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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 06 Issue 06
Volume 6, Issue 6 Atari Online News, Etc. February 6, 2004
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2004
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:
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #0606 02/06/04
~ File-Sharing Appeal! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Police Raid Kazaa!
~ MyDoom: Just A Taste! ~ AOL Seeks SB Refund! ~ MS Escapes Attack!
~ .zip Files Dangerous! ~ What's Next for Linux? ~ New Xbox in 2005?
~ Law Doesn't Can Spam! ~ Kid Takes On Microsoft ~ Apple Safari Update!
-* MyDoom Brings Down SCO Site! *-
-* Pentagon Cancels Web Voting System! *-
-* Congress Eyes Internet Fraud Crackdown! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
They were doomed from the start! The GameDay 2004 Super Bowl victor was the
Panthers - every Game Day victor in the past has been the real victor. The
Patriots were favored - never before in history. The game was not at home.
There was no snow on the ground, or frosty conditions in the air. The
Patriots win! Unbelievable game! I was pulling out my hair during the last
quarter, cursing the Patriots' secondary! Call it what you like - fate,
luck, whatever - it was a great win for the Pats! And what turns out to be
the most sought-after item in history on the internet? The clip from the
halftime show of Janet Jackson's boob. Paris Hilton, eat your heart out!
<sigh> How can I possibly top the Super Bowl with an editorial about a
major virus, or spam, or some other hot topic? I can't, so I won't.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. This is another one of those weeks when I
have absolutely no idea of what I'm going to end up saying in this part
of the column.
Sometimes I start with a clear idea of what I want to say. Sometimes I
find a 'hook' while I'm wandering around the keyboard. And sometimes...
like now... nothing seems to come together.
So I guess I'll fall back on one of my favorite subjects: The
exploration of space.
You'll hear all kinds of arguments both for and against spending money
on space exploration these days. Sure, it's true that we spend a lot of
money each year on the space program. It's also true that we spend less
on space exploration than many other things. Don't quote me on this
because I'm not positive of the numbers, but I seem to remember that
total annual expenditures for the space program amount to less than one
percent of the national budget.
With the almost daily news about our ice caps shrinking, ice sheets
thinning, temperatures rising, and jet streams slowing, it only makes
sense to me that we should 'hedge our bet'. Perhaps we're seeing some
sort of natural rhythm or maybe even actual global warming that's
unrelated to anything that we are doing. The fact remains that things
are changing. Whether or not we're the cause won't really seem all that
important when/if we all have to start using a 2000 sunblock and
personal portable air conditioners.
Technological advances can sometimes result from a 'eureka moment', but
more often they are the result of slow, careful experimentation. And
that's almost never a low-cost proposition.
One thing I don't like is when people throw around 'facts and figures'
about NASA inventing products or technologies. You've probably seen
commercials for everything from 'space age polymers'to 'fruit and grain
energy bars' to the next big thing in bed construction.
The truth of the matter is that NASA doesn't invent anything. They DO
commission studies, experiments, designs and even entire projects, but
they don't actually invent the stuff.
Back in the days of the Apollo Program, the big things were Tang and
Space Food Sticks. Today, we've come to take a lot of the advances of
the space program for granted. We look at pictures that come to us from
more than a hundred million miles away and simply shrug. Instead of
looking upon the sands of another world and appreciating the
technological advances involved, we bemoan the malfunctioning of a
thermocouple in the very same machine.
Perhaps some of the technology created for the exploration of Mars will
one day help us to live peacefully here on earth... or help us escape
our mistakes if we find that we can't.
Let's get to the news, hints, tips, and info from the UseNet
From the comp.sys.atari.st NewsGroup
====================================
Raoul Teulings asks about formatting a particular kind of removable media
drive:
"Is it possible to format disks from a Jaz drive who
are pre-formatted for Macintosh? Or is that
impossible?"
Edward Baiz tells Raoul:
"Yes Raoul that is possible. A friend of mine gave a 1GB Jaz cart
that was pre-formatted for a Mac. I just used HDDriver and re-formatted
it for the Atari and it works fine now."
Kenneth Medin adds this bit of useful wisdom:
"I suppose a Jaz is just like any other SCSI or IDE HD... Never format a
HD! They were formatted when new and the formatting scheme is platform
independent. Only if the drive has bad sectors it might be of any use to
actually try o reformat it.
What you want is to partition it with Atari compatible partitions! This
will wipe out the Mac partition data and make the drive like new."
Steve Sweet asks Kenneth:
"Why not format a HD, I've never had problems with doing that, it's
generally unnecessary but saves possible problems if you take the drive
from one platform to another.
Dr. Uwe Seimet, author of HD Driver, adds:
"This is possible, but partitioning is enough. There is no need in
formatting drives that do not have bad sectors, it's just a waste of time."
Mark Bedingfield asks about his new TT030:
"Hi All, just picked up the new TT. It is very under spec. No TT ram and
only 2Mb ST ram. Also only a very small hard disk. So on to my dumb
questions (being that I am used to Falcons).
1 - What is the biggest drive that can be fitted internally? It was fitted
with a 200Mb Conner. I have had zip luck with a Quantum 2.1 ST. Only ICD
utils will even detect it. AHDI 6.06, and Hddriver 7.6 will not recognize
it all. The drive is set to ID0 and term is on. The only other drives I
have are bigger than this. Oh, and what can TOS 3.06 handle natively?
2 - How about ram expansion? 2Mb is less than my ST's. I had to resort to
NVDI 2.5, because after installing NVDI 5 I only had 200k free. What are
the limits to the TT's ram expansion?
3- Also VME cards? What are available?
Got to say tho, it is a bloody quick Machine.
I have been unable to get any of my 2.1 gig drives working. Internally or
externally. These are 2x Quantum Fireballs (TM and SE I think) and 1x IBM
UW drive. I have set all to ID 0 and tried with or without termination.
I did get a zip drive and a 4x CDRom working happily. But apart from the
old 200 meg drive no luck.
I did note that the termination resistor pack had been removed from the
Main board. Any idea's? I will try a 500meg drive tonight to see if there is
any difference.
Also, does anybody have an e-mail address for this gentleman selling
TTram boards?""
Peter West tells Mark:
"I seem to remember that some Quantums, at least, needed parity (or was it
initiator ID?) signals. Most hosts and drivers do not provide these.
Which driver are you using? If it's not HDDRIVER, download the
demo version and try that. Although commercial, it's by far the
best driver available for the Atari, and is still supported."
Dennis Vermeire adds:
"Yes, every "Fireball" model fits in that category, but the hard disk
however is recognized under HD Driver and can be partitioned, booting from
it however is not possible, so anyone who obtains such a drive can only
use it as secondary hard disk. If being able to boot from it is not a
priority, then don't dismiss the "Fireball" models, they are build to
last, very very silent, and not power hungry at all.
If HD Driver can't recognize the drive, then it's probably
defective. Like I said, HD Driver has no problems with the Fireballs models
from Quantum (I have two here somewhere)."
