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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 05 Issue 13
Volume 5, Issue 13 Atari Online News, Etc. March 28, 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:
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #0513 03/28/03
~ Why's The Dog Barking? ~ People Are Talking! ~ Adam Osborne Dies
~ Fee For Online Mags! ~ Cyber-Activism On War! ~ California Net Tax?
~ HotMail Reduces Mail! ~ Non-English Domains! ~ Linux Gains Ground!
~ ~ Anti-Virus Fights Spam ~
-* Finally, A Good Use For Spam *-
-* Junk Fax Law Could Help Fight Spam! *-
-* Nintendo Pins Overseas Hopes on the GBA SP *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, Spring is finally here!! The weather has been terrific; and the snow
in my yard is all gone! Spring cleaning has started in my neighborhood; and
it's an enjoyable sight. Pretty soon I'll be out getting the gardens and
lawn prepared for their annual rites of Spring. It's a great time of year!
This year our major project will be to work on the house. We plan to
enlarge (or replace) the kitchen, and do some other renovations. I've been
putting it off for too long, but it's time. In other words, my wife says it
had better happen, or else!
Computing and web news has been sparse all month, surprisingly. Whether
it's due to the economy or not, who knows. And I haven't seen anything
related to our favorite Atari systems for awhile, either. Maybe it's all
due to the winter taking its toll, but rejuvenation will occur soon. In
the meantime, I'll daydream of going barefoot in the grass, flowers
blooming, the barbecue cooking, and longer days.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. Another week has come and gone, and things
are just as they were last week... different.
There are lots of things going on these days. Some of them we all know
about, some of them some of us know about, and some of them none of us
know about. I was a bit dismayed to hear that someone has been messing
(actually, SEVERAL someones doing several kinds of messing) around with
Al Jazeera's website.
I mean c'mon people. Think back to the days before everybody and their
brother could get onto the internet. When it was just those of us who
knew a bit about computers and a bit about things like online services,
modems, and user accounts. The news of the coming connectivity instilled
in us a feeling that the world would soon be smaller and we'd all find it
easier to understand one another and resolve things.
And for a while, that's how it was. Sort of a geek utopia. I can remember
chatting with several people that I'd never have had the opportunity to
talk with otherwise and thinking, "it won't be long now until we all get
to express our ideas and get to hear the other guy's ideas and realize
that we all just want to be ourselves".
Yeah, well, what can I say? I was young and foolish. <grin>
I don't mean to take what's going on lightly. Just the opposite, in fact.
But I probably have a different perspective than you, than my boss, than
my neighbor, etc.
It won't happen this time around, or the next, but eventually we WILL
come to understand one another and perhaps... just perhaps... respect one
another every so-often.
Okay, enough of that. Let's talk about something with "Atari" in the title.
Thanks to a little bit of traffic on the UseNet last week, there are now
66 members of the TEAM ATARI SETI@home group. We've contributed almost
135 years of CPU time to searching more than 100,000 work units
containing radio signals from outer space, looking for a signal from an
extraterrestrial intelligence... kinda like Jody Foster in CONTACT
without the big budget. It's really a cool project, and worth looking
into. Check it out at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu
Info about TEAM ATARI can be found at:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_21046.html
Well, let's get to the news and stuff from the UseNet.
From the comp.sys.atari.st NewsGroup
====================================
Jared Addington asks for help diagnosing his sick Falcon:
"Recently my Falcon received an unexpected electrical jolt. Now when the
power is turned on, it comes up with a white screen just like it would
normally but nothing else ever happens. No Atari logo or RAM check ever
occurs. The power supply, & HD seem OK. Any ideas at all would be
appreciated."
Barrie at Keychange tells Jared:
"You need to find someone with a Falcon test cartridge."
Jared tells Barrie:
"I've heard of those, but I don't know how they work...That will work
even though the computer does nothing?"
Mark Bedingfield adds:
"I had a Falcon that did this. It turned out to be oxidisation on the ROM
chip. Best cleaned with an eraser."
Dennis Bishop asks about making things available on the web:
"I would like to put the SIAR's newsletter online for downloading, but have no
idea of how to do it, anyone give me some help?"
Greg Goodwin tells Dennis:
"What format is the newsletter in? If it is (mostly) text, HTML would
be the recommended method. If it is not too long, you can scan the
pages as GIFs (use about 75 DPI -- that's all the screen shows anyhow)
and place in a very simple web page (Just make sure that you warn
people that this page is BIG!). If it is more complicated, I'd
recommend PDF format if you don't want to learn more advanced HTML."
