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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 09 Issue 33
Volume 9, Issue 33 Atari Online News, Etc. August 17, 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:
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #0933 08/17/07
~ U.N. Web Sites Hacked! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Skype Not Attacked!
~ Content Online Is King! ~ Spam Tricking Filters! ~ Wikia Gamers Guide!
~ MS: Prototype Broken! ~ Free Recycling By Sony ~ Madden Frenzy Anew!
~ Dangerous Sites Warning ~ Baby @ Name Rejected! ~ Harnessing Girl Power!
-* Web's Rife With Attack Codes *-
-* Web Use Could Kill Local Newspapers! *-
-* U.S. Seeks To Dismiss E-Mail Spying Case! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Another week has come and gone. Not much has changed since last week;
the sun came up, the sun went down. The days are getting shorter these
days - signifying that the summer is winding down. It's hard to believe,
but Labor Day is rapidly approaching! Where did the summer go? I just
don't know any more. I must be suffering from that common affliction
called A.G.E.
Well, no earth-shattering controversial topics this week, so let's get
right to the thick of things. Unfortunately, part of this week's usual
entries is missing again. Due to the sparse activity in the newsgroups
again this week, Joe's "People Are Talking" column is on a diet, and will
not appear. We're all hoping that the message activity starts to pick up
now that summer vacations are just about up.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Madden Frenzy Begins Anew!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Hezbollah-Israel War Game!
Wikia Unveils Gamers' Guide
And more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
'Madden' Video Game Frenzy Begins Anew
Say Madden this time of year and most everyone knows the reference is not
about the Hall of Fame coach and sportscaster himself. It's about his
video game.
In an industry seemingly fixated on aliens, dragons and crime sagas, John
Madden's football series rushes its way annually to the top of the sales
charts, selling some 60 million copies in the past 17 years.
The newest version, "Madden NFL 08," debuts Tuesday for 10 different
gaming systems with the sort of spectacle usually reserved for blockbuster
movie premiers and "Harry Potter" books.
The hype for this year includes "Maddenoliday" festivities in New York's
Times Square on Monday evening, where former players such as Eric
Dickerson, Warren Moon and Marshall Faulk will meet with fans. Former New
York Giants running back Tiki Barber will hand off the first copies of
the game to rabid fans Monday night at midnight at Toys "R" Us.
For hardcore devotees like Steve Williams, a 35-year-old from the Houston
suburb of Sugar Land, "Madden" is more than a game - it's a way of life.
"You're playing as opposed to just watching; it's like chess," said
Williams, who goes by the handle "Coach" when he plays the game with
others. "You are the coach, the general manager, you're everything that
you've always wanted to be."
Williams is such a big fan he runs his own Web site, where he posts a
podcast with insider Madden game tips. And recently he was among a handful
of professional Maddenheads to participate in the taping of season three
of ESPN's "Madden Nation" reality TV show, which airs in October.
The game has spawned a competitive tour, as well. Called Madden
Challenge, the world's best ballers vie for cash prizes and a trip to
Hawaii.
"Madden" has been a guaranteed profit maker for publisher Electronic Arts
Inc. EA sold 7.4 million copies in North America last year, including 2
million in the first week, making it the top-selling title in 2006,
according to market research firm NPD Group. Each copy retails for $30 to
$60, depending on the game system.
The game's release comes at a crucial time for EA, one of the world's
largest video-game makers, which recently saw first-quarter losses widen
by 63 percent amid a seasonal slowdown.
There are other football games on the market but EA hasn't had much
competition in terms of realism on the virtual gridiron because of deals
it struck in 2005.
That's when EA reached an exclusive agreement with the National Football
League and its players' association that prevents other publishers from
making games that include actual NFL teams and players. A month later, EA
got exclusive rights to use the ESPN brand in its video games.
Rival products include "All Pro Football 2K8." The game from 2K Sports, a
division of Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., depicts historically
important players like Jerry Rice and John Elway, but can't use current
rosters like "Madden" does.