'Sam F' asks about max RAM for a Falcon:
"So how much ram can a Falcon handle. Mine has got the Wizztronics memory
board and a stick of 16meg ram. Could I go higher on this board, say 32
megs?"
Maurits van de Kamp tells Sam:
"Without special hardware, the Falcon can handle 14MB (often 16MB of simms
are used for this). But there are expansions that allow for more, for
example the Centurbo2 which can handle 128MB (or was it even more?). The
CT60 probably handles even more but I don't know that one very well.
To be more precise, the Falcon can handle 14MB of ST-ram and a huge amount
of TT-ram. But to be able to use TT-ram, you need special cards like the
Centurbo. Further limitations depend on these cards."
Greg Goodwin adds:
"The CT60 can go up to 512MB."
Cyril Lambin asks about using a VGA monitor on an ST:
"I'd like to connect my old STe to a standard SVGA monitor. Of course I
searched the net and found a lot of schematics, but I don't know which one
to use. There's one with simple connections between the ST and VGA pins,
one with 5 resistors (on R/G/B connections, I guess it's to compensate the
difference of luminosity between the three color component) and one a
little bit trickier including a transistor. Which one should work best ?
Now I also have a SM124 monitor that is non-working but might be easily
repaired (the image is garbled but the CRT looks okay). I don't know how to
fix it so if someone living in Paris wants it, contact me. "
Edward Baiz tells Cyril:
"I can hook my STe to my Compaq 17 inch SVGA monitor indirectly
using an old piece of Atari hardware called "Video Key" and a
video converter. It is a little blurry, but readable never the
less. Cannot get monochrome. but color modes work fine."
Jérôme Ginestet adds:
"When connecting a ST on a standard SVGA, only the monochrome mode is
possible, so RGB signals aren't used (there is a different pin for
monochrome signal). If you found schematics indicating resistors on RGB
pins, they are not describing a ST-VGA cable.
The one with direct connection is probably the good one.
This one works fine :
http://ginesj.free.fr/stvga/ "
Djordje Vukovic adds his thoughts:
"The monochrome signal from a ST should be supplied
in appropriate proportions to R/G/B inputs of the monitor. That is what
the resistors are for; if you do not use them, you will get a very
bluish-looking monochrome picture on a colour (S)VGA monitor.
Btw. possibly the best picture could be obtained by using a -monochrome-
(S)VGA monitor. In this way one would not see on the screen the moire
effects resulting from the interference of the monochrome patterns and the
CRT shadowmask/pixels."
Jérôme Ginestet tells Djordje:
"Not at all. And I have proof in front of me.
In fact it's the other way round : if you want to use a monochrome
display with a RGB source, you will need the different resistors, because
luminance is a*R+b*G+c*B, not R+G+B.
But with a RGB display, white (or pure gray) is obtained by sending
exactly the same voltage level on R, G and B.
This can be easily seen by looking at RGB signals on the outputs of a ST
or Falcon displaying a white or gray screen with an oscilloscope.
The only worry with direct connection seems to be (I have not checked
that) that the voltage level on the monochrome output is slightly higher
than the standard max of the RGB input. However, that doesn't seem to
cause any trouble."
Janez Valant takes a slightly different approach:'
"Another possibility is to get TV tuner (external) preferably. U need to
take care that tuner have RGB inputs and not only composite, if u don't have
STE or STxM. Machines without modulators, also don't have composite wired to
connector, so has to be RGB in that case, which is better anyway... Serves
me nice, and i also can connect many 8bit machines, although i did frag
composite from them..."
Carey Christenson asks about NVDI, CAB and his printer:
"I have been experimenting with different drivers in
NVDI for printing under CAB. I have a EPSON Stylus
color 880 PRINTER. Is anyone out there using this
printer and if so what driver are you using and the
settings inside of NVDI. I finally found an Epson
Stylus Color 1500 is working quite well and printing
under CAB in COLOR is reasonably fast at 720 dpi with
the CT60. Just wondering if anyone else is using a
different driver that might work just as well and
possibly faster yet. Or does the driver not make that
much difference anyway???"
Kenneth Medin tells Carey:
"You are actually lucky. I have a HP 960c and can only print at 300 dpi in
colour. B&W goes to 600 dpi with NVDI.
Magic and NVDI 5 make it possible to print in background. If you add
IPRN2D.PRG to the AUTO folder it will get as fast as it can. My TT does
print just as fast as my pc as soon as it has rendered the print data to
the temp file."
Well folks, that's it 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 - Final Fantasy Comes to GameCube!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Next Xbox in 2005?
Marvel, EA Team Up!
And more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Next Xbox Could Come in Fall 2005
The next version of Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox video game console could be
released in the fall of 2005, without the hard drive that was one of the
defining characteristics of the current game console, the San Jose Mercury
News reported on Monday.
The paper, citing information it said had been shared with game developers
and publishers, said the console would use three International Business
Machines Corp. processors based on the new generation of powerful 64-bit
computing technology and a graphics chip from ATI
Technologies Inc.
The newspaper also reported that the new console would likely be shipped
without a hard drive and said it was not "guaranteed" that the new console
would be able to play current Xbox games.
By eliminating the hard drive, Microsoft could reduce the cost of
production while allowing game data to be stored on flash memory, the
newspaper said.
A Microsoft spokeswoman was not immediately available to comment on the
report.
Both Microsoft and Sony Corp. are expected to divulge more details on the
next generation of their hardware in the coming months at industry
conferences in March and May. Most in the industry had expected those
next-generation systems to come out only in 2005 or 2006.
Microsoft executives have said they do not want to give Sony the head start
in the current generation that it had in the last one. Sony's PlayStation 2
came out a year before the Xbox and has built a commanding worldwide lead.
Part of the strength of the PS2, industry leaders have said, is that it is
backward-compatible with the original PlayStation. As the Xbox is
Microsoft's first foray into games hardware, it has never been clear if the
company intended future generations of the console to play old games.
Video game hardware and software sales totaled $10 billion in the United
States in 2003, though growth is expected to slow in coming years ahead of
the launch of the new consoles.
Final Fantasy Comes to GameCube
Final Fantasy is coming to GameCube, with Nintendo adding its own spin to
the popular series from Square Enix.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, expected to be in stores Feb. 11, can be
played as a solo game but its major appeal will be as a multi-player title.
The game allows up to four players to campaign together on one console,
controlling characters on the same screen. The multiplayer version of the
game uses Nintendo's connectivity to full advantage. But you need some
other hardware to get going: a Game Boy player (around $70), which connects
Nintendo's hand-held Game Boy portable to the GameCube, and each player
needs a Game Boy Advance or the newer Game Boy Advance XP (around $140).
The hand-held Game Boy Advance serves as a controller for each player,
allowing them to switch weapons and make other decisions without cluttering
up the main TV screen hooked to the GameCube console.
The main screen does have small icon displays for each player, reminding
them whether they are in attack or defence mode, how much life they have
left and so forth.
Playing the game solo can be done with just the GameCube and its normal
controller.