Dennis tells Greg:
"I write the newsletter using Word Perf.9.0 and it includes images and
stuff, I save it two ways, word perf. and also pdf. both as a multi-page
single file.
I see web sites where you click on a link to download a pdf file, just
not sure who to set it up, I mostly use netscape composer for my web page
writings.
www.starlords.org is the site where I want to set up the DL of newsletter
on."
Stephen Moss jumps in and tells Dennis:
"A normal link should do it eg...
<a href="http://www.starlords.org/directory(s) (if
required)/filename"> Link Text goes here </a>
However integrated systems with a PDF viewer installed (eg windoze)
might run the viewer thus displaying the page instead of just
downloading it as a file for later viewing.
I'm not sure how you would arrange things so that it only ever
downloads the file unseen if that is the only method of downloading
you wanted but the PDF viewer should have a save option if someone
want to keep a permanent copy.
If that does not work just visit the site you you know has a similar
link, click on your browsers "view Source" button and scan the source
code for the link then copy it changing the URL, directories and
filename as appropriate (creating a new blank page and then copying and
pasting their link to it and viewing that pages source code may be
easier than having to scan through someone elses entire page of code),
just hope they did not use Java script!"
Guy Harrison adds:
"Also worth mentioning the following...
IE : right-click on url/link "Save Target As".
NS : right-click on url/link "Save Link As"
Opera : right-click on url/link "Save target as"
Dillo : right-click on url/link "Save Link As"
Lynx : select url/link, press "d"
...all override default browser behaviour and download the file
under the link verbatim."
Dennis tells Guy:
"I had forgotten about that viewer operation, so what I'll do is put it
up as a ZIP file for DL'ing and offline reading, they'll just need to
unzip it first."
Kersey Graves asks about installing a hard drive:
"I got a Megafile 30 at the swap meet with a cable. It powers up OK, the
green and yellow lights come on, then after a while the yellow goes out and
the green remains. I can heard the disk inside rotating with a steady
whirr.
I have various 1040 STs and one Mega 2 ST. (Musician, you can tell No
matter to which ST I hook up this !@#$$ hard drive, the computers just
don't take notice of it. I can install a C drive icon on the Desktop, but
whenever I double click the icon, I get the following error message:
"The drive you specified does not exist. Check the drive's identifier or
change the drive identifier in the DISK INFORMATION dialog."
What the heck does this mean? There is no "disk information dialog"
anywhere that I can see. If I select the C drive icon and go to "File /
Show Info", I get this same error message again. How was this supposed to
work?"
Edward Baiz tells Kersey:
"You need to install a Hard Disk driver for the ST. The best one is
HDDriver. A downloadable demo of it can be found at:
http://www.seimet.de/index_english.html "
Well folks, I'm done here 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 - Nintendo Pins Hopes On GBA SP!
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Nintendo Hooks Overseas Hopes on New Game Boy
Japanese video game maker Nintendo said on Tuesday it had invested heavily
in a redesigned version of its top-selling Game Boy Advance to boost sales
in the vital but struggling European and American markets.
In Europe, Nintendo has shipped 400,000 units of Game Boy Advance SP, an
upgrade of the Game Boy Advance (GBA), ahead of its March 28 launch. The
new device had a March 23 U.S. debut.
The company will spend 30 million euros in Europe alone to market the
product, which features a rechargeable battery, a brightly lit screen and
a sleeker metallic-look finish to appeal to an older consumer base.
"We've seen a significant number of pre-orders, probably between thirty and
forty percent of the initial shipment figure as of last week," David Gosen,
managing director of Nintendo of Europe, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Nintendo has a lot riding on the pocket-sized device, which carries a
suggested retail price of $138.20 in Europe and $99 in the U.S.
Last month, the company forecast sales of 20 million Game Boy Advance
machines for the business year starting on April 1, an increase of one
third from the current business year.
Hitting the target is crucial as sales of its flagship GameCube console
continue to disappoint retailers. Earlier this month, UK retailer Dixons
slashed the unit's price by $47.35 in an effort to shift inventory amid
slow demand.
Various market estimates suggest GameCube is losing ground in the U.S. and
Europe to Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox, making a strong
showing from GBA SP all the more important.
The weak performance of GameCube has prompted concerns among investors. The
stock, which closed down 3.7 on Tuesday in Tokyo at 9,720 yen ($81.27), is
down nearly 17 percent since the start of the year.