From its first release 18 years ago, "Madden" has transformed into
something that closely mirrors America's obsession with real football,
said Bryan Intihar, 30, news editor of the video-game magazine Electronic
Gaming Monthly.
"They call baseball America's pastime but in the realm of video games it's
football," he said. "It's become like a Mario. Madden is in many ways a
video-game icon."
Intihar said he has already played the newest version and likes many added
features, such as a bigger front-office mode, a superstar mode, and better
performance, particularly on the Xbox 360 version.
Special icons now identify the strengths of franchise players like
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and running back LaDainian
Tomlinson of the San Diego Chargers. Another new feature, called "Family
Play," is designed to make the game easier for Madden newbies on Nintendo
Co.'s Wii console by simplifying the controls.
One thing Intihar said he and many others in the community are still
waiting for, however, is online leagues that let players guide their
favorite teams through an entire virtual season against rivals. For now,
online games are limited to head-to-head matches.
Actual NFL players play as much as anyone, including Tennessee Titans
quarterback and current "Madden" cover star Vince Young.
"We're beautiful," he said of his team's digital likeness in the game.
Young added that he's "not even a little bit" worried about the so-called
"Madden Curse." Earlier "Madden" cover athletes such as Marshall Faulk
and Donovan McNabb ended up with injuries later in the season, leading
some to conjure up a connection.
"You know you have to go out and play so nobody tries to worry about a
Madden jinx," explained Titans receiver Brandon Jones, who often plays the
game as other NFL players he's friends with on other teams.
Hezbollah Brings Israel War To Computer Screen
Raid Israel to capture soldiers, battle tanks in the valleys of south
Lebanon and launch Katyusha rockets at Israeli towns - a new Hezbollah
computer game puts players on the frontline of war with the Jewish state.
"Special Force 2" is based on last year's 34-day conflict between the
Lebanese guerrilla group and Israel.
"This game presents the culture of the resistance to children: that
occupation must be resisted and that land and the nation must be
guarded," Hezbollah media official Sheikh Ali Daher said.
Designed by Hezbollah computer experts, players of "Special Force 2" take
the role of a Hezbollah fighter, or Mujahid. Weapons and points are
accumulated by killing Israeli soldiers.
The game, launched on Thursday, recreates key phases of the conflict,
which was triggered when Hezbollah raided northern Israel and captured
two soldiers, saying they wanted to negotiate a prisoner swap.
Hezbollah takes huge pride in its military performance in the war, which
killed 158 Israelis, mainly soldiers. Some 1,200 people, mostly
civilians, were killed in Lebanon.
Israel says Hezbollah was weakened in the conflict, in which the group was
forced out of its strongholds along the Israeli border and an expanded
international peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon under a
U.N.-brokered ceasefire.
A Shi'ite Muslim group backed by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah declared the
outcome of the conflict as a "divine victory."
"Through this game the child can build an idea of some of ... the most
prominent battles and the idea that this enemy can be defeated," Daher
said.
Retailing at around $10 in Lebanon and produced by volunteers, Hezbollah
is expecting strong demand for the game at home and abroad. Hundreds of
copies have been reserved in advance in Lebanon.
The 3-D game forces players to think and use their resources wisely,
reflecting the way Hezbollah fights, Daher said.
"The features which are the secret of resistance's victory in the south,
have moved to this game so that the child can understand that fighting
the enemy does not only require the gun.
"It requires readiness, supplies, armament, attentiveness, tactics."
Wikia Unveils Gamers' Guide
Wikia Inc. is offering people who love online games a chance to use its
guides to help them navigate landscapes, and beat foes in major games
through tools developed by Playxpert LLC.
World of Warcraft players are already using a widget that gives them
access to the 30,000 pages of advice on WowWiki, ensuring they beat
monsters, win weapons and navigate more easily through the game.
People who play Second Life, Final Fantasy, Runescape and other games will
see similar widgets soon said, Gil Penchina [cq], CEO of Wikia Inc., in a
recent interview.
Up to now, any gamer could build a game collaboration site through Wikia
and players from around the globe would fill them with advice and
directions. But those huge databases weren't readily available to users
in the middle of play. People would have to switch back and forth between
their game and the site, holding them up and slowing down the game. The
partnership with Playxpert means they will gain their own widgets similar
to the WowWiki soon as well.