The game itself is all about co-operation. A poisonous cloud has blanketed
the world and the only thing protecting the band of adventurers is a magic
crystal that creates a force field.
One of the players is entrusted with carrying the crystal, while the others
protect him.
An early look at Crystal Chronicles suggests a multiplayer campaign could
be a lot of fun, if you already have the necessary hardware - and friends
ready to hit the video game road with you.
The game looks very polished, with a Zelda-like feel - more of a simple
action-adventure rather than complicated role-playing game.
Using the Game Boy Advance as a controller, with its separate screen, also
raises some interesting possibilities for future Nintendo games.
Crystal Chronicles is available only on GameCube and Nintendo has high
hopes for it.
Future Fantasy titles have sold well in the past with Square Enix saying
worldwide sales of the series have topped 48 million units.
The most recent title, Final Fantasy X-2, has sold more than one million
units in North America since shipping in November, on top of two million in
Japan.
Nintendo is also using its connectivity as a hook for its new Pokemon game,
Pokemon Colosseum. The role-playing game, which has impressive graphics
even to a non-Pokemon man, allows players to import characters they have
built up in previous Pokemon titles on Game Boy Advance into Colosseum,
where they can be used in the game's Battle Mode.
Pokemon Colosseum is due out March 24.
Nintendo is throwing in a bonus to gamers who pre-order the title through
EB Games. They will get a bonus disc with the Pokemon character Jirachi the
Wishmaker. This character can then be transferred to other Pokemon games.
There is a Canadian connection to Nintendo's upcoming releases with Silicon
Knights of St. Catharines developing Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, a
special version of the Metal Gear series for the GameCube due out March 4.
The stealth game draws on Metal Gear Solid and its sequel Metal Gear 2:
Sons of Liberty. Silicon Knights previously did Eternal Darkness: Sanity's
Requiem for the GameCube. ... Metroid: Zero Mission for the Game Boy
Advance is a retro version of the Metroid series, and brings back a lot of
the game's original features. It's due out Feb. 11. ... Details are sketchy
on Nintendo's DS new portable game system. The company says it will have
two three-inch screens, allowing gamers to see two different views or use
one screen to access a menu. The system is supposed to launch worldwide by
the end of 2004 but there is no word yet on what kind of game cartridges DS
will use.
Marvel, EA Tie Up Seen Tricky But with Big Potential
Spider-Man, the X-Men and Marvel Enterprises's other superheroes will soon
be faced with deadly new enemies being dreamed up by video game publisher
Electronic Arts Inc.
Analysts and industry executives said the battle royale must be carefully
staged to avoid legal entanglements with other video game publishers who
have licensed Marvel characters. But they also said the tie-up could lead
to a potential new hit franchise for EA and a new characters that Marvel
could leverage into lucrative TV and film deals.
Marvel and EA said on Thursday they had signed a deal for EA to license
more than 100 of Marvel's characters, among them "Spider-Man" and the
"X-Men," to create a series of fighting games pitting the Marvel heroes
against new villains to be created by EA.
Marvel will in turn license the rights to those new characters and feature
them in comic books. The first game under the new deal, under development
at EA Canada, is expected to be released at the end of 2005.
Marvel already has extensive licensing arrangements for some of the same
characters with Activision Inc., THQ Inc. and the games unit of Vivendi
Universal, raising questions about how it can license the same property
again without risking legal problems or confusing consumers.
"They do step on their toes," said American Technology Research analyst
P.J. McNealy.
A Marvel executive said the new EA games would stand out by featuring a
battling cast of superheroes, but said the details still needed to be
worked out.
"It's very early on. We've just begun developing the game." said Tim
Rothwell, president of worldwide consumer products for Marvel.
Eventually, though, Rothwell said, Marvel will be able to exploit the
characters EA creates much as it has its own.
"As the new characters emerge and we figure out where the strengths lie
in this new cast of characters ... we can begin some publishing
initiatives, merchandising and licensing initiatives," he said.
THQ officials had no immediate comment on the new deal. Activision Chief
Executive Bobby Kotick said his company had passed on licensing Marvel
characters for fighting games.
Japan's Capcom Co. Ltd. previously had such a deal for its "Marvel vs.
Capcom" series. The last game in that series was released in March 2003
on the Xbox to disappointing reviews.
"Fighting for the Marvel characters has just historically not been a very
successful genre," Kotick said. "EA stepped into that deal, and there are
tremendous restrictions in terms of genre, marketing, what they can include
on the packaging, the way they can design the games."
Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Gordon Hodge raised his 2004 earnings
estimates for Marvel slightly but said the biggest benefits were still a
way off.
"We believe Marvel may recognize modest minimum royalty income in the range
of $2 million to $3 million in 2004 but could enjoy meaningful royalty
overages in 2005 and beyond depending on the success of EA's games, the
first of which is likely to be released next year," he said in a note.
Bear Stearns analyst Glen Reid said in a note that any gain from the deal
would not likely come until 2006. "We believe the bulk of Marvel's take
will be from licensing of original content to come from future EA game
development," he said.
While Electronic Arts has little background in fighting games, aside from
another licensed property, the successful rap music-themed "Def Jam
Vendetta," American Technology's McNealy said the Marvel deal fit a
pattern.
"This is typical of Electronic Arts' strategy of signing only multiyear,
multifranchise deals for licensed properties such as comic book
characters," he said. "You're shooting to be more successful than
creative."
Florida Lawmakers Take Aim at Violent Video Games
Bolstered by outrage from Haitian Americans and parents over a top-selling
game, a group of Florida lawmakers is moving to stiffen penalties for
retailers that sell or rent violent or sexually explicit computer games to
minors.
Legislative critics in Florida of violent computer games have been thwarted
before in attempts to make selling them to minors a third-degree felony,
punishable by up to five years in prison or a $5,000 fine.
But they believe they may now have a better chance of gaining support after
ire over Rockstar Game's "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," in which players
are urged to "kill the Haitians" and score points for rape and murder.
"We want to make sure that parents are educated and that retailers are
aware that this game and others like it are not appropriate for children,"
said Florida state House sponsor, Rep. Sheri McInvale, a Democrat from
Orlando.
Rockstar and its owners Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. have agreed to
remove the "kill the Haitians" phrase from future copies of "Grand Theft
Auto: Vice City," but the concession has failed to assuage many critics.
The Florida House bill, and a similar Senate proposal, would require
merchants to demand identification for any purchase or rental. Both
proposals exempt Internet sales.
But retail associations are urging lawmakers to shelve their plans because,
they say, the proposals ignore the Entertainment Software Rating Board
system that already ranks video games based on content.
Furthermore, the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association, an
industry group including such retailers as Wal-Mart and video chain
Blockbuster Inc, agreed to have procedures in place by next Christmas to
stop the sale of mature and adult video games to minors.
"This is a case where the industry is way out in front of government," said
Bill Herrle, vice president for governmental affairs for the Florida Retail
Federation.