To rekindle European interest in GameCube, Nintendo is including a sales
voucher with each GBA SP, entitling buyers to a 50-euro discount on
GameCube.
"It's one of the ways we see taking our Nintendo fan base across different
platforms," Gosen said.
During the past weekend, major U.S. electronics retailers heavily promoted
the new GBA SP, with many dangling a free game or a bundle package that
included accessories like a carrying case to stoke demand.
First-day U.S. sales figures were not immediately available but Nintendo
claimed to have done "exceedingly well" for the day. Unofficial tallies out
of Japan suggest the unit is selling well there since its Feb. 14 debut.
One U.S. retailer, CompUSA, offered the device for $69 as part of an
anniversary promotion for its stores. For the most part, retailers honored
the $99 price, an amount that some have questioned given that GameCube
sells for $150 in the U.S.
"The price point at $99 is a little high, especially when you compare it
to where the (major consoles) are," THQ Inc. Chief Executive Brian Farrell
said last month. THQ is a major Game Boy publisher.
Pricing concerns aside, industry observers and reviewers note that Game
Boy Advance SP has generated the all-important buzz factor, particularly
among the older demographic of twenty-somethings that Nintendo is trying
to cash in on.
"From what I've come across, it's been pretty well anticipated by retailers
and publishers. Nintendo is reflecting that in its guidance," said a
London-based gaming analyst.
Others are already talking about the "Game Boy impact" - a carry-over
effect that could bring consumers back to Nintendo, the most established
brand in video games, which has lost some of its luster of late.
"I think SP will be a positive catalyst," the analyst said.
Ever since its introduction in 1989, the Game Boy has defeated all comers,
even if some rival products were arguably more powerful, such as Sega's
Game Gear.
Later this year, Nintendo will compete head-on with N-Gage, a mobile phone
and game gadget from Finnish heavyweight Nokia, which has so far failed to
impress reviewers.
Nokia still poses a legitimate threat, considering its marketing and
distribution prowess and its status as a brand of choice for older
consumers.
The key for GBA SP, and Nintendo as a whole, is whether it can attract
buyers above the age of 16, a group that is proving elusive for the company
at the moment. "Undoubtedly, this is the crucial test for SP," the analyst
said.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Adam Osborne, Portable Computer Pioneer, Dead at 64
Adam Osborne, whose successes and failures pioneering the first portable
computer became one of Silicon Valley's great cautionary tales, is dead at
64 after a long illness.
Osborne, a British immigrant and long-time resident of Berkeley,
California, died in his sleep in Kodiakanal, a village in southern India
last Tuesday, his sister, Katya Douglas, told Reuters on Monday.
His death ended a decade-long battle with an organic brain disorder that
caused him to suffer an endless series of mini-strokes.
The popularity of the 23-pound luggable computer he introduced in 1981 made
his start-up, Osborne Computer Corp., the fastest-growing company up to
that time, thanks in part to his willingness to cut the cost of computers
nearly in half compared with rivals such as first-to-market Apple Computer.
But the rigors of "hypergrowth" -- a term coined to describe his company's
rise -- ended in an even quicker plunge into bankruptcy two years later,
making Osborne's legacy a textbook study of the perils of undisciplined
growth.
A later generation of dot-com entrepreneurs would come to repeat his
mistakes on an even more spectacular scale.
Friends and former colleagues said they remembered Osborne as a man
brimming with ideas, an engineer turned early computer publisher, then
pioneering computer executive, for whom concepts ruled and business was
secondary.
"My appreciation of him was that he was too much of an entrepreneur and
not enough of a jack-of-all-trades," recalled Lee Felsenstein, another
co-founder of Osborne Computer.
"He had the perfect personality to become a dot-com billionaire," but
arrived too early, said John C. Dvorak, a columnist for PC Magazine. Dvorak
helped Osborne write the first Silicon Valley CEO confessional following
Osborne Computer's collapse, inspiring a mini-genre since then.
Born in Thailand to British expatriate parents, Osborne spent his childhood
in southern India, the son of an author of comparative theology who helped
popularize Eastern religion to the West.
After attending public school and university in England, he married and
moved to the United States to pursue a career in chemical engineering with
Shell Oil. He later became a U.S. citizen. Osborne gambled on a new career
in technical writing and publishing during the formative years of the PC
industry.
