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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 09 Issue 52
Volume 9, Issue 52 Atari Online News, Etc. December 28, 2007
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2007
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:
Gerhard Stoll
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #0952 12/28/07
~ Happy New Year To All! ~ People Are Talking! ~ New Phoenix Out!
~ Hackers Aim for Macs! ~ Info Overload Costly! ~ Metroid Prime 3!
~ Netscape Support Ending ~ Truck Thief Is Caught! ~ Gloves Reunite!
~ Atari Classics Evolved ~ AvP: Requiem Ships! ~ Big PS3 Surprise!
-* OLPC Enlivens Hamlet In Peru *-
-* Storm Worm Tempts With X-mas Theme! *-
-* Queen Elizabeth Joins YouTube Generation *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
I hope that you all had a great holiday! 2007 is rapidly coming to an
end - another year older, and likely not any wiser. It happens. Bit,
we did have a good holiday. Lots of goodies (yep, I did get that new
digital camera!) under the proverbial tree. We then went to my wife's
mother's for an early dinner. All in all, a nice day.
Besides the new camera, I did get an Atari item: a Flashback console.
I finally got it hooked up and actually working, but the console appears
to be a little flaky. Some of the games won't load, so it's back to the
store for an exchange. And I was really looking forward to playing some
Asteroids and Canyon Bomber! Oh well, eventually.
Otherwise, it's been a slow week. That's typical for this time of the
year. Things will pick up after the first of the year, like
clockwork, literally.
Any special plans for New Year's Eve? Most likely we'll stay in like we
usually do. My wife will watch some television and go to bed early. Me,
I'll listen to some tunes with few drinks in tow. I'll then take a quick
peek at the tube to see how old Dick Clark looks and switch back and
forth to watching the celebration in Boston with the Pops. Maybe there
will be some inane television series marathon showing for awhile too. A
nice quiet routine!
Anyway, all of us here at A-ONE wish you all a Happy New Year. Please,
unless you are celebrating like I am, please party responsibly. If you
are driving, don't drink. Not a big deal!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
Phoenix 5.2
Hello,
I release the Version 5.2 from the database program Phoenix with
source code. This version based on the code from Dieter and Jürgen
Geiß.
At the moment there is only a english resource. The docu is in
german.
Gerhard
<http://home.ewr-online.de/~gstoll/>
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. Well, here we are at the end of another
year. It's been an interesting one, and I'm not sure that I want to see
it's like again for a while.
You almost certainly know this by now, but as I sit here typing this,
the news is breaking that Benazir Bhutto has been killed. I'm not
exactly sure that you can call it an assassination, since I think an
assassination is the premeditated murder of a public official. I could
be wrong about that, but suffice it to say that she's been killed.
For those of you who cannot connect the name with a person, she was a
former Prime Minister of Pakistan. I won't tell you what I thought of
her, because by now you've heard every possible opinion about her.
Suffice it to say that I thought that she could have done some good if
she'd had the time.
While reports are muddled and confused at the moment, it seems that a
suicide bomber shot her and then detonated the bomb he was wearing. The
toughest question to answer is going to be: Who was responsible? There
will no doubt be theories swirling around like crazy for weeks or
months, but I doubt we'll ever know with a high degree of certainty.
Since this is our last issue of the year, I'd like to remind everyone to
celebrate responsibly. If you drive, don't drink. If you drink, don't
drive. The life you save may be MINE.
Well, let's get on with the news, hints, tips and info from the UseNet.
From the comp.sys.atari.st NewsGroup
====================================
Gerhard Stoll posts:
"I release Version 5.2 of the database program Phoenix with
sourcecode. This version based on the code from Dieter and Jürgen GeiÃÂ.
At the moment there is only an english resource. The docu is in german.
http://home.ewr-online.de/~gstoll/ "
Alexander Beuscher tells Gerhard:
"Nice gesture to give free the sources. Phoenix still is my favourite
database.
I've only had a short look at the sources but does the "BASE"
subdirectory contain the part that once was sold by ASH as "Phoenix
Base"? "
Gerhard replies:
"Yes, a german docu can be found on my homepage."
Alexander tells Gerhard:
"I've seen that, quiet helpful for getting into it, thanks! The db
interface itself is compiled into a lib file, so I think that the
Geiss brothers prefer to have that "protected" to some extent."
Derryck Croker adds:
"Nice to see Dennis's work from way back finally in use. There's still
some German text around, but not enough to make it unusable for any
non-German readers I think."