The widgets change that by not only allowing them to view pages from
their wiki, but depending on the widget, users will also be able to give
advice, chat, and control music selection, among other things.
The WowWiki widget opens as a pop-up, or overlay in front of the World of
Warcraft game being played. It's transparent, so the user can see what's
happening behind it, and it doesn't take up too much of the screen.
Videogame Industry Hopes To Harness Girl Power
Can "High School Musical" and "Hannah Montana" finally take girl gaming to
the next level?
While most of the attention of teen and tween girls Friday night will be
focused on the premiere of "High School Musical 2" on Disney Channel,
Disney Interactive is hoping that interest eventually bears fruit in the
gaming aisles of retailers nationwide.
Beginning with "High School Musical: Making the Cut" for the Nintendo DS,
Disney Interactive is bringing out four titles based on the two licensing
juggernauts in the coming months.
"The demand for both the 'High School Musical' and 'Hannah Montana' games
has been enormous among retailers," Disney Interactive GM Graham Hopper
said. "I think the industry is starting to wake up to the fact that girls
play games."
Getting that female audience into video games, especially consoles, has
long been a holy grail for publishers, and there have been encouraging
signs. According to the Electronic Software Assn., 38% of game players
are women or girls, and a Harris Interactive poll this year found that
tween girls spend up to 10 hours a week playing games, compared with 16
hours a week for tween boys.
"The industry is still dominated by the male side, but we're definitely
seeing not just more female players but older gamers as well," said Beth
Llewelyn, senior director of corporate communications at Nintendo of
America. "We've had success with DS titles like 'Nintendogs' but also
with the 'Brain' games - 'Brain Age' and 'Big Brain Academy' - that are
definitely skewing more toward females."
The problem has been that girls and women tend to be among the most casual
players, interested in easy-to-pick-up social games but not consistently
shelling out $30-$50 for more complex fare.
"The real key is to get girls to begin obsessing over games the way they
might obsess over a boy band or shows like 'High School Musical,"' said
Jessica Chiang, marketing producer at Her Interactive, which has carved
out a niche making PC games based on the "Nancy Drew" license.
Chiang said the way to achieve that passion seems to be the right license,
noting, "If they already like the TV show or dolls, they tend to want to
get the game."
Added Hopper, "We already know that girls will play on the Nintendo DS and
Game Boy Advance hand-helds," he said, touting the previous success of
Disney Interactive titles for hand-helds based on "Lizzie McGuire" and
"That's So Raven." "But there have not been a lot of examples of huge
successes on the home consoles, though we've got the two properties this
season to see if that's about to change."
It also is going to take the right platform, and Nintendo might have more
of those answers right now.
"They're justifiably quite proud of the way they're growing the market,
and they have lot of information to back up the fact that they're really
starting to get the female gaming audience," said Sarah Handley, senior
global brand manager at THQ, which this year is bringing out a game based
on "Bratz: The Movie."
Other companies, most notably the now-defunct Acclaim, had some solid
sales in the past with games based on the Olsen twins. But they also might
have done more harm than good because many of those properties lacked the
thing that keeps girls coming back, which is good gameplay.
"This has to be more than just dropping a license on a box," Hopper said.
"That's one of the issues this industry needs to get away from." Hopper
said the "High School Musical" game for the Nintendo Wii will be among
the first to feature a microphone, while the upcoming "Hannah Montana:
Music Jam" for the DS will allow up to four players to play various
wireless instruments together.
"We didn't need all the guitar features in 'Hannah,' but we did it because
want to create a great game," Hopper said. "I think the success of 'High
School' and Disney Channel has done a wonderful job in creating a
mass-market phenomenon. But we look at it as a starting point, where we
can move forward with game innovations and permanently expand the girl and
tween gamer market."