Seeing an opportunity to challenge Apple Computer after its initial success
in 1977, Osborne turned to developing the first commercially viable
portable computer. He received backing from renowned Silicon Valley venture
capitalist Jack Melchor.
In 1981, the company's first year, Osborne sold $5.8 million worth of the
Osborne-1 computer. By the end of 1982, he had sold $68.8 million, or as
many as 10,000 units a month.
Then his classic business misstep occurred. Osborne boasted in early 1983
of an improved second generation of his product -- months before it was
ready to ship. Sales of older models of his portable sewing-machine-sized
computers plummeted.
The inventory build-up that resulted led Osborne Computer to collapse in
September 1983.
"His enthusiasm for the next big thing meant Adam couldn't keep a secret,"
recalled Felsenstein, who lives in Palo Alto, California, where he
continues to work as a computer hardware designer and also working on a
low-cost wireless computer system for villagers in Laos.
Compaq Computer Corp., now a part of Hewlett-Packard Co. picked up where
Osborne left off when Compaq introduced its first product - a portable
computer - in 1983.
Undaunted by his company's failure, Osborne published a memoir of his
experience in 1984 entitled "Hypergrowth." He then jumped into a new
venture he called Paperback Software - based on the idea that software
could be sold like mass-market paperbacks.
That venture ran aground after Paperback was sued by rival Lotus
Development Corp. in a high-profile case that alleged Paperback's
spreadsheet program too closely resembled Lotus' own 1-2-3 program. Osborne
and Paperback parted ways in 1990.
Osborne's health began to decline in 1992, leading him to move to India to
live out the rest of his life with his sister, Katya.
He was buried on Tuesday in a local cemetery near his sister's home, in
Kodiakanal, an isolated village whose closest major city is Chanai.
Osborne married and divorced twice. Survivors include his first wife,
Cynthia Geddes, and their three children, Marc, Paul and Alexandra Osborne,
and his second wife, Barbara Burdick.
Linux Gains Ground In Retailing
Linux is gaining market share in the retail industry. Use of the
open-source operating system to run point-of-sale terminals in North
America increased 185% last year, IHL Consulting Group said in a study
released Wednesday.
Linux is gaining traction particularly within restaurants and "category
killers," megastores such as Home Depot and Toys "R" Us that are thought
to drive small, local stores out of business, says IHL, an independent
business-consulting firm for IT companies focusing on the retail industry.
Nevertheless, with only 4% of the point-of-sale market, Linux has quite a
way to go before it becomes a serious challenger to Microsoft's Windows
and IBM's 4690, which last year had 69% and 17% of total shipments,
respectively.
While many retailers are looking at Linux as an upgrade path for aging DOS
installations, few have made a chainwide decision, the study finds. Because
of the economic slowdown, the point-of-sale market in general has slowed,
with retailers more likely to spend limited IT funds on scanners and
self-checkout systems. Overall, the point-of-sale market in 2002 dropped 2%
from the previous year.
California Moves Closer to Taxing Internet Sales
California, the nation's most populous state, this week took a step closer
to collecting tax on sales of consumer goods over the Internet - a move
rejected by its governor in better budgetary times.
A tax committee of California's Senate on Wednesday approved two bills that
would clear the way for the state to collect sales tax on goods sold by
out-of-state vendors to its residents via the Web, a move that could help
it recoup an estimated $1.75 billion in lost annual tax revenue.
When California's home-grown Internet sector was thriving, California Gov.
Gray Davis was an opponent of online sales taxes, saying they could hamper
the growth of then-booming dot-com companies.
But such concerns have been eclipsed by a recent study finding that
California appears to losing more tax revenues to online sales than any
other state.
As the state looks to plug a $35 billion budget gap over the next 15
months, lawmakers and Davis are taking a second look at Internet sales
taxes.
The first Internet tax bill would require California to join a group of 35
states and the District of Columbia, working to help states tax remote
sellers, including those that operate online and via mail-order.
Members of that group known as the Streamlined Sales Tax Project were key
players in a February deal in which eight major online retailers agreed to
begin collecting taxes on behalf of about three dozen states. As part of
that deal, the vendors were granted amnesty for any prior uncollected
taxes.
California did not participate in that settlement and has remained on the
sidelines on the issue.
"This isn't about 'taxing the Internet,' it's about equity, because people
should be taxed on what they buy, not how they buy it," bill sponsor Sen.
Debra Bowen, a Democrat, said in a statement.
