand, which
gives you an idea of the worldwide scope of the problem - make software
that helps block spam. Tech ·¬ber-lawyer Lawrence Lessig is talking up the
idea of the government offering bounties to citizens who turn in deceptive
spammers. IBM scientist Adam Emery is working on software that would make
a spammer pay you to interrupt you with a message.
But none of that will stop spam. As long as there is money to be made,
spammers will work to find their way around software blocks and skirt
bounty hunters, regulators and law enforcement. In that sense, spam is like
running water - block it one place, and it will cut a new path somewhere
else.
There's also a complication: defining spam. It's like defining tasty food
- one person's perfect squid sushi is another's garden hose on rice. We can
mostly agree that scam letters from fictional relatives of deposed Nigerian
officials are spam.
But after that, it can get tricky. Like, I just got a PR pitch titled "Farm
safety not just for farmers." Legitimate as it might be for someone on the
hay-bailer beat, to me it's spam. Those discrepancies make it harder for
software or regulators to block spam.
In the end, there might be only one way for us - the people - to take back
our electronic lives. It's a Gandhi-like approach of passive resistance.
Ignore spam. Give it no sustenance. Deprive it of its very reason for
being. If we all remain strong and act in concert, spam will wither and
die.
At least we can hope so.
Don't Call Me Spam!
With anti-spam sentiment reaching a fever pitch, some legitimate marketing
campaigns are being incorrectly identified and blocked. It is becoming more
challenging than ever for companies that operate "by the book" to reach
their intended targets.
"Solving the spam problem is critical," said Peter Mesnik, president and
CTO of e-mail marketing-software company iMakeNews. "But there is also a
legitimate need for commerce to occur over e-mail. It's a very efficient
medium, and commerce will always flow through the most efficient channel."
There is a difference between spam - unsolicited and unwanted material
spent by e-mail - and legitimate e-mail marketing. "There's some obvious
spam - the guy in Nigeria that wants to give you a million dollars,"
Mesnik told CRMDaily.com. On the other end of the spectrum is what he calls
"informative relationship marketing," which includes subscription
newsletters and legitimate company-to-customer communications like product
upgrade announcements or recall notices.
But many law-abiding users of e-mail are finding that spam is clogging the
channel - and the problem keeps getting worse. "It is getting way, way out
of control," said Art Schoeller, senior analyst at the Yankee Group.
"Because there is so much spam out there, you may try to run a legitimate
marketing campaign and find you're being screened out by the ISPs. You may
design this really great e-mail with all kinds of rich content, and it
doesn't get through because the ISP's system looks at it, sees the rich
content and thinks that it's porn."
Between spam and clearly legitimate and necessary e-mail applications is a
large gray area, and that, Mesnik says, is mostly where the problem lies.
"There does seem to be a need for some legislation to cut down on the most
egregious cases - the real spam," Mesnik said. "But anti-spam legislation
could hurt legitimate e-mail marketers if it creates a feeding frenzy of
lawyers and lawsuits that bury [marketers] with fights over ambiguities"
about what is spam and what is not.
Legislation aside, users are incredibly wary of spam these days. "Everybody
has been trained not to open e-mail from unknown sources," notes Hal
Sirkin, senior vice president at Boston Consulting Group.
As a result, a company's e-mail is not even likely to get through unless it
has an existing relationship with a customer. "It's very hard to start a
customer relationship with e-mail, but once that relationship exists,
e-mail is a very efficient way to maintain the relationship," Sirkin said.
Companies that want to continue to take advantage of the low-cost e-mail
channel to communicate with customers need to take care to avoid the
perception of spamming. One way to do that is to be sure that e-mail
communications provide useful and relevant information to customers or
potential customers. In return, Mesnik says, e-mail can provide a wealth
of information about customers, their interests and their buying patterns.
"You need to provide information that's expected and wanted by customers,"
Mesnik suggests. "Then if spam filters take it out, customers will speak
up to their ISPs to get it restored. That's one of the key solutions that
marketers can employ today."
Mesnik's company, iMakeNews, provides software to help marketers create
electronic newsletters, including tools that enable dynamic personalization
and customization of the information. It also allows marketers to track
which information is read by users, providing both tactical insights (what
items to run in the next newsletter) and strategic ones (what kinds of
products interest readers most).
Of course, responsible e-mail marketing starts by getting the customer's
permission - at least tacitly - to send e-mail. Recipients must always be
given the option of electing not to receive further e-mails, and those
requests should be honored immediately. "It always frosts me when a
marketer tells me it's going to take 48 hours for them to process my
request to be removed from their e-mail list," says Schoeller. "Why should
[it] take 48 hours? This ought to be automated and immediate."