The Florida lawmakers' action is the latest in a series of legal efforts to
reign in violent, sexually explicit or profanity-riddled games, including
an ordinance given preliminary approval last month by North Miami City
Council.
"We're not banning them and requiring retailers to go to expensive
extremes. We're just saying we need to deal with video games in the same
way we deal with pornography, alcohol and R-rated movies," said McInvale.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
'Mydoom' Virus Brings Down SCO Web Site
A computer virus that targeted a small Utah software company performed as
its perpetrators promised on Sunday, bringing down The SCO Group's Web site
two days before a similar virus was programmed to attack Microsoft Corp.
The "Mydoom" or "Novarg" virus launched the attack early Sunday with
hundreds of thousands of requests, which crippled the site, SCO spokesman
Blake Stowell said.
The virus was spread last week by e-mail and caused infected computers to
launch the electronic attack against SCO, which has been targeted at least
twice this year with such attacks because of its threats to sue users of
the Linux operating system in an intellectual property
dispute.
On Tuesday, Lindon, Utah-based SCO announced a $250,000 reward for
information leading to the arrest and conviction of Mydoom's creator.
Stowell said the company believes someone within the Linux community is
behind the worm.
Sunday's attack had a higher profile because the well-publicized Mydoom
virus was involved, but that doesn't make the assault unique, a computer
expert said.
"To SCO, it means quite a bit," said Marty Lindner, an analyst at US-CERT,
a public-private partnership focused on Internet security. "But in the big
scheme of things, this happens all the time."
Internet traffic to SCO's Web site began building late Saturday night, and
overwhelmed it just after 12 a.m. EST.
"It's on the scale of hundreds of thousands of computers, all trying to
access www.sco.com all at the same time, several times a minute," Stowell
said. "Our capacity to be able to handle that amount of bandwidth, or the
number of requests coming in, was completely saturated."
The attack is programmed to continue on SCO's Web site until Feb. 12,
according to messages left inside the virus' code.
But Stowell said the company would announce a contingency plan Monday for
customers to access the site. He declined to discuss those plans, citing
hackers.
It will likely involve slightly altering the wording SCO's Web address,
said David Perry, a spokesman for antivirus firm Trend Micro.
SCO does not expect the Web site interruption to affect its business.
"The way we really look at this, people don't come to our Web site to
conduct commerce," Stowell said. "They come to obtain information and maybe
receive a product update or software patch."
The strain that shut down SCO's Web site was the Mydoom.A virus. Another
strain, called Mydoom.B, is set to launch an attack Tuesday on Microsoft.
The companies have been sharing information about the virus and how each
is addressing it. Microsoft also has offered a $250,000 reward to help
catch those behind the virus.
Lindner said it's difficult to predict the same type of shutdown for
Microsoft.
"Depending on the number of machines launching the attack, the outcomes
could be the same or completely different," he said. "There are too many
unknowns."
Microsoft Web Sites Resist Virus Attack
Microsoft Corp. said it had fought off an attempted software virus attack
Tuesday that was aimed at shutting down some of the company's Web sites.
Stephen Toulouse, a security program manager for Microsoft, said the
company's Web sites were up and running as of midmorning.
The virus works by getting infected computers to send hundreds of thousands
of requests for the site per minute, in hopes of crippling it. Toulouse
would not detail how the company had been able to ward off the attack,
citing security concerns.
"It's still a little early and we remain vigilant," he said.
The virus, called "Mydoom.B," was programmed to launch an attack on
Microsoft's site Tuesday, two days after a variant shut down the Web site
of The SCO Group, a small Utah software company.
But security experts had said the Mydoom.B variant was spreading much less
quickly than Mydoom.A, the version that attacked SCO Group.
Microsoft said that computers infected with the virus would not be able to
access Microsoft's Web site. The Redmond, Wash.-based company has set up
an alternative Web site, https://information.microsoft.com, for those
users.
Last week, Microsoft said it would to pay $250,000 to anyone who helps
authorities find and prosecute the author of the virus. The cash reward is
the third so far under a $5 million program Microsoft announced in early
November to help U.S. authorities catch authors of unusually damaging
Internet infections aimed at consumers of the company's software products.
SCO Group had previously offered a $250,000 reward for information leading
to the arrest and conviction of the creator of the Mydoom.A version.
MyDoom a Taste of Viruses to Come
E-mail viruses like MyDoom will be the weapon of choice for future
corporate and political Web site attacks, with one worm able to threaten
thousands of big sites at once, a top computer security official said on
Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of computers have already been infected by the
fast-spreading MyDoom worm, which has toppled the Web site of U.S. SCO
Group and now has software leader Microsoft in its crosshairs.
This effectiveness, especially in harnessing an army of computers to
bombard target sites with a flood of data, means copycats will likely be
used by hackers and activists, said the top anti-virus official at
Finland's F-Secure, a firm that works with various law enforcement agencies
on a number of cyber criminal investigations.
"You could use exactly the same technique, or even a little bit more
advanced technique... to carry out your own agenda and take down the sites
you want," F-Secure Anti-Virus Research Director Mikko Hypponen told
Reuters in a telephone interview.
"This is a much larger attack network than anything we have seen before.
With this kind of horsepower you could take down not just one site, you
could take down thousands of sites - big sites - at the same time and keep
them down for quite a while."
In the past three years, a series of increasingly sophisticated worm
outbreaks have been used to get across a political message or blackmail
businesses. Victims range from Caribbean gambling sites to Pakistani
government ministries.
MyDoom emerged last week in the form of a spam e-mail message containing a
well-disguised virus attachment. It was programmed to take control of
unsuspecting computer users' PCs, from which an attack was launched on SCO
on Sunday.
When activated, the effect was like hundreds of thousands of users
refreshing SCO's home page at the same time, crippling the site.
"This showed the bad boys the virus works... if you want to do something
like this, you can," Hypponen said.
He said while the virus was effective against smaller companies, an attack
on Microsoft would likely fail as the firm's site was built for heavy use.
Plus, the strain of the virus is less potent than the one used against SCO.
Hypponen also said MyDoom could also prove to be a smokescreen, leaving the
door open for future use of the infected computers by the virus writer.
"It is creating a back door to a million computers in the world at the same
time, which could be used to do lots of nasty things, especially sending
spam," he said.
Hypponen said companies have some options when trying to guard against or
mitigate the effects of an attack.
One route is to hire Web hosting firms specializing in defending against
such attacks. If all else fails, companies have little option but to pull
the site from the Web.
But with viruses increasingly well-hidden, Hypponen said the responsibility
for protection ultimately will come down to technology firms because people
have proven they cannot resist clicking on mysterious attachments.
"I've lost my faith in education. It never helps, people will never
learn... They will click on everything," he said.
"We really have to take security to a higher level, and take the
responsibility away from the users... (People) have to be automatically
secured by someone else," he said.
Zipped Files Can Zap Antivirus Apps
E-mail users who were slow to update their antivirus software last week may
have been surprised to receive a flood of e-mail messages containing .zip
files from long lost acquaintances, business partners, and complete
strangers.