Bowen said the current tax system gives every out-of-state businesses an
instant 7.25 to 8.5 percent price advantage over California-based
retailers, who collect that sales tax at the point of sale depending on
where it is made.
A second pending tax bill would require retailers with "bricks and mortar"
locations in California to collect state sales tax on Internet transactions
with California customers through their online subsidiaries and partners.
California residents are currently required to report and pay such sales
taxes, although few do.
Davis vetoed a similar bill in 2000 - at a time when Internet companies
were still seen as an high-powered engine for economic growth.
Bowen's bill is scheduled to be heard by the Senate Appropriations
Committee in April. A committee hearing for the "bricks and mortar" bill
has not yet been set.
Bowen also penned a separate anti-spam bill approved by committee on
Monday.
That bill would outlaw unsolicited commercial e-mail, commonly known as
"spam," and give people the right to sue spammers for $500 per violation.
The bill also would give judges the right to triple fines in cases where
the sender willfully and knowingly violated California's spam ban.
That bill also is slated to be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee
in April.
Time to Charge for Online Magazines
Time Inc., owned by AOL Time Warner said on Thursday it would charge for
the online editions of 14 of its magazines starting with People and
Entertainment Weekly on Monday.
People and Entertainment Weekly's Internet editions will be out of bounds
to readers except to America Online members, subscribers to the specific
magazines, or people who buy the newsstand edition.
In the following weeks, magazines such as Teen People, Real Simple and In
Style will follow the same route.
The move is part of an announcement planned for Monday by Internet service
provider AOL for new broadband services.
AOL is expected to offer content from different divisions of AOL Time
Warner such as video clips of movies from Warner Brothers to its broadband
members.
It currently has 35 million members, 2.7 million of which access the
Internet via high speed connections.
Court Ruling Could Help Fight Spam
In a legal action that may help combat spam, a federal appeals court has
ruled that a law restricting junk faxes is constitutional. Anti-spam
experts hailed the decision, noting that it creates a legal precedent that
could help create similar legislation banning junk e-mail.
The ruling concerns a federal law known as the Telephone Consumer
Protection Act (TCPA). Enacted in 1991, it expressly prohibits using "any
telephone facsimile machine, computer or other device to send an
unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine."
In March of 2002, the United States District Court in Eastern Missouri
ruled that the TCPA's provision against unsolicited faxes was
unconstitutional. This ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by the state
against two companies that sent unsolicited fax advertisements. The
companies argued that this action was protected by a Supreme Court ruling
that extended free speech protection to commercial messages.
In overturning the 2002 ruling, the Eighth Circuit panel found that
restricting unsolicited fax advertisements is reasonable. Banning
unsolicited fax advertising does not violate the First Amendment's
protection of freedom of speech, the appeals panel said.
Despite the hope the ruling offers to groups advocating anti-spam
legislation, some analysts noted that the battle against junk e-mail
remains tough.
"We do expect federal laws to move forward," said Ari Schwartz, associate
director of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). He added that
spam interests legislators "because there's such an outcry from people."
But "you can't ban all commercial e-mail outright," Schwartz told
NewsFactor. "You have to come up with a way that's constitutional."
Although this can be done, there are numerous concerns, he said - for
example, "How do you define 'unsolicited'?"
Others have raised doubts about the enforceability of such legislation.
"What kind of resources is the government really willing to marshal to
combat spam?" asked Yankee Group analyst J.P. Gownder. "It's
internationalized and it's potentially completely decentralized," he told
NewsFactor.
"I think the regulatory approach is probably not the right approach,"
Gownder concluded.
The Eighth Circuit appeals panel ruled that the TCPA reasonably acts to
prohibit the costs to recipients of so-called junk faxes. The TCPA says
that unsolicited faxes unfairly shift the economic burden onto recipients
by forcing them to pay for the paper and ink such messages require.
Many groups fighting spam argue that junk e-mail puts a similar burden on
recipients. The hours that employees spend handling such e-mail place an
economic burden on corporations, they contend. Additionally, many firms
are forced to invest in anti-spam software.
Gownder said that "probably 40 to 50 percent of all e-mail now is spam,"
adding that spam creates heightened security risks for companies.
As public pressure for federal anti-spam laws mounts, anti-spam groups may
use the Eighth Court's ruling to push for new legislation. There are
currently no federal laws regulating spam, although some states have passed
anti-spam legislation.
Spam experts say that the recent Eighth Circuit Court ruling proves that
an anti-spam law would prove to be constitutional.