Gerhard adds:
"Yes, the title form the dialog boxes are in german, because they will
used for the hypertext. And the Alertbox also in german.
If someone wants to translate it ..."
Derryck Croker tells Gerhard:
"No worries about translating those texts, but the hypertext would be
well beyond me I'm afraid."
'IntelOutside' asks about installing a newer, larger hard drive in his
MegaSTE:
"I've just bought an old ATARI Mega STE, 4Mbyte, but still
with its original 48Mbyte HD.
I can format this old hard disk, but 48Mbyte is not much.Got
a 2 Gbyte IBM SCSI drive, it fits and spins up, but the
Advanced Hard Disk Utilities do report a "fatal error" when
I try to install that hd.
Is 2Gbyte too much for an ATARI STE? I was told that
the 2Gbyte drive is working. Do I need a better version of
the hard disk tools? Are there any upgrades?"
Dr. Uwe Seimet, author of HD Driver, tells IntelOutside:
"With AHDI you can only access the first GByte of such a drive, and with
some drives AHDI will not work at all.
In order to access drives bigger than 1 GByte with their full capacity
you need a Link host adapter, preferably a LINK96 or LINK97, since
those are the only ones that work with any SCSI drive."
Well folks, that's it for this week. I'll see you again next year.
Please remember to be responsible this holiday. Tune in again next
week, and keep your ears open so you'll be ready to hear what they are
saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Atari Classics Evolved!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
AvP Requiem Ships!
And more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Atari Classics Evolved Ships For PSP
Atari, Inc , one of the worlds' most recognized brands and a third-party
video game publisher, today announced that Atari Classics Evolved, a
large compilation of classic Atari arcade games, has shipped to retailers
in North America just in time for the holiday season. Atari Classics
Evolved, rated E for Everyone, is available on the PSP (PlayStation
Portable) system for a suggested retail price of $19.99.
Atari Classics Evolved features a full gamut of genre-defining classics
like Battlezone, Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, Tempest, Lunar
Lander, Super Breakout, Warlord, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe and Pong.
In addition to the 11 arcade classics, players can unlock more than 40
original Atari 2600 titles. These titles include such noted favorites as
Yar's Revenge, Night Driver, Canyon Bomber and Crystal Castles among many
others.
"Gamers today have gotten used to the increasing complexity of video
games," said Todd Slepian, Producer, Atari, Inc. "But it's always nice
to take a break from these monstrous titles and go back to the games that
defined our childhoods. With so many fun classic games packed into such a
small disc, it's hard not to crack a little smile for days gone by."
For true arcade authenticity, all 11 classic arcade titles in Atari
Classics Evolved feature their original retro graphics, as well as an
option for beautifully rendered "Evolved" graphics and enhanced gameplay.
While retaining the tried-and-true gameplay of the original games, the 11
classic arcade titles also feature online leaderboards, allowing players
to compare scores against some of the best players in the world. Some
games also have local peer-to-peer wireless capability allowing players
to compete in fierce local multiplayer matches.
For more information on Atari Classics Evolved, Atari and its entire
product line-up please visit http://www.atari.com.
"Aliens vs. Predator" Back In Deadly Sequel
The Alien and the Predator, monsters from a great science-fiction film
and an above-average one, respectively, have been reduced in "Aliens vs.
Predator: Requiem" to featured attractions in a dull actioner that looks
like a bad video game.
The first "AVP" pairing in 2004 at least played the monster mash for camp
humor. Yet this new film, which opened as counter-programming on
Christmas Day, sends the space creatures and their human victims through
an antediluvian small-town-under-siege plot that was so nicely satirized
this year in Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" portion of "Grindhouse."
"AVP" grossed $80 million domestically but "Requiem" is unlikely to stir
that kind of interest. The old A and P monsters just aren't what they
used to be. Familiarity has done them in.
Consider that great signature moment from Ridley Scott's "Alien" way back
in 1979, when an alien baby burst unexpectedly from a poor astronaut's
gut. It was truly shocking. Weren't moviegoers supposed to have fainted?
Here the directors, who bill themselves as the Brothers Strause, get to
that moment right away - and then again and again and again. A great
screen moment turned into to a carny sideshow.
Aliens cause a Predator spacecraft to crash near the small Colorado
mountain town of Gunnison, killing the Predator pilot. Another Predator
follows his pal, discovers him dead, gets all emotional, then goes on an
Alien hunting trip. He certainly has many targets.