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
U.S. Seeks to Dismiss E-Mail Spying Case
A U.S. appeals court agreed on Wednesday to weigh a government motion to
dismiss a lawsuit alleging the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored
phone lines and e-mails without a warrant, but judges asked a government
lawyer tough questions over the issue.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class action lawsuit
against AT&T Inc. claiming the company violated the privacy rights of its
customers when it cooperated with an NSA program of monitoring AT&T
customer phone calls and e-mail traffic without warrants.
Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre, representing the government,
argued that letting the case go to trial, "would reveal the sources,
methods and operational details" of government intelligence activities.
The alleged monitoring is part of more rigorous surveillance practices put
in motion after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
After a two-and-a-half hour hearing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th
District, in San Francisco, said it will consider the dismissal motion as
well as a one in a second lawsuit also challenging the NSA program.
But Appeals Court judges Michael Daly Hawkins, Margaret McKeown and Harry
Pregerson, peppered Garre with questions, challenging his argument that
the state secrets privilege trumps the right of the plaintiffs to have
their case heard.
Pregerson asked Garre how a court is to decide whether something the
executive branch claims is a state secret is a secret, if the executive
branch won't reveal what it claims is a secret.
"Who decides what's a state secret? Are we just a rubber stamp? We're
just supposed to take the word of the executive?" Pregerson asked.
Garre responded that the court should give "the utmost deference" to the
executive branch's claim that something is a state secret, but
acknowledged that it is not an "absolute deference."
The EFF says that AT&T, at one of its offices in San Francisco, diverted
Internet traffic, including e-mails and Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone calls,
to a separate room in which NSA-authorized people monitored the network
traffic. Robert Fram the attorney for EFF, said that just the act of
diverting that traffic into a room controlled by the NSA proved their
case against AT&T and that they would not have to try to risk violating
the state secrets privilege by trying to disclose what was done with the
information.
But Garre, in rebuttal, argued that if the surveillance done in that room
was approved by a warrant, then there is no violation by the government
or AT&T in diverting Internet traffic to that surveillance room.
The second case is that of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. President
George W. Bush, which claims the government engaged in warrantless
surveillance of their organization, in violation of its constitutional
rights.
The appeals judges gave no indication when they might rule on the motion
to dismiss. Lee Tien, an EFF staff attorney, said given the notoriety of
the case, the judges could render a decision soon, but at the same time,
given the gravity of the issues, they might take more time.
U.N. Internet Sites Hit By Hackers
Hackers breached the United Nations Web site during the weekend, prompting
the world body on Monday to stop posting new information while technicians
evaluated the system, U.N. officials said.
Early on Sunday, the hackers defaced the official Web site on pages
reserved for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with slogans accusing the
United States and Israel of killing children.
The United Nations quickly removed the hackers' messages and on Monday
stopped updating the site while the system was assessed, U.N. spokeswoman
Michele Montas said.
In addition to the main U.N. site, the web pages for the Economic and
Social Council and the Paris Web site of the U.N. Environment Program were
also attacked, Montas said.
She said U.N. investigations were underway and "quick action was taken to
prevent damage to the computer system." Key financial information was not
affected, she said.
A repeating message on the secretary-general's page read: "Hacked By
kerem125 M0sted and Gsy That is CyberProtest Hey Ysrail and Usa, Dont kill
children and other people Peace for ever No war" according to snapshots
of the site by bloggers.
One of the three hackers claimed to be Turkish.
CNET, a computer and technology publisher. "The perpetrators appeared to
have used a well-known and highly preventable technique called SQL
injection, which takes advantage of flawed database programming to
activate malicious lines of code," CNET said on its web site.
The defacements, which affected the secretary-general's site and news
pages (HTTP://www.UN.org/news) were cleaned within hours, Montas said.
In an e-mail to CNET's news.com Web site, Giorgio Maone, an Italian
software developer who has worked with the world body, said, "The U.N.
staff just deployed a cosmetic patch, which hides it from the most obvious
tests, but it cannot prevent an attack" and said he had offered his
assistance.
At the Web site www.M0sted.org, there is a list of sites allegedly hacked
by the group, including Harvard and other universities and Norfolk and
Norwich University Hospital in Britain, CNET said.