CDT's Schwartz noted that "there seems like there will be many attempts"
to pass anti-spam legislation.
"Politicians use this as an issue," Yankee Group's Gownder said. "They
know [spam] makes people angry. But, he added, "Why don't we allow the
spam-blocking technologies to work on a market level rather than a
regulatory level?
"There are maybe ten different technological methods for blocking spam at
the moment. They're either going to have to rely on that, or they're going
to have to send police officers over to where the server is located," he
said.
Adding momentum to the push for federal anti-spam legislation, the Direct
Marketing Association announced that it favors federal legislation
controlling junk e-mail.
The group's 4,700-company membership includes many direct mail and
telemarketing firms; hence, it is expected to lobby to shape such laws.
The group says it now will "pursue legislation as the latest tactic in the
battle against the rising volume of spam inundating consumers'
e-mailboxes."
Antivirus Vendors To Add Spam-Fighting Capabilities
Although the antivirus market is among the most mature in software, there's
still room for improvement, research firm Meta Group says.
Businesses should keep an eye on developments, particularly moves by major
vendors in integrating corporate anti-spam defenses with virus killers.
By the end of next year, says Meta Group's Peter Firstbrook, a senior
research analyst with the firm's security and risk-strategies service, the
leading antivirus vendors will offer comprehensive anti-spam software
through acquisition or integration.
Longer term, he says, the successful security software makers will
incorporate other forms of content management such as URL and mobile-code
filtering at the enterprise gateway, and will offer integrated personal
firewalls and personal intrusion detection at the client.
"Antivirus defense isn't achieved solely by installing a software product.
It's attained by partnering with one or more strategic vendors, deploying
a suite of defensive tools, actively monitoring threat activity, and
continuously adjusting defenses," Firstbrook says.
Businesses that are reluctant to switch from existing antivirus client
software, which may be spread across tens of thousands of seats in the
case of major companies, should select a vendor dedicated to deploying
antivirus software and security in large organizations.
That leaves three security software makers - Network Associates/McAfee,
Symantec, and Trend Micro - as the leading contenders for enterprise
business. Of those three, Firstbrook tags Trend Micro as the leader, thanks
to its dominance in the growing gateway market, its focus on the virus
outbreak cycle, and its centralized management tools. But Symantec and
McAfee aren't far behind. Challengers to the big three include Computer
Associates and Sophos.
The maturation of the security market means businesses have opportunities
to bargain. "Aggressive negotiations [on licensing and service plans] can
lower the cost of ownership of antivirus defenses," Firstbrook said.
Companies evaluating antivirus and security suppliers should seek out
vendors with ongoing investments in research and development, and a proven
track record of innovation.
On Monday, Symantec announced AntiVirus for SMTP Gateways 3.1, an E-mail
gateway defense that integrates both anti-spam and antivirus features - the
kind of move Firstbrook said to look for.
AntiVirus for SMTP Gateways 3.1 includes multiple methods of defending
against spam, ranging from blacklists provided by third parties to a
heuristic anti-spam engine that probes a message's characteristics and
determines the likelihood that it's spam. Administrators can tweak the
anti-spam engine for best results for their users, as well as create and
apply more traditional spam defenses, such as whitelists and subject-line
filtering.
Microsoft Limits E-Mail to Fight Spam
To cut down on junk e-mail, Microsoft Corp. is capping the number of
e-mails that users of its free Hotmail service can send each day.
By limiting to 100 the number of messages that could be sent in a 24-hour
period, Microsoft's MSN division hopes to stop people from using its
service to send the unsolicited messages, known as spam.
"MSN is strongly committed to helping stop the widespread problem of spam
and this change is one way we are preventing spammers from using Hotmail
as a vehicle to send the unwanted e-mails," said Lisa Gurry, MSN lead
product manager.
Microsoft said it viewed the limit as a reasonable cap that would affect
less than 1 percent of its active subscriber base of 110 million. The
company would not disclose its previous cap.
The limit took effect earlier this month. It does not apply MSN 8
subscribers or those who purchase extra storage on Hotmail.
Spam Keeps Al-Jazeera Website Down, English Version Delayed
Waves of spam have kept Al-Jazeera's website down for a third day, and
officials at the maverick satellite channel said it was coming from U.S.
e-mailers apparently angry over its coverage of the Iraq war.