The Aliens incubate and reproduce in humans at a rapid rate so Gunnison
becomes a virtual shooting gallery for the sometimes invisible Predator.
Trouble is he isn't too careful about what else he hits - humans or a
nuclear power plant. The town blacks out on a rainy night while the
rampaging monsters devour and destroy humans left and right.
The town's sheriff (John Ortiz) is overwhelmed. In fact, he is so nuts he
keeps bringing along an ex-con (Steven Pasquale), just out of prison, on
all his investigations. The ex-con's younger brother (Johnny Lewis) is
fighting off the town bully over a girl (Kristen Hager) but all is
swiftly forgotten as the teens get dispatched one by one.
So lacking in imagination is this movie that the Brothers Strause and
writer Shane Salerno keep scrambling back to the original movie for
inspiration. Reiko Aylesworth's Iraq War veteran is a carbon copy of
Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley as she fights the monsters in skin-tight
clothes with guns a-blazing to protect her daughter (Ariel Gade).
Character and dialogue are strictly rote with jaw-dropping lines
occurring like Aylesworth's when someone notices that her daughter is a
bit shaken, having just seen her daddy devoured by a monster, which then
chased them all over town: "It hasn't been an easy night for her," her
mom says. No, it hasn't.
Fights between the space fiends are tiresome affairs of zaps, gun bursts
and acid blood plus a blue liquid Alien Cleanser the Predator keeps
pouring everywhere to dissolve the creatures. Meanwhile, the soundtrack
is filled with peculiar gurgles, crackling, hisses, clicks and
electronic noise, all backed by Brian Tyler's relentless, pulsating
score.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Nintendo knows best. If you thought that releasing a gaming handheld with
two screens and stylus input was a bad idea, Nintendo knew better. If you
thought that releasing an underpowered console with motion-control input
was a weak response to Sony and Microsoft's next-gen efforts, Nintendo
knew better. If you thought those motion-sensitive controllers would have
weak and shaky input that would make games unplayable if they depended on
fine control, Nintendo knew better. And if you thought the Wii's graphic
system would ensure that every game on the system would look weak and
fuzzy, Nintendo knows better. From "Wii Sports" to "Paper Mario" to "Super
Mario Galaxy" to "Metroid Prime 3," Nintendo takes a system that gives
every other developer fits and somehow develops first-rate entertainment
for it. If Nintendo could bottle that magic and sell it to other game
developers, the Wii's market share would soon be so dominant that we'd be
using Xbox 360's to prop open doorways.
But I digress. The subject of the day is "Metroid Prime 3," and it is
about as professional an effort as you're likely to see. If you're not a
Nintendo fanboy of long standing, you may never have played a "Metroid
Prime" game before, so here's some background: you play as Samus Aran, a
female bounty hunter who dresses up in a big set of armor and does battle
with various space antagonists in a first-person shooter environment.
Like most futuristic sets of armor, you get some special powers, most
prominent of which is the ability to morph into a ball that can roll
around and navigate past obstacles that would block you in your full
form. "Metroid Prime 3" plays like your standard shooter on rails: you
get an objective and have a set of corridors or passageways to navigate
in order to complete your mission, with a predictable array of baddies
that will fight you along the way, and a boss battle at the end of the
level to punctuate your progress.
It's not just a shooter, though. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's not
even primarily a shooter. "Metroid Prime 3" is full of puzzles: how do you
open that door, how do you get the power supply back online, how do deal
with obstacles that slow you down when there's a time limit, and so on.
You spend far more time thinking your way past the puzzles than you do
shooting stuff (and, in fact, most of the actual gun battles pose no more
than a moderate challenge). So you can think of it this way: "Metroid
Prime 3" is a puzzle game, and your gun is a puzzle solver.
The game design is excellent throughout. The graphical look and polish is
quite good - not next-gen good, in the sense of the visual splendor you
can get on the 360 or PS3, but more than good enough for gamers today. I
particularly liked the way you could see Samus' eyes faintly reflected in
the visor in front of your face; that's the sort of immersive detail that
just makes a game more fun. The controls are rock-solid, with none of the
drunken weaving you tend to experience on other shooters that use the
Wiimote for aiming. The levels are designed carefully and well, and the
puzzles are just tricky enough to slow you down without making it
impossible to get by without cheating or getting lucky. In short, this
is the sort of quality title that makes you wonder why other developers
don't make better games for the Wii. Clearly the system has everything it
needs for a true AAA-quality release. Sooner or later, you have to assume
that developers like EA and Ubisoft will crack the Wii code and start
releasing first-rate games, and then the sky's the limit.