Mozilla Aims To Warn Users About Dangerous Sites
With the number of malicious Web pages mushrooming over the past several
months, the Mozilla Foundation is looking to help users defend themselves.
Window Snyder, who is Mozilla's "chief security something-or-other," says
the company is taking a two-pronged approach.
First, Mozilla developers are working on giving Firefox 3.0, the next
version of the open source browser due later this year, the ability to
detect malicious code on Web sites that users are trying to access. "In
Firefox 2, there's no mechanism that identifies if malware is present,"
says Snyder.
Second, developers are working on creating an interface that will warn
users that the pages they're trying to call up are dangerous. "We don't
want to just pop up an alert that gives them an OK or cancel option,"
says Snyder. "We want to create a warning that users won't mistake. ...
It's going to be a different kind of warning, and it's not going to be a
click-through."
Security company Sophos reported last month that the number of malicious
Web sites has skyrocketed over the past few months, from 5,000 new ones a
day in April to nearly 30,000 a day in early July. One reason, according
to Sophos researchers, is that hackers are increasingly turning away from
e-mail as their preferred method of spreading malware and putting their
focus on malicious sites. In some cases, they're creating their own
sites, but in most cases they're hacking into legitimate sites and
embedding malware into them.
The mock-up of the alert appears as a red-letter warning that doesn't have
a click-through option, and the malicious page wouldn't be able to load.
It's still a work in progress, and it could change dramatically before
Firefox 3.0 ships, Snyder says. Technicians are debating whether there
should be an override mechanism that lets users go to malicious pages
regardless of the danger.
One of the most difficult aspects of implementing something like this is
making sure the interface communicates clearly to the user, that it's
"the sort of thing users won't be able to sail through without a real
context change," Snyder says.
Mozilla programmers are rewriting a lot of the Firefox code for the
upcoming version release, Snyder says. They're replacing much of the
older code to increase performance and make the code base more modular,
able to handle new security threats like phishing. In a previous
interview, Snyder said some of the browser's components that are written
in native code are being rewritten in managed code to reduce memory
management flaws, like buffer overflow vulnerabilities. Managed code
executes in a virtual machine, so there's less space for memory
management problems.
Meanwhile, Mozilla faced another security-related issue recently, one of
its own making. An executive appeared to suggest the company could patch
any known security vulnerability within 10 days. Snyder, who was quick to
try to clear up what Mozilla says was a muddled message, says on her blog
that Mozilla doesn't set such parameters: "We do not think security is a
game, nor do we issue challenges or ultimatums."
That's not what it sounded like at the Black Hat security conference two
weeks ago in Las Vegas. Mike Shaver, director of ecosystem development at
Mozilla, passed a business card to security researcher Robert Hansen,
known as RSnake, with "ten [expletive] days" written on it. Hansen wrote
on his blog that Shaver was claiming that, with responsible disclosure,
Mozilla could patch any critical hole in that amount of time. Wrote
Hansen, "I told him I would post his card - and he didn't flinch. No, he
wasn't drunk. He's serious."
Snyder says Shaver meant that, since Mozilla got a recent security update
out in only 10 days, there's no reason security researchers should post
details of a vulnerability before a patch is available. But security
bloggers pounced on what sure sounded like a challenge. Admits Snyder,
"His statement has taken on a life of its own."
Study Finds Internet Rife with Attack Codes
Even seemingly safe web addresses are rife with attack code aiming at
vulnerable clients, according to a new study from the Honeynet Project.
The study also found that methods such as blacklists can be surprisingly
successful in stopping client-side attacks.
Attackers are increasingly turning to end-user systems as a way around
the antivirus and firewall systems that are increasingly blocking access
to traditional attack routes, according to the researchers, who hail from
the US, Germany and New Zealand.
"The 'black hats' are turning to easier, unprotected attack paths to
place their malware onto the end-user's machine," they said in the study,
called "Know Your Enemy: Malicious Web Servers."
The researchers, using a "high-interaction" client honeypot called
Capture-HPC developed by the Victoria University of Wellington, analyzed
more than 300,000 addresses from around 150,000 hosts.