The e-mail was sent by the recent Mydoom e-mail worm. The .zip attachments
were evidence of what antivirus experts say is a new trend in virus writing
circles: using compressed .zip files to hide viruses and elude detection by
antivirus engines.
.Zip files are containers for one or more compressed files. Using programs
like WinZip for Windows or Unzip for Unix, users compact files they want to
store or transfer to others. The files must then be decompressed - or
"unzipped" - before they can be viewed.
Long a staple of Internet and office communications, the compressed .zip
file has become embroiled in an arms race between virus writers and
antivirus technology companies, experts say.
"We're definitely seeing a trend," says Alex Shipp, antivirus technology
expert at MessageLabs. "It really took off in 2003. As soon as one virus
was successful with technology like this, other virus writers took notice."
Virus authors learned long ago to hide their creations in e-mail file
attachments, often disguising viruses as Windows screen saver (.scr) files
or Windows program information (.pif) files, says Mike Hrabik, chief
technology officer of Solutionary, a managed security services company in
Omaha, Nebraska.
While .zip files were occasionally used to mask virus payloads, the
practice wasn't common in virus writing circles because .zip, unlike .scr
and .pif files, required separate software to be installed on the receiving
system before the files could be opened and run on ubiquitous Windows
machines, he says.
All that changed with the release of Microsoft's Windows XP operating
system, which includes native support for opening .zip files. That allows
virus writers to count on users being able to unzip their attachment and
open the virus file stored inside, Shipp says.
Gerhard Eschelbeck of security vulnerability scanning company Qualys
agrees, saying that embedded support for .zips in modern systems makes them
a rich target for worms like Mydoom.
In switching to.zips, virus authors were also picking up on trends in
legitimate e-mail traffic to hide their own malicious creations, Shipp
says.
"When corporations started blocking .exe [executable] files to prevent
viruses from coming into their environment, people who wanted to send .exes
back and forth started zipping them before they sent them. Virus writers
noticed that and took advantage of it," he says.
Unlike .scrs and .pifs, which have no use in legitimate exchanges, .zip
files are an important business tool that many individuals and
organizations use to transfer large file. That makes it difficult for
companies to strip them out of e-mail messages without affecting employees'
work, experts say.
"For the most part, .zips are effective ways to send files, so blocking
them is not something you want to do because it will break other
functionality," says Craig Schmugar, antivirus research manager at Network
Associates' McAfee antivirus unit.
The files have other advantages for virus authors, as well, says Vipul Ved
Prakash, founder and chief scientist at antispam company Cloudmark of San
Francisco.
For mass mailing worms like Mydoom, zipping the virus payload makes it
smaller and enables the worm to mail out more copies of itself in the same
length of time than it could with uncompressed .scr, .pif, or .exe files,
Prakash says.
Zipping also changes the unique signature on the virus attachment, making
it harder for antivirus engines to detect the malicious program, he says.
Eighty percent of the Mydoom samples that were submitted to Cloudmark from
its SpamNet network of 800,000 users had .zip attachments, Prakash says.
Malicious hackers are also finding other ways to maximize increased .zip
file use with viruses.
A recent security advisory from AERAsec Network Services and Security GmbH
in Hohenbrunn, Germany, found that many antivirus engines are vulnerable
to denial of service attacks from so-called "decompression bombs," in
which gigabytes of data are zipped into very small files.
Antivirus engines that try to unzip these bombs often crash when trying to
handle the huge amount of data stored in them, AERAsec researchers warn.
While decompression bombs have been around since the 1980s, many software
products, including antivirus engines, still do not detect such attacks,
says Harald Geiger of AERAsec.
But.zips are not a magic bullet for virus authors. Most antivirus programs
can open and analyze the contents of .zip files, flagging any files in a
.zip that match known viruses, says Schmugar.
In the end, there are no easy answers to the.zip file problem, experts
agree.
Solutionary publishes a list of 20 recommended file extensions that should
be blocked, including .pif and .scr, Hrabik says.
For others, such as Microsoft Word DOC files and Adobe PDF files, companies
should block specific file names that are known to be associated with virus
payloads, he says.
Best practices for companies should include scanning inside of .zip files
and using extension blocking on files contained in the archives, says NAI's
Schmugar.
"Security is always a trade-off," says Cloudmark's Prakash. "You can't just
stop receiving .exe and .zip files from people, because most of them are
useful."
Companies need to balance business needs with security when setting up
policies for files like .zips, he says.
Security policies that attach a trust level to certain e-mail senders
outside and inside the company could be effective at blocking malicious
.zip attachments. Better user education that addresses bad habits like
forwarding executable attachments could also help, Prakash says.
Congress Eyes Internet Fraud Crackdown
Congress is expanding its focus on the growing business of online fraud
with the introduction of new legislation that would mandate stiffer
sentences for anyone who commits a crime using a Web site registered under
a false name.
The "Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act," sponsored by Reps. Lamar
Smith (R-Texas) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.), would add as much as seven
years to prison sentences handed out to anyone committing fraud through a
Web site registered under a false name or contact in formation. And it
would permit copyright owners to seek larger monetary damages from people
who falsify their registration information to run Web sites that distribute
copyrighted material without permission.
"The Government must play a greater role in punishing those who conceal
their identities online, particularly when they do so in furtherance of a
serious federal criminal offense or in violation of a federally protected
intellectual property right," Smith said at a hearing on the topic today.
Smith and Berman drafted the bill after receiving complaints from the
entertainment and software industries that much of their material is made
available for free on Web sites whose owners are impossible to track down
because their domain name registrations often contain made-up names like
"John Doe" and phone numbers like "123-4567."
The information is stored in public "whois" databases that are run by
registrars, the businesses that sell Internet addresses. The Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the
Internet's addressing system under an agreement with the U.S. government,
says registrars must require their customers to submit accurate information
when they sign up for an address.
The proposal could run up against opposition from privacy advocates who
say that information like home addresses and telephone numbers should not
be made available if the registrant does not want it revealed.
They say that the information would make the databases a welcome hunting
ground for unscrupulous marketers, identity thieves and stalkers.
"Because of the way whois is currently structured, there are a lot of
reasons why users might submit false information that have nothing to do
with copyright infringement," said Michael Steffen, a policy analyst at the
Center for Democracy and Technology.
The CDT said that access some personal contact information should be
restricted to law enforcement officers and copyright owners.
Defending the rights of domain owners to submit false or incomplete
information to domain registrars, Marv Johnson, an attorney with the
American Civil Liberties Union, noted that the U.S. Constitution
"recognizes that you have a right to anonymous communication."
The bill would not affect people who are trying to safeguard their privacy
because it only makes it a crime to submit false registration data when it
is done to help commit a crime, said Mark Bohannon, senior vice president
for public policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, which
supports the bill.
Bohannon added that ICANN should enforce its policy of terminating
contracts with domain name holders whose information is found to be
inaccurate, but "is either unable or unwilling" to do so. Intellectual
property groups have complained for several years that ICANN has not
enforced its policy.