The Qatar-based network, which has broadcast graphic footage of dead U.S.
and British soldiers, also said it would now have to delay the introduction
of an English-language site for several weeks due to the barrage of spam,
or junk electronic mail.
"English.aljazeera.net will not be launched until mid-April," online
editor-in-chief Abdel Aziz Al-Mahmud told AFP Thursday.
The Arabic-language site has been down since Tuesday, and he said the junk
mail had been pouring into the servers of the site, which is immensely
popular in the Middle East.
The channel said it hoped to have the Arabic site back up soon.
The attacks began after the network broadcast footage of several U.S.
soldiers killed in Iraq, some of whom had apparently been shot in the head,
as well as interviews with five US prisoners of war.
Officials say the satellite channel's viewing figures have jumped 10
percent since the war began last week.
The network has eight teams of reporters on the ground in Iraq and is the
only channel to have been broadcasting from the southern city of Basra,
scene of a furious battle between Iraqi and besieging US-led coalition
forces.
The channel first gained major Western attention by broadcasting statements
from Osama bin Laden after al-Qaeda organisation's September 11 attacks in
the United States.
The government of Qatar is a part owner of the network, which was launched
in 1996, and its coverage has sometimes affected relations between Qatar
and other Arab countries, notably Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Iraq War Sparks Tit-For-Tat Hacker Attacks
Pro-and-anti Iraq war protesters have been making their point by hacking
into Web sites in a display of "cyber activism," rather than with the
traditional can of spray paint or placard.
Countless activists -- protesters or war hawks -- have the ability to
hijack or cripple Web sites from the opposing camp, leaving in their wake a
graveyard of busted and defaced links.
"This is the future of protest," said Roberto Preatoni, founder of Zone-H,
an Estonian firm that monitors and records hacking attacks. Since the war
in Iraq started last week, the firm has recorded over 20,000 Web site
defacements.
The most notable victim was al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite TV
network that angered many Western viewers earlier this week when it aired
footage of dead British and American soldiers and of prisoners of war.
The Arabic-language site, www.aljazeera.net, flickered to life on Friday,
but access to the English-language version remained impossible, the result
of repeated hack attacks since Monday.
On Thursday, visitors to the English site were greeted with a
stars-and-stripes logo saying "Let Freedom Ring." Earlier, "Hacked by
Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia," was scrawled on the site beneath a
logo containing the U.S. flag.
A spokesman for the FBI said the agency was investigating the al-Jazeera
Web site hack.
Al-Jazeera was not alone. Sites on both sides of the war have been
targeted, as have sites with no obvious affiliation to the war effort.
Last week, when bombs first began to drop on Baghdad, hundreds of U.S. and
British business, government and municipal Web sites were defaced with
anti-war messages, security experts reported. Seemingly within hours, more
hawkish hackers went on the offensive against Arab sites.
Identifying themselves with such nicknames as "Hackweiser" and "DkD,"
hackers and hacker groups are hard to track down.
While Faisal Bodi, senior editor for aljazeera.net, pointed a finger at the
Bush administration, security experts dismiss the existence of
state-sponsored hacking initiatives.
Instead they say they are usually the work of private groups or individuals
with a particular viewpoint to communicate - or with the aim of gagging
their opponent.
The recent tit-for-tat attacks prompted calls from free speech activists -
and even some hackers - for a cease fire.
"In a protest or activist scenario, one would hope that one's cause and
message were strong enough that 'shouting down' the opposing viewpoint is
considered unnecessary," said Mark Loveless, a hacker who works for U.S.
security software company BindView Corp. and is known online as "Simple
Nomad."
"People wouldn't tolerate groups that burn down book shops or news agents
that sell publications they don't agree with. They shouldn't tolerate the
online equivalent," said Ian Brown, director of the Foundation for
Information Policy Research, a British free speech think tank.
But others are convinced the worst is yet to come. "If you take down
al-Jazeera, everybody around the world knows it. And you never have to
leave your house," Preatoni said.
Internet Body to OK Non-English Domains
Internet domain names in languages other than English should be available
within the next few weeks or months, the chairman of the Internet's key
oversight body said Wednesday.
Vinc, would likely approve technical standards Thursday. The standards
allow the world's computers built around English to recognize Chinese,
Arabic and other languages.
"A great deal of progress has been made this week and I hope we will see
progress as the weeks go by," Cerf said. "The technical standards are
ready. Now the policy work has to be done."