The study looked at various site categories, including adult, music,
news, "warez," defaced, spam and addresses designed to grab traffic from
users who mistype common web addresses. While some categories were more
likely to contain malicious addresses than others, all contained
malicious addresses, the report said.
"As in real life, some 'neighborhoods' are more risky than others, but
even users that stay clear of these areas can be victimized," the report
said. "Any user accessing the web is at risk."
Users can be led to malicious sites via links, typing in an address
manually, mistyping an address or following search-engine results, the
study said.
These results only confirm what security researchers have been saying for
some time now. But the study also analyzed the effectiveness of safeguards
against such infections in some detail.
The research showed that blacklists, if regularly updated, can be a
surprisingly effective way of blocking malicious addresses.
The researchers also recommended regular patching, but this may not always
be straightforward, since the study found a prevalence of attacks against
plug-ins and non-browser applications. "Attacks also target applications
that one might have not think about patching, such as Winzip," the study
said.
Another technique that can block attacks would be to use a less popular
browser, such as Opera, the study found. "Despite the existence of
vulnerabilities, this browser didn't seem to be a target," the study said.
The data used as the basis for the study has been made available on the
Honeynet Project's website.
Spammers Find New Ways To Slip Through
Just when it appeared tech firms had the upper hand against spam, spammers
have unleashed new forms of the meddlesome e-mail to trick filters.
Spam in the form of popular PDF e-mail attachments and electronic greeting
cards is confounding e-mail security systems and annoying consumers. The
recent Storm e-mail virus and several pump-and-dump stock scams are
clogging inboxes and snookering consumers into downloading malicious
software. And it could get worse as the holidays approach, anti-spam
experts say.
The trend illustrates the shifting nature of spam's deceptive packaging.
As anti-spam vendors come up with solutions, new versions pop up. The
most common spam - which uses images to avoid the detection of spam
filters - is quickly fading because of advances in anti-spam technology.
But spam in PDFs, non-existent in May, now accounts for 8% of unsolicited
commercial e-mail. Last week, a PDF promoting a pump-and-dump scam
contributed to a 30% increase in overall spam. It was sent from
compromised PCs turned into spam-spreading bots, security firm Sophos
says.
Faux electronic-greeting cards, containing links to viruses, have also
picked up. Since mid-July, security firm Postini has blocked about 800
million copies of Storm, an e-mail virus masquerading as a greeting card.
"It's a cat-and-mouse game, and PDFs are the latest twist," says Adam
Swidler, senior marketing manager at Postini.
Spammers also are beginning to use Excel and Zip files.
As spam evolves, from text in the body of e-mail to images embedded in
attachments, it has become more difficult for filters to identify, says
Tom Gillis, co-founder of IronPort Systems, a security firm acquired by
Cisco Systems. "There is a social engineering element to this. People are
more likely to open a PDF file or Excel document, which are more
trusted."
Spammers now are also leveraging popular online applications to tout ads
for everything from stock scams to Viagra. Subscribers to Google's news
alerts are beginning to receive links to such ads among their customary
news links.
"Spammers make hay with a technique as long as they can," says Doug
Bowers, Symantec's senior director of engineering.
New strains have largely supplanted image spam, which accounted for half
of all spam in January. Image spam varies the content of individual
messages - through colors, backgrounds, picture sizes or font types - and
was harder to detect than text-based spam. Since software makers came up
with a solution, image spam has dropped to 8% of all spam, Symantec says.
eBay Says Skype Was Not Attacked
Skype has not been attacked, eBay said Friday, dispelling rumors that
Russian hackers took down its popular online telephony service.
For more than a day now, millions of Skype users have been knocked offline
by a major service outage that has crippled the service. By Friday
morning, things had improved for some users, but many were still unable to
connect.
eBay attributes the outage to a problem in a Skype networking algorithm,
but code has been posted to a Russian security discussion forum that
could supposedly be used to knock the service offline in a DOS (denial of
service) attack.