ICANN "takes these issues very seriously" but has not decided whether to
support the bill, said spokesman Kieran Baker.
Police Raid Kazaa Offices
Investigators working for the Australian Recording Industry Association
raided the offices of Sharman Networks, makers of Kazaa peer-to-peer
file-sharing software, Friday searching for evidence linking the company to
copyright infringement, the company says.
The company was served with a "search and seize" order issued by a judge at
the Federal Court of Australia. The homes of two Sharman executives were
also searched, according to Sharman.
The company's Cremorne, Australia, headquarters was raided by Music
Industry Piracy Investigations, a branch of the Australian Recording
Industry Association (ARIA) early Friday morning, local time, says Rich
Chernela, a Sharman spokesperson.
The search relates to legal proceedings in Australia and was part of a much
larger operation that included searches of Australian universities as well
as facilities owned by local Internet service provider Telestra, Chernela
says, citing news reports.
"It sounds like they really took a shotgun approach," he says.
The raid was not related to Sharman's ongoing legal fight against
entertainment industry groups the Recording Industry Association of America
and Motion Picture Association of America in the U.S., Sharman says.
The Australian Record Industry Association posted an undated statement on
its Web page saying that it "supports the proceedings recently commenced
by the record industry against Kazaa."
"ARIA supports the industry's move to stop the illegal behavior of file
sharing networks. The a??free ride' simply can't continue indefinitely at
the expense of the owners and creators of the music," the organization
says, in a statement attributed to Stephen Peach, chief executive officer
of ARIA.
In its statement, Sharman labels the search "an extraordinary waste of
time, money, and resources," and an attempt by the recording industry to
disrupt the company's business. "It is a gross misrepresentation of
Sharman's business to suggest that the company in any way facilitates or
encourages copyright infringement," the company says.
The raids may be less about gathering information than sending a message
to parties who contribute to the illegal music swapping problem, says
Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"This move is consistent with the music industry's generally held view that
[file swapping] is a completely illegal activity and that they will use any
legal means to impede it," he says.
Controversy Erupts over Apple Safari Update
Moving forward in the development of Mac-only software, Apple has released
an upgraded Safari browser, version 1.2. This newest browser is available
as a free download.
While the upgrade includes significant enhancements, its release has
produced at least a murmur of complaint - and perhaps a good bit more -
among Apple users.
The new release requires the most recent version of the Apple operating
system, Mac OS X 10.3, code named "Panther." That has left some Apple
faithful wondering why the new update was not made backwards compatible
with OS X 10.2, known as "Jaguar," which still is used by many. Jaguar
users will be restricted to using the previous Safari release.
Apple's decision was necessary, Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg
told NewsFactor. "At a certain point, the company is only going to be able
to support its newest initiatives on its newest operating systems." Other
software companies often make similar decisions, he noted.
"If users want the full functionality of Windows Media 9, they have to use
it on Windows XP, not Windows 2000 or Windows 98," he noted.
Clearly, this new Safari update offers some useful new tools. Most
significantly, it includes what Apple refers to as "improved compatibility"
with Web sites and Web applications.
Earlier versions of Safari were unable to access certain features of sites
that were optimized for Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Since IE has
a greater than 90 percent share of the browser market - causing site
developers to design specifically for it - other browser developers are at
a competitive disadvantage.
"I know that folks have found greater compatibility with certain sites that
were previously grumpy about Safari," Gartenberg said of the new release.
"It shows that Apple is taking seriously the feedback it's getting in terms
of bug reports and using them to make a better browsing experience."
Safari 1.2 also includes support for personal certificate authentication,
an important security feature. Its new keyboard-navigation capability means
a Web surfer would virtually never need a mouse to navigate the Internet.
Users of 1.2 can use the "resume download" feature to continue paused
downloads at a later time. And the new browser supports sites that use
LiveConnect for communication between JavaScript and Java applets. This
function requires users to have Java 1.4.2.
Based on statistics on the Apple site, Safari 1.2 surfs blazingly faster
than competing browsers, loading an HTML page in one third the time that IE
does.
The Safari browser has earned kudos from users and analysts alike since its
release in early 2003. Features like a pop-up blocker and tabbed windows
drove millions of Apple users to download the free browser. "Safari is an
excellent product, and it's the best browser on the Mac right now,"
Macworld editor in chief Jason Snell told NewsFactor.
But consternation over Apple's decision to create Safari 1.2 only for its
latest version of Panther has prompted some Apple users to post complaints
on Mac-related message boards. (To upgrade to Mac's latest OS X update
requires many users to pay US$129.)
Some note that Microsoft has discontinued IE for Mac development, which
will force Apple users to rely on Mac-only browsers as the current IE
becomes obsolete.
But Gartenberg pointed to the many viable options that remain for Mac
users. "When you look at the feature sets, it's not that users of Jaguar or
earlier operating systems are overly limited or have lost browsing
functionality," he said, "but at a certain point Apple has got to push
people onto the latest and greatest in order to support them properly."
U.S. Appeals Court Hears Key File-Sharing Case
In a landmark case over online piracy, a federal appeals court on Tuesday
considered whether Napster-like Internet services can be shut down if their
users swap unauthorized copies of movies and music.
Lawyers for the entertainment industry squared off against attorneys for
file-sharing services Grokster and Morpheus before a three-judge panel of
the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena to revisit a key ruling
by a lower court.
That decision by a federal judge in Los Angeles rejected a bid by film
studios and record labels to shut down Grokster and Morpheus, saying the
file-sharing services enjoyed the same legal protection as the makers of
videocassette and DVD recorders.
That ruling in turn relied on a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held
that Sony Corp. was not liable for copyright infringement by selling VCRs
that allowed users to tape TV shows - a legal finding that became known as
the "Betamax Doctrine."
"While the odds are against them, they (music and movie makers) have a lot
to gain. If they could get a win, it would be a huge win," said Evan Cox,
an intellectual property attorney in the San Francisco office of Covington
and Burling.
Music companies claim song swapping has caused lower sales of CDs because
customers copy their free digital music files onto blank CDs, which
violates U.S. copyright law.
Film studios believe if they do not stop piracy now, it will hurt them in
the long run since downloading digital movies is expected to grow more
common with the spread of broadband Internet connections.
Until the April 2003 ruling by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson, the
record and movie companies had been successful in pursuing a legal course
to shut down sites like Grokster and Morpheus, such as the song-swapping
pioneer Napster.
After the ruling the record industry shifted tactics, filing suit against
thousands of individuals for copyright infringement - a move that risked
alienating music fans.
On Tuesday, lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America,
National Music Publishers' Association. and Motion Picture Association. of
America, were prepared to argue to the appellate court that the initial
ruling in favor of Grokster and Morpheus was flawed.
Attorneys for Grokster and Streamcast Networks Inc., which distributes the
Morpheus software, will counter that Wilson correctly applied the Sony
Betamax ruling.
In the Sony case, the Supreme Court said VCRs had substantial uses besides
the taping of copyrighted material and that those uses outweighed the
copying function in question.