So remember, folks: Nintendo knows best. "Metroid Prime 3" is just the
latest example of that fact.
Ratings (1-10):
Graphics: 8. Not flashy, but still quite good.
Sound: 8. Voice work is solid and professional.
Gameplay: 9. What was that again, kids? That's right - Nintendo knows
best.
Story: 8. Something about space pirates. I honestly didn't care that
much, but your mileage may vary.
Replayability: NA. There's enough depth here that I honestly think
replayability is a non-issue.
Overall: 8.5. "Metroid Prime 3" is another excellent Nintendo game for a
Nintendo system. When are the other developers going to join the party?
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
Teen Opens PlayStation 3 Box, Finds Phone Book Inside!
A Camarillo father says he bought his son a PlayStation, but when the
teen opened the box, all he got was a phone book.
Imagine tearing into a holiday present to find a PlayStation 3 box... with
a phone book sealed inside! That's what happened to 13-year-old Brandon
Burns Christmas morning. He says he laughed about it when it happened. His
parents... not so much, since they spent $500 for the PS3. They say they
plan on taking the phone book, the box, and their receipt back to the
Thousand Oaks mall store where they bought it. Good luck, guys!
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Laptop Project Enlivens Peruvian Hamlet
Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky
little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop
Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the
One Laptop Per Child project six months ago.
These offspring of peasant families whose monthly earnings rarely exceed
the cost of one of the $188 laptops - people who can ill afford pencil
and paper much less books - can't get enough of their "XO" laptops.
At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination
library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night,
they're dozing off in front of them - if they've managed to keep older
siblings from waylaying the coveted machines.
"It's really the kind of conditions that we designed for," Walter Bender,
president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff, said of
this agrarian backwater up a pr ecarious dirt road.
Founded in 2005 by former MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte, the
One Laptop program has retreated from early boasts that developing-world
governments would snap up millions of the pint-sized laptops at $100
each.
In a backhanded tribute, One Laptop now faces homegrown competitors
everywhere from Brazil to India - and a full-court press from Intel
Corp.'s more power-hungry Classmate.
But no competitor approaches the XO in innovation. It is hard drive-free,
runs on the Linux operating system and stretches wireless networks with
"mesh" technology that lets each computer in a village relay data to the
others.
Mass production began last month and Negroponte says he expects at least
1.5 million machines to be sold by next November. Even that would be far
less than Negroponte originally envisioned. The
higher-than-initially-advertised price and a lack of the Windows
operating system, still being tested for the XO, have dissuaded many
potential government buyers.
Peru made the single biggest order to date - more than 272,000 machines -
in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World
Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed. Uruguay
was the No. 2 buyers of the laptops, inking a contract for 100,000.
Negroponte said 150,000 more laptops will get shipped to countries
including Rwanda, Mongolia, Haiti, and Afghanistan in early 2008 through
"Give One, Get One," a U.S.-based promotion ending Dec. 31 in which you
buy a pair of laptops for $399 and donate one or both.
The children of Arahuay prove One Laptop's transformative conceit: that
you can revolutionize education and democratize the Internet by giving a
simple, durable, power-stingy but feature-packed laptop to the worlds'
poorest kids.
"Some tell me that they don't want to be like their parents, working in
the fields," first-grade teacher Erica Velasco says of her pupils. She
had just sent them to the Internet to seek out photos of invertebrates -
animals without backbones.
Antony, 12, wants to become an accountant.
Alex, 7, aspires to be a lawyer.
Kevin, 9, wants to play trumpet.
Saida, 10, is already a promising videographer, judging from her artful
recording of the town's recent Fiesta de la Virgen.
"What they work with most is the (built-in) camera. They love to
record," says Maria Antonieta Mendoza, an Education Ministry psychologist
studying the Arahuay pilot to devise strategies for the big rollout when
the new school year begins in March.
Before the laptops, the only cameras the kids at Santiago Apostol school
saw in this population-800 hamlet arrived with tourists who visit for
festivals or to see local Inca ruins.
Arahuay's lone industry is agriculture. Surrounding fields yield
avocados, mangoes, potatoes, corn, alfalfa and cherimoya.
Many adults share only weekends with their children, spending the work
week in fields many hours' walk from town and relying on charities to
help keep their families nourished.
When they finish school, young people tend to abandon the village.