Once you have established a mailing list of customers willing to receive
your information, a few precautions can help keep the list viable. Mesnik
says one common mistake is pushing too much information. "Sometimes people
go overboard and send 25 or 30 articles in a newsletter" or use articles
that are too long. "You have to be careful not to oversaturate the
audience."
He also cautions against poisoning the well by using an e-newsletter list
to send other types of content. "We had one sports marketer that saw a
sudden surge in unsubscribe," he recalled. "Turns out they had started
using their newsletter list to send purely promotional items," which was
turning people off. The same information could have been included in a
soft-sell form in a newsletter, he suggests.
Selling your e-mail list also can backfire, Sirkin said. "If people figure
out you're selling their name to someone else, they'll never give you
information again." Instead, provide click-through links to business
partners that may have products or services of interest to your customers.
Legitimate marketers should work collaboratively with ISPs to understand
the criteria they are using to filter out spam, Schoeller suggests. He
recommends industry groups like the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and
the Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM) as focal points for this
kind of industry cooperation.
"E-mail is a delicate medium," Mesnik said. "People are sensitive about how
much e-mail they're getting," and it is easy for them to delete material
without reading it.
"Spam is the most dangerous and critical problem faced by e-mail
marketers."
Users Overwhelmingly Favor Anti-Spam Legislation
Internet users overwhelmingly favor anti-spam legislation currently pending
in Congress, according to poll results from Web and e-mail filtering vendor
SurfControl, released this week.
Respondents also said that the number of spam messages received weekly has
increased 21 percent since January.
The survey also sought to map out the Internet community's definition of
spam. More than half of respondents, or 54 percent, said unsolicited mass
e-mail from a company the recipient done business with in the past is not
spam.
Unsolicited mass e-mail that is deceptive in its subject line was
categorized as spam by 93 percent of respondents.
Unsolicited mass e-mail, even if it comes from a legitimate or well-branded
business, was categorized as spam by 82 percent of respondents.
Even unsolicited mass e-mail on subjects or offers that interest the
receiver was categorized as spam by 78 percent of respondents.
"The definition of spam is black and white for people working in offices
across the country," said Susan Getgood a senior vice president at
SurfControl, who commissioned the survey. "E-mail from commercial strangers
is spam. E-mail from companies you have done business with in the past is
not," she said in a statement.
The survey was conducted for SurfControl by Public Opinion Strategies, a
political and public affairs research firm.
An overwhelming majority of business users, 86 percent, say they favor
legislation currently pending in Congress that would outlaw spam that hides
the identity of the sender or misleads the recipient about the contents of
the e-mail. The bill, S-877 CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, was introduced last month
by Sens. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
Some 85 percent of respondents say they would support their company using
technology to control spam.
Tree-Saving Electronic Paper Comes a Step Closer
Electronic paper, which promises to change the face of publishing and save
forests, came closer to reality on Wednesday as scientists revealed a
super-thin, flexible electronic-ink display screen.
Just 0.012 inch thick, the device developed by researchers at E Ink
Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, can be flexed without distorting
the type and paves the way for electronic newspapers, wearable computer
screens and smart identity cards.
"It's the closest thing demonstrated today to electronic paper," Yu Chen,
an electrical engineer at E Ink and a visiting scientist at Princeton
University in New Jersey, told Reuters.
When it is fully developed e-paper will be able to display black and white
and color text using wireless technology.
Buying the daily newspaper will no longer be necessary because with e-paper
it will be updated wirelessly or through the Internet.
"In the current form you can already receive images and read books through
these displays screens," Chen said but he added the display was still too
slow for a video display because of the switching speed of the electronic
ink.
The display consists of two components. The front part switches according
to electronic signals and the back component is a circuit made of
transistors that control each individual pixel that composes the display.
Each pixel needs a circuit, made of transistors, behind it to switch it. In
order to make electronic paper the transistors have to be made on a very
thin and flexible substrate.
"In our case it is a very thin stainless steel foil. You need to put a
layer of electronic circuits on that foil," Chen said.
Chen, who reported the research in the science journal Nature, said the
size can vary from a business card to a computer screen. The current device
is too thick to be folded in half but Chen and his team are working on a
thinner a version.
"Our work demonstrated that you can make high-quality electronic circuits
on very thin and flexible substrates," he added.
=~=~=~=
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