"The Sony Betamax case created an exception for somebody who makes a
product and releases it but isn't too much involved with the use of that
product," Cox said.
Similarly, Wilson ruled that Grokster and Morpheus simply provide the
software for song and movie swapping, but do not dictate how the software
is used. The software also had other substantial, non-infringing uses,
Wilson said.
In their appeal, attorneys for the music and movie makers will argue that
the software is the underlying reason users flock to the Grokster and
Morpheus Web sites where the operators reap profits from advertising.
They will also argue that the Web sites regularly apply software filters
to block out pornography, computer viruses and bogus files, and there is
no reason the Web sites cannot apply similar filters to screen for
copyrighted material.
What's Next for Linux
Linux is everywhere. it's in your Web server. It's in your data center.
It's in your desktop, your laptop and your handheld. It may soon be in your
car and home appliances. It's being used by NASA to operate the Mars rover.
There may yet be enterprise IT executives still wondering when to jump in,
but chances are, Linux is already being used somewhere in their
organization. They need not look any further for a proof of concept than
e-commerce company Amazon.com Inc., which, as an early adopter of Linux,
began deploying it in 2000. Now, Linux runs its entire infrastructure.
"Linux is pervasive," said Ross Mauri, general manager of e-business on
demand at IBM in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "Everyone was always pointing to the
future. But we've stopped pointing. The future is here."
But now that Linux has arrived, where do we go from here? Executives
contacted by eWEEK editors at LinuxWorld here last month were not as sure.
Linux will no doubt extend deeper into markets already running Linux, but
will Linux ever reach the holy grail of challenging Microsoft Corp. on the
desktop? Leading Linux luminaries such as Linus Torvalds and his right-hand
man, Andrew Morton, believe 2004 will be the year of the Linux desktop.
"In the early 1980s, we saw the transition to the PC, but I believe Linux
has now matured to the point where it will be taking over as the next form
of computing," said Sam Greenblatt, senior vice president and chief
architect of Computer Associates International Inc.'s Linux Technology
Group, in Islandia, N.Y. "We are into the Linux generation."
A number of new technologies underscore Greenblatt's views about Linux's
rosy future, such as Looking Glass, a three-dimensional, multimodal desktop
under development at Sun Microsystems Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif. The
technology would help users move away from the Windows paradigm of today,
Greenblatt said. "The Open Source Development Labs [Inc.] has also
announced the Desktop Management Task Force, and we will all contribute to
this. But Sun and Novell [Inc.], since its acquisition of open-source
developer Ximian, will both be playing active roles on that task force,"
he said.
Consumers may not soon replace Windows with Linux on home PCs, but there's
plenty of evidence that Linux is challenging Windows in many other client
environments. Greenblatt, for example, used a Linux-based Sharp Electronics
Corp. Zaurus 5600 PDA to run much of his LinuxWorld keynote presentation.
Meanwhile, automaker DaimlerChrysler Corp. is working on a Linux-based
management and navigation system for its cars.
"DaimlerChrysler recently demonstrated an S-class Mercedes equipped with
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System services in Berlin. Applications
demonstrated included radio, navigation, maintenance services, Internet
access [including e-mail and Web browsing], an MP3 player, and games.
Computer Associates is working with DaimlerChyrlser on the management,"
Greenblatt said.
Dave Dargo, vice president of Oracle Corp.'s Linux Program Office, in
Redwood Shores, Calif., said he believes Linux is on the verge of achieving
mass-market enterprise capability. The 2.6 kernel was a great catalyst for
the consolidation of many changes made after the production 2.4 kernel was
released, Dargo said, so a lot of the work that was done in the 2.4 kernel
around enterprise scalability, reliability and stability is now part of the
2.6 kernel.
"And all of those resources that were spent making 2.4 ready for the
enterprise will be freed up once 2.6 is available, and [they will] be able
to start working on the next set of things. As Red Hat [Inc.] and [Novell
Inc.'s] SuSE [Linux] both release 2.6 kernels, there will still be room
for them to add new features that make it more robust," Dargo said. "This
is an exciting time for all of us, and there is a sense of purpose, destiny
and challenge among us all."
Indeed, large enterprises continue to invest in Linux where it performs
best-on the server. The Weather Channel Enterprises Inc., in Atlanta, a
longtime Linux shop, recently refreshed its server technology with 110
Dell Inc. PowerEdge servers running SuSE Linux. The upgrades allowed
Weather. com to improve the reliability and speed of data to its customers
during severe blizzards in December. The site served more than 34 million
page views in one day-most of them dynamically generated-at an average
response time of 1.31 seconds.
"Whether our customers are experiencing severe weather, planning a vacation
or just trying to decide when to play a round of golf, they've come to
depend on the information we provide," said Dan Agronow, vice president of
technology at Weather.com. "[The Linux servers] will help us continue to be
one of the most reliable and popular sources of weather information on the
Web."
Others, such as Red Hat's Paul Cormier, in Westford, Mass., cautioned the
recently released Linux 2.6 production kernel is not quite ready for the
enterprise and said its implementation into shipping distributions could
be a year away. But looking at the future, Cormier is bullish, saying on
the server side it was "like a freight train moving."
Spam Has Not Been Canned by New US Law
A new US law aimed at curbing the flood of unwanted e-mails, or spam, has
had little effect since going into effect January 1, according to a survey.
E-mail security firm Postini said spam accounted for 79 percent of all the
e-mail it processed in January, compared with 80 percent in December.
That suggests minimal impact from the so-called "CAN-SPAM Act" - which
stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and
Marketing Act.
The law stops short of banning unsolicited e-mail. But it enables Internet
users remove their e-mail addresses from mailing lists and imposes for
heavy fines and prison terms for those sending messages of a fraudulent or
pornographic nature without warning recipients.
"The CAN-SPAM Act appears to have had little immediate effect on the amount
of unwanted e-mail offers," said Andrew Lochart, director of marketing for
Postini.
Another firm involved in anti-spam technology, Brightmail, estimated this
week that 60 percent of all Internet e-mail sent in January 2004 was spam,
a two percent increase from the company's measurement of 58 percent in
December.
But it said the CAN-SPAM will play an important role in the fight against
spam.
"It is important to understand that legislation is only one component of a
holistic solution to the worldwide spam epidemic," said Enrique Salem,
president and chief executive of Brightmail.
"Creating the best anti-spam technology is the key to winning the fight
against spam."
A third firm, SurfControl, cited a proliferation of "new and improved" spam
that use the new law as an excuse to market suspect services, including
offers of "special spam removal" services.
One such service calls on users to pay 21.95 dollars to unsubscribe to
pornography and spam-related mailing lists by clicking on a link.
"Unfortunately, many spammers aren't really doing anything different than
they
did before the CAN-SPAM Act was passed - they're just creating the
illusion they are complying with the law and using it to market or commit
fraud," said Susan Larson, SurfControl's vice president of Global Content.