Peru's head of educational technology, Oscar Becerra, is betting the One
Laptop program can reverse this rural exodus to the squalor of Lima's
shantytowns four hours away.
It's the best answer yet to "a global crisis of education" in which
curricula have no relevance, he said. "If we make education pertinent,
something the student enjoys, then it won't matter if the classroom's
walls are straw or the students are sitting on fruit boxes."
Indeed, Arahuay's elementary school population rose by 10 when families
learned the laptop pilot was coming, said Guillermo Lazo, the school's
director.
The XOs that Peru is buying will be distributed to pupils in 9,000
elementary schools from the Pacific to the Amazon basin where a single
teacher serves all grades, Becerra said.
Although Peru boasts thousands of rural satellite downlinks that provide
Internet access, only about 4,000 of the schools getting XOs will be
connected, said Becerra.
Negroponte says One Laptop is committed to helping Peru overcome that
hurdle. Without Internet access, he believes, the program is incomplete.
Teachers will get 2 1/2 days of training on the laptops, Becerra said.
Each machine will initially be loaded with about 100 copyright-free
books. Where applicable, texts in native languages will be included, he
added. The machines will also have a chat function that will let kids
make faraway friends over the Internet.
Critics of the rollout have two key concerns.
The first is the ability of teachers - poorly trained and equipped to
begin with - to cope with profoundly disruptive technology.
Eduardo Villanueva, a communications professor at Lima's Catholic
University, fears "a general disruption of the educational system that
will manifest itself in the students overwhelming the teachers."
To counter that fear, Becerra said the government is offering $150 grants
to qualifying teachers toward the purchase of conventional laptops, for
which it is also arranging low-interest loans.
The second big concern is maintenance.
For every 100 units it will distribute to students, Peru is buying one
extra for parts. But there is no tech support program. Students and
teachers will have to do it.
"What you want is for the kids to do the repairs," said Negroponte, who
believes such tinkering is itself a valuable lesson. "I think the kids
can repair 95 percent of the laptops."
Tech support is nevertheless a serious issue in many countries,
Negroponte acknowledged in a phone interview.
One Laptop is currently bidding on a contract with Brazil's government
that Negroponte says demanded unrealistically onerous support
requirements.
The XO machines are water resistant, rugged and designed to last five
years. They have no fan so they won't suck up dust, are built to
withstand drops from a meter and a half and can absorb power spikes
typical of places with irregular electricity.
Mendoza, the psychologist, is overjoyed that the program stipulates that
kids get ownership of the laptops.
Take Kevin, the aspiring trumpet player.
Sitting in his dirt-floor kitchen as his mother cooks lunch, he draws a
soccer field on his XO, then erases it. Kevin plays a song by "Caliente,"
his favorite combo, that he recorded off Arahuay's single TV channel. He
shows a reporter photos he took of him with his 3-year-old brother.
A bare light bulb hangs by a wire from the ceiling. A hen bobs around
the floor. There are no books in this two-room house. Kevin's parents
didn't get past the sixth grade.
Indeed, the laptop project also has adults in its sights.
Parents in Arahuay are asking Mendoza, the visiting psychologist, what
the Internet can do for them.
Among them is Charito Arrendondo, 39, who sheds brief tears of joy when
a reporter asks what the laptop belonging to ruddy-cheeked Miluska - the
youngest of her six children - has meant to her. Miluska's father, it
turns out, abandoned the family when she was 1.
"We never imagined having a computer," said Arrendondo, a cook.
Is she afraid to use the laptop, as is typical of many Arahuay parents,
about half of whom are illiterate?
"No, I like it. Sometimes when I'm alone and the kids are not around I
turn it on and poke around."
Arrendondo likes to play checkers on the laptop.
"It's also got chess, which I sort of know," she said, pausing briefly.
"I'm going to learn."
Britain's Queen Elizabeth Goes Global On YouTube
Queen Elizabeth is joining the YouTube generation.
Buckingham Palace on Sunday said the 81-year-old monarch will post her
traditional Christmas Day message - normally broadcast on television - on
the video-sharing Web site as well this year.
At the same time, a new Royal Channel has been unveiled on YouTube,
allowing Web surfers to view the queen's first Christmas broadcast in
1957, as well as other archive footage of the royal family and its
events.
The catalogue is at www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel.
The queen is said to be avid about using new technology to reach a wider,
more diverse audience. Last year her Christmas message was released as a
podcast.