Cerf made his comments at a weeklong ICANN meeting that ends Friday. ICANN
is the body selected by the U.S. Commerce Department in 1998 to oversee the
Net's addressing system, important for sending e-mail and finding Web
sites.
The core computers that handle online addresses currently understand only
the 26 English letters, 10 numerals and a hyphen, along with a period for
splitting addresses into sections. Tildes, slashes and other characters are
not part of the domain name and are handled by separate computers. Other
languages must be converted into a string of the permitted characters.
For the past few years, a separate body, the Internet Engineering Task
Force, has been working on how to convert all that smoothly, behind the
scenes.
Though some non-English names have already been available on a test basis,
ICANN's approval of the new standards would make them official and help
ensure that they actually work.
Even with the changes, Cerf said, the domain name's suffix like ".com" or
".org" would remain in English for the time being.
How soon users would be able to obtain domain names in other languages
depends largely on the extent to which technicians using those languages
have translated their alphabets into Internet protocol, Cerf said.
"The languages that are the most advanced are Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
Those groups have done a tremendous amount of work to translate their
scripts into domain names," Cerf said.
Meanwhile, the incoming president and chief executive of ICANN promised to
reach beyond the developed world to create a more inclusive Internet.
On Thursday, Paul Twomey of Australia will replace Stuart Lynn and become
the first non-American to oversee the day-to-day operations of an
organization frequently criticized for being U.S.-centric.
"We are entering a period where we need to be focused on the fact that
Internet is becoming more global and we need to focus on the global
aspects, particularly developing countries," Twomey said.
Dog Lovers to Decide if Bark Is Worth the Bite
If you're wondering why your pooch howls at the moon, growls at the mailman
or barks uncontrollably at squirrels, the answer may be only a click away.
A Japanese toy maker claims to have developed a gadget that translates dog
barks into human language and plans to begin selling the product -- under
the name Bowlingual -- in U.S. pet stores, gift shops and retail outlets
this summer.
Tokyo-based Takara Co. Ltd. says about 300,000 of the dog translator
devices have been sold since its launch in Japan late last year. It is
forecasting far bigger sales once an English-language version comes to
America in August.
The United States is home to about 67 million dogs, more than six times the
number in Japan.
"We know that the Americans love their dogs so much, so we don't think they
will mind spending $120 on this product," Masahiko Kajita, a Takara
marketing manager, said during an interview at a recent pet products
convention in Atlanta.
Cited as one of the coolest inventions of 2002 by Time magazine, Bowlingual
consists of a 3-inch long wireless microphone that attaches to a dog collar
and transmits sounds to a palm-sized console that is linked to a database.
The console classifies each woof, yip or whine into six emotional
categories - happiness, sadness, frustration, anger, assertion and desire
- and displays common phrases, such as "You're ticking me off," that fit
the dog's emotional state.
Takara says it has spent hundreds of millions of yen developing the device
in cooperation with acoustics experts and animal behaviorists and hopes to
sell 1 million units in the United States in the first eight months after
its launch.
It is undeterred by those who scoff at the idea of paying $120 to read a
dog's mind. "Of course people are always really skeptical at first, but
once they see a demo they are amazed and impressed," Takara spokesman
Kennedy Gitchel says.
It is no secret that the product is being launched at a time of solid
growth in the $30-billion U.S. pet products market, often considered to be
one of the best examples of a recession-proof industry.
Sales in this niche sector have been buoyed in recent years by a steady
rise in pet ownership, which has fueled demand for basic pet necessities
as well as high-end items such as air-conditioned dog houses and rhinestone
ferret collars.
The increasing importance of the industry was highlighted by the nation's
reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Many Americans found consolation
in the familiar routines of their pets and were willing to pay to pamper
their furry friends.
That trend continued in the months afterward as U.S. authorities tightened
security across the nation and moved closer to considering a military
attack on Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein, industry insiders say.
"As fear, tension and insecurity continue to rise in the nation, people are
turning to their pets for comfort," says Robert Vetere, executive vice
president of the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, an
industry trade group. "They don't mind spending more on them."
Whether the same will hold true when Bowlingual hits the U.S. market is
anybody's guess.
Sharper Image Corp. and Petsmart Inc., the No. 1 U.S. pet products company,
are among the retailers that have expressed an interest in carrying the
product, but so far no deals have been reached, according to Takara.
One thing that does appear certain is that the market for animal
translation products will likely remain a dog's world since Takara has no
plans to develop a similar device for cats.
"They are too unpredictable," Kajita said.
=~=~=~=
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