She noted that spammers are providing a physical address and opt-out
mechanisms required by the new law. However, the addresses are often
questionable and the opt-out mechanisms unclear and in some cases, quite
cumbersome.
"While some spam is very obvious, it's getting tougher to identify the
legitimate e-mail marketers from the really bad actors who continue to send
spam that appears legal," said Larson. "E-mail inboxes are still being
jammed with messages that are really just scams or contain content tricks
that seek to steal e-mail addresses and spam you again."
Teen Watches as eBay Bids Climb for His
Book of Legal Threats from Microsoft
The teen who laughed in the face of Microsoft's $10 offer for his cheeky
mikerowesoft.com domain name kept cool Thursday playing the Xbox the
company eventually coughed up in compensation.
In between games, Mike Rowe clicked onto eBay to watch the bids on a book
of his legal correspondences with Microsoft climb with just hours before
the auction deadline. Bidding closed Thursday night with some last-second
entries pushing the prize up to just over $1,000 US. "So I'm happy with
that," said Rowe, 17. "It's not the 20 million that it was before, but
it'll do."
Rowe remembered when, after he first posted the documents, the bids began
topping the million dollar mark and he hysterically wondered how he would
spend it all.
"But then it went up to like, $20 million, and I knew it was a joke, they
weren't real bids, so I deleted them all and started asking for deposits to
make sure I had serious bidders," the quiet kid said, not trying to hide
the bitterness.
Legitimate collectors from Canada and the U.S. dutifully mailed him cheques
for $500, which he promised to return if they don't win the auction.
Rowe's learning how to manage the storm of hype he's in, making sure it
doesn't burn him and trying to spin it out as long as he can.
The Victoria teen's battle with Microsoft rocketed him from the sleepy
world of his Victoria high school and his parents's house into a glaring
international media spotlight.
Offers for computer consulting jobs have come flooding in, he's partnered
with a Princeton University marketing company and there's talk of a TV
movie.
But his story had a lonely start.
Rowe holed up in his room and plotted the web site of his dreams, the
perfect platform to launch a sexy e-design career.
He spent his 16th year painstakingly constructing it. Then he was hit with
his best idea yet, the icing for his internet cake: a hilarious domain name
that was sure to get some, if unintentional, traffic.
He registered mikerowesoft.com last August, and exploded onto the computer
company's radar as someone who might try to use the domain to fleece them
of a small fortune.
"They e-mailed me a letter asking me to give up my domain name because it
infringed on their trademark. I e-mailed them back saying I didn't want to
give up all the hard work I put into it.
"They said they would give me all of the out-of-pocket expenses for the
site, which they said was $10. I said 'No, I want $10,000.' "
Rowe thought he had them, until an intimidating 25-page letter landed on
his doorstep written in ominous legal jargon and quoting trademark law.
Angry at the thought of having to come up with another winning address for
his site, he updated it telling anyone who might care to know how Microsoft
was bullying him.
"I explained how much work I put into my site and that I didn't want give
up. I got business cards printed up for it and everything.
"That's when the media picked up on it."
The attention mushroomed swiftly, with hackers jumping to Rowe's side and
sending him thousands of dollars to mount a legal defence.
Stories ran across North America, painting the computer company as heavy
handed and creating a public relations mess for them to wade through.
"Typically they use a more nuanced strategy to deal with these kinds of
cases," said Charles Weinberg, a marketing expert with the University of
British Columbia's Sauder School of Business.
"You don't often hear about them and they are settled in a much quieter
way, but this one blew up on them.
"Microsoft created a lot of negative publicity for themselves, but from
their point of view, they have to be very careful about how much they offer
the kid because it could set a precedent."
Rowe's site, which had averaged four hits a day, swelled with visits from
an unabating stream of supporters who elevated him to hero status.
Suddenly he was the little guy taking on the ruthless Microsoft for
computer users everywhere and the computer company realized they better
change their tactic fast.
Microsoft's Jim Desler put on his nicest face and conceded that while
Microsoft has to take its trademark seriously, it may have in this case
taken it too seriously.
"As well as ourselves," Desler graciously added in an interview last month.
The company put itself in a teenage headspace and took another run at
negotiations with Rowe, now flush with an $8,000 defence fund provided by
his loyal fans.
"We had a conference call in my lawyer's office and they offered me an
Xbox, five games, a certified professional Microsoft training course, and a
trip to Redmond, Wash., for the annual technology fest," Rowe said.
"They were nice. They joked around and said I was a nightmare for their
public relations department."
Playing his new Xbox, he's no longer bitter about being forced to give up
his domain name. He's already moved on and is busy tweaking his new site
mikeroweforums.com.
"They were never trying to bring me down. They were just protecting their
trademark," said Rowe who is now almost famous at his high school where he
has just begun the last semester of Grade 12.
In anticipation of the end of his five minutes of fame, he said he plans to
put the money he gets from the auctioning off of his letters from Microsoft
towards university.
The $8,000 in his legal defence is being returned to the fans that turned
on him when he settled and the rest will be donated to charity.
Pentagon Cancels Internet Voting System
The Pentagon won't use an Internet voting system for overseas U.S. citizens
this fall because of concerns about its security, an official said
Thursday.
The official, who requested anonymity, said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz made the decision to scrap the system because Pentagon officials
were not certain they could "assure the legitimacy of votes that would be
cast."
Computer security experts who last month reviewed the Secure Electronic
Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE, had urged the Pentagon to
scrap the system, saying it was too vulnerable. The experts said the system
could be penetrated by hackers who could change votes or gather information
about users.
"Internet voting presents far too many opportunities for hackers or even
terrorists to interfere with fair and accurate voting, potentially in ways
impossible to detect," the experts said in a statement Jan. 21. "Such
tampering could alter election results, particularly in close contests."
Despite the concerns, Pentagon officials had said they still planned to use
the system this fall and would test it during Tuesday's South Carolina
primary. But the day before the voting the Pentagon called off the South
Carolina test.
About 6 million U.S. voters live overseas, most of them members of the
military or their relatives.
Bowl Sponsor AOL Seeks Refund
The controversial Super Bowl halftime show, in which Janet Jackson bared a
breast to the chagrin of the NFL, CBS and show producer MTV, has touched
the world's largest Internet service.
America Online has canceled plans to stream on-demand the halftime show
that it reportedly paid $7.5 million to sponsor. The Time Warner-owned firm
is reportedly seeking a refund for all or some of that money. Although AOL
issued a statement distancing itself from what some government officials
are calling a crass halftime performance, a representative declined comment
on TW's desire for compensation from Viacom.
"While AOL was the sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show, we did not
produce it," the company said. "Like the NFL, we were surprised and
disappointed with certain elements of the show. In deference to our
membership and fans, AOL and AOL.com will not be presenting the halftime
show online as originally planned."
The $7.5 million AOL paid to sponsor the halftime show included several ads
for its new TopSpeed service. The sponsorship, therefore, represents a
significant discount to the $2.3 million CBS reportedly charged per
30-second Super Bowl ad.
=~=~=~=
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