In her first Christmas broadcast 50 years ago, she waxed lyrical about
the advent of television.
"I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message
more personal and direct," she said. "That it is possible for you to see
me today is just another example of the speed at which things are
changing all around us."
Queen Elizabeth's message is followed closely by millions of Britons and
others in Commonwealth countries worldwide on Christmas Day each year.
Buckingham Palace revealed this week the queen likes to sneak off from
the rest of her family on Christmas Day and watch the recorded message
alone, judging for herself how she comes across.
AOL Pulls Plug On Netscape Web Browser
Netscape Navigator, the world's first commercial Web browser and the
launch pad of the Internet boom, will be pulled off life support Feb. 1
after a 13-year run.
Its current caretakers, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, decided to kill further
development and technical support to focus on growing the company as an
advertising business. Netscape's usage dwindled with Microsoft Corp.'s
entry into the browser business, and Netscape all but faded away
following the birth of its open-source cousin, Firefox.
"While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and
energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have
not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet
Explorer," Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog entry Friday.
In recent years, Netscape has been little more than a repackaged version
of the more popular Firefox, which commands about 10 percent of the Web
browser market, with almost all of the rest going to Internet Explorer.
People will still be able to download and use the Netscape browser
indefinitely, but AOL will stop releasing security and other updates on
Feb. 1. Drapeau recommended that the small pool of Netscape users
download Firefox instead.
A separate Netscape Web portal, which has had several incarnations in
recent years, will continue to operate.
The World Wide Web was but a few years old when in April 1993 a team at
the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing
Applications released Mosaic, the first Web browser to integrate images
and sound with words. Before Mosaic, access to the Internet and the Web
was largely limited to text, with any graphics displayed in separate
windows.
Marc Andreessen and many of his university colleagues soon left to form a
company tasked with commercializing the browser. The first version of
Netscape came out in late 1994.
Netscape fed the gold-rush atmosphere with a landmark initial public
offering of stock in August 1995. Netscape's stock carried a then-steep
IPO price of $28 per share, a price that doubled on opening day to give
the startup a $2 billion market value even though it had only $20
million in sales.
But Netscape's success also drew the attention of Microsoft, which
quickly won market share by giving away its Internet Explorer browser
for free with its flagship Windows operating system. The bundling
prompted a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit and later a settlement
with Microsoft.
Netscape eventually dropped fees for the software, but it was too late.
Undone by IE, Netscape sold itself to AOL in a $10 billion deal
completed in early 1999.
Netscape spawned an open-source project called Mozilla, in which
developers from around the world freely contribute to writing and
testing the software. Mozilla released its standalone browser, Firefox,
and Netscape was never able to regain its former footing.
Using eBay To Catch A Truck Thief
On the morning of Nov. 17, Ben Adams found himself hiding beneath the
retractable cover in the back of a Chevy TrailBlazer. The truck was
parked in front of a warehouse in Duncanville, Texas. His friend "Sam,"
the TrailBlazer's owner, had just finished a test drive on a 1949 Chevy
truck - the same truck Adams was certain had been stolen from him four
months earlier.
Adams pulled out his mobile phone and dialed 911. "Please help me," he
said. "I'm at a warehouse. There are criminals all around me."
The story of how a mild-mannered software developer from San Antonio,
Texas, ended up running his own undercover sting operation against eBay
fraudsters begins with a truck. And if the story has a lesson, it's the
one told on Adams's blog: Don't mess with Texas, especially if it
involves a truck.
Last July, Adams sold the 1949 Chevy in an eBay auction. The buyer, who
called himself Derrick Colbert, appeared to be from Georgia. And when a
transport company employee showed up at Adams's door with a cashier's
check for US$9,600, Adams let him load up the truck and promised to hand
over the title when the check cleared.
The next day, he learned from his bank that the check was a fake.
Adams immediately contacted no fewer than 15 law enforcement
organizations and eBay itself, but he also began some sleuthing of his
own.
He found that the thief had made an important slip-up. While
corresponding about the truck, Colbert had sent Adams an e-mail from a
second eBay address, different from the one he used to purchase the
truck.
By tracking the sales and purchases of Colbert's second eBay ID and
contacting a Colorado dealer who had sold him a junky 1950 Chevy truck,
Adams was able to track Colbert down to the South Dallas area. But he
still didn't have his truck.
By now, Adams had put together a 10-page packet of information and sent
it to every law enforcement agency he could think of. But police didn't
seem to have much interest in working on the case, and although he had
reported Colbert to eBay, that didn't get him anywhere either.
"At this point, I was kind of depressed," remembered Adams. "Every few
weeks, I'd do regular eBay searches for all automobiles made between 1948
and 1952 that were within the Dallas-Fort Worth area... I even searched
in Craigslist."
And then on November 13, his luck changed.
Colbert had listed the pale blue 1950 Chevy for sale on eBay. Only it
wasn't junky anymore, and it didn't look like the 1950 Chevy that Colbert
had bought from the Colorado dealer a few weeks earlier. It looked just
like a repainted version of Adams's 1949 truck. It had the same windows
in back, the same missing gas cap, and the same yellow stain across the
passenger side of the front windshield.
"It made me sick to my stomach," Adams said. He called local police, but
they were skeptical. So he decided to set up a sting.
First step: fake ID. He took a tip from the thieves and bought a prepaid
mobile phone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Then using a friend's
well-established eBay account, he placed a couple of bids on the truck to
show that he was an interested buyer. His name became "Sam."
He didn't want to seem too eager. In fact, he didn't want to do anything
to tip Colbert off. And although he thought he might be putting his life
at risk, Adams called Colbert and asked to set up a Saturday morning test
drive. To be sure that Adams wouldn't be recognized, a friend volunteered
to play the part of "Sam" during the face-to-face meeting.
And that's how Ben Adams ended up hidden inside a Chevy TrailBlazer on a
Saturday morning, calling 911. Patrol cars speeding to the scene met up
with Adams and his friend about a half-mile from the warehouse and
followed the amateur sleuths back to the truck.
"They probably had a two-minute window where they probably could have
shut the warehouse door and hit the road," Adams said.
But the thieves didn't leave, and now Adams has his truck back. And this
time he plans to keep it.
Info Overload Costs Economy
Think twice before you copy someone on an e-mail or hit "reply all." Such
practices have made today's workers less productive, a research firm
concludes.
After years of naming a product or person of the year, Basex Inc. decided
to forecast "information overload" as problem of the year for 2008.
"It's too much information. It's too many interruptions. It's too much
lost time," Basex chief analyst Jonathan Spira declared. "It's always too
much of a good thing."
Information overload isn't exactly new, but Spira said the problem has
grown as technology increases societal expectations for instantaneous
response. And more information available, he said, also means more time
wasted looking for the right information, whether in an old e-mail or
through a search engine.
Workers get disoriented every time they stop what they are doing to reply
to an e-mail or answer a follow-up phone call because they didn't reply
within minutes. Spira said workers can spend 10 to 20 times the length
of the original interruption trying to get back on track.
He estimates that such disruptions cost the U.S. economy $650 billion in
2006.
Spira has a number of recommendations: Resist the urge to immediately
follow up an e-mail with an instant message or phone call. Make sure the
subject line clearly reflects the topic and urgency of an e-mail. And use
"reply all" sparingly.
Storm Worm Tempts With Christmas Strip Show
The criminals behind the Storm botnet waited until the last minute, but
they've finally started delivering unwanted Christmas presents.
Starting Monday, Storm-infected machines began sending out
Christmas-themed spam in yet another attempt to trick victims into
downloading malicious software. In this case, the site is named
Merrychristmasdude.com, and the malware is a variation of the Storm
Trojan horse program that has been plaguing systems around the world
since January.
The e-mails contain titles such as "Find Some Christmas Tail," "Warm Up
this Christmas" and "Mrs. Clause Is Out Tonight!"
One message reads "Yo, I am pretty sure this is up your alley, from the
things you have told me before. This will be the best 2 min you spend
this holiday. hehe."
Once the user clicks on the link to Merrychristmasdude.com, he is taken
to a Christmas-themed Web site with photos of scantily clad women and
offered a free download. That download is a malicious program, called
Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.pd by F-Secure, that connects to a P-to-P
(peer-to-peer) network and begins downloading even more malware.
Storm's creators have built up networks of infected PCs - called botnets
- over the past year by using a combination of sophisticated hacking
tricks to avoid detection and by spamming potential victims with clever
and timely e-mail messages. The network is called Storm because its
original messages offered victims video of the deadly storms that
battered Europe a year ago, but has also perfected the tactic of sending
out holiday-themed messages.
Security experts estimate that the Storm has infected more than 15
million computers over the past year, although the current size of the
network is much smaller than that.
This latest variant is being blocked by some antivirus vendors, including
Kaspersky, Microsoft and Symantec, according to a technical write-up of
the Christmas outbreak.
The SANS Internet Storm Center recommends that administrators block Web
and e-mail access to the Merrychristmasdude.com domain.
Hackers Take Aim At Mac OS X
The Story: It's not often that an analyst covering computer security
issues tells you that he doesn't do much to protect his systems. But one
reputable analyst I know said just that as we talked about the rising
threat of malware aimed at Apple's hardware. I won't mention his name,
but the gentleman is dead wrong. The days when you can assume that
Apple's products are exempt from harm are over.
Is it time to panic? No, actual attacks against Macs and the rest of the
Apple family, such as the iPhone, are still rare. But as the platform
becomes more and more popular, hackers are gearing up to do damage.
You'd better protect yourself.
'Most Mac users take security too lightly. In fact, most are quite proud
of the fact that they don't run any security at all,' says IDC analyst
Chris Christiansen. 'That's an open door; at some point it will be
exploited,' he says.
First some numbers: In 2006, the National Institute of Standards and
Testing (NIST) tabulated 106 'vulnerabilities' in Apple's Mac OS X. (It
defines vulnerabilities as a weakness in the code that could be exploited
to perform unauthorized, and generally harmful, functions by the
application.) In the first six months of 2007 there were 78
vulnerabilities found in Mac OS X. Windows XP (all flavors), meanwhile,
had 55 vulnerabilities in 2006 and 19 in the first six months of 2007.
Vista, which wasn't available in 2006, chalked up 19 vulnerabilities in
2007.
In a sense, Apple is a victim of its own success. Savvy hackers read the
same stories and watch the same television programs as the rest of us,
and so they are very aware of the burgeoning popularity of Apple's
products. Hacking Windows still provides a lot more bang per bug than
attacks on Apple, but the smaller rival is a more satisfying target than
ever before. And the company's deserved reputation for building good
products has probably made users overconfident.
'Apple has better commercials, but the Mac is no harder to break into
than a Windows PC,' says Gartner security analyst John Pescatore. What's
more, most IT shops can automatically patch large numbers of PCs at the
same time, while Macs generally have to be patched one at a time, he
said.
The Bottom Line: Actual attacks on the Mac platform are still unusual.
But as it becomes a juicier target, that will change. Why take a chance?
Give a lot more thought to securing your Macs this year.
Complete list of 2007 underreported stories: 1.xx Java is becoming the
new Cobol 2.xx Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.xx Hackers take
aim at Mac OS X 4.xx There are some threats you can worry less about
5.xx Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.xx Open
source's new commercial strategy 7.xx End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives
8.xx Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.xx BI is dead; long live BI
10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
Web Site Reuniting Gloves Makes Matches
Jennifer Gooch's mission was to create a simple Web site where people
could go to find their lost gloves. Even if no happy reunions ever took
place, she was just content to spread a little goodwill.
But just a month since http://www.onecoldhand.com went live, the
Carnegie Mellon University art student is busier than ever. She's
reunited four gloves with their owners, is working on similar sites for
cities around the globe, and is planning a book to showcase her found
gloves.
The first glove match was made about a week ago, when a CMU intern from
Germany heard about the site and checked it out for her missing beige
glove. She found it on the page, under the description "woman's leather
glove with bling."
Sarah Altmeyer said she bought the gloves a few years ago in Germany,
but later lost one at Carnegie Mellon's Simon-Newell Hall. She heard
about the Web site Gooch created and thought she'd check it out.
Much to her joy, she found the missing glove there. "It was a very
popular glove. I was actually kind of happy it was our first reunion,"
Gooch said.
Gooch's Web site got 55,000 hits in the 10 days after stories about her
project ran all over the world.
"It's been amazing. Once the surprise kind of waned, I realized that
it's something a lot of people can relate to, and for different
reasons," Gooch said.
More than a dozen businesses and other offices in Pittsburgh now have
drop boxes where lost gloves can be placed. Gooch gathers the gloves,
photographs them and displays the picture on her Web site with
information about where the glove was found.
Gooch's site has grown from 21 gloves to a collection of 75. A site
started soon after, http://www.onecoldhand-nyc.com, had three gloves
posted online as of Thursday. Sites are also planned for Manitoba,
Milan and Philadelphia after Gooch was contacted by strangers who
wanted to spearhead similar efforts in their cities.
At the end of April, Gooch plans an art show with the photos of her
gloves, along with an accompanying book.
=~=~=~=
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