The code, which was published anonymously, appears to be capable of
forcing Skype's servers to freeze up, said the discussion forum site's
editor, Valery Marchuk, in a posting to the Full Disclosure security
discussion list. "Reportedly, it must have caused Skype massive
disconnections," he wrote.
Not necessarily so, say researchers who looked at the code Friday.
The code is designed to repeatedly launch Skype and overwhelm the server
with information, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with
nCircle Network Security. "But I couldn't say if it would have this kind
of potential DOS effect on all of Skype," he said.
The code simply would not work as advertised, said Stefano Zanero, CTO
with Secure Network SRL. "The attack code is fake, no doubt on that," he
said. "I don't think this is the cause of whatever is happening to
Skype."
eBay's Villu Arak addressed the issue directly in a Friday blog post,
saying that neither hackers nor a recent technology update were to blame.
"Neither Wednesday's planned maintenance of our Web-based payment
services nor any form of attack was related to the current sign-on issues
in any way," he wrote.
Half of Web Time Spent Viewing Content
Content online is king. Internet users spend nearly half their time online
viewing news or entertainment content, surpassing activities such as
sending e-mails, shopping or searching for information, according to a
study released by the Online Publishers Association on Monday.
The four-year study, conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings, tracked a 37 percent
increase in amount of time spent viewing content such as online videos or
news, surpassing a 35 percent rise in using search engines like Google
Inc.
The abundance of content and faster online speeds accounted for the
spike, the study said. A proliferation of social networks such as News
Corps' MySpace and Facebook have helped boost content viewing as well.
Overall, viewing content accounts for 47 percent of time spent online in
2007, up from 34 percent in 2003. Web search accounted for 5 percent of
time spent online in 2007 from 3 percent in 2003.
Time spent on commerce sites such as Amazon.com fell 5 percent and
accounted for 15 percent of time spent in 2007.
Time spent on communications such as e-mail fell 28 percent to 33 percent
of time spent online in 2007, down from 46 percent in 2003.
The popularity of instant messaging such as AOL Instant Messenger, which
lets users send quick messages rather than e-mails, accounted for the drop
in the amount of time spent corresponding, the study said.
Sony Offers Free Recycling
Consumers in the U.S. will be able to get Sony-brand electronics products
recycled for no cost from September under a new recycling program
announced by the consumer electronics company on Friday.
The Sony Take Back Recycling Program will be offered through 75 drop-off
locations in the U.S. operated by WM Recycle America LLC and will begin
on Sept. 15.
Sony intends to expand it to include about 150 drop-off points - at least
one in each state - within the year. Consumers will also have the option
to ship their products to a recycling center and Sony will work towards a
goal of having centers within 20 miles of 95 percent of the U.S.
population.
The issue of electronic waste is growing in importance as the number of
gadgets increases and their price comes down. Today, faulty electronics
products are more usually junked than repaired and it's increasingly
common for users to replace products not because they are old but because
a more attractive product comes along.
In 2005, between 1.9 million and 2.2 million tons of electronics products
were discarded in the U.S. of which the vast majority was dumped in
landfill sites. As little as 345,000 tons was recycled, according to a
study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Disposal by landfill often leads to numerous toxic chemicals leaching
into the surrounding ground leaving it poisonous and dangerous to the
nearby environment.
The issue is most vividly highlighted in Guiyu, China, where vast amounts
of electronics waste are sent for recycling from around the world. There,
according to environmental groups, so many toxic substances have escaped
into the ground that the area is heavily polluted and dangerous to the
health of local citizens.
Greenpeace has been urging electronics companies to cut down the number
of toxic substances used in electronics products. It publishes a regular
report of how it sees the major consumer electronics companies.
Sony ranked in last place in the most recent report, published in March
this year, in part for its take back standards. Greenpeace said the
company was part of a coalition that has been opposing producer
responsibility in recycling in the U.S. The organization also noted that
Sony scores well for have some models that are free of the worst
chemicals on the market.
Internet Use Could Kill Off Local Newspapers
News audiences are ditching television and newspapers and using the
Internet as their main source of information, in a trend that could
eventually see the demise of local papers, according to a new study
Wednesday.
"As online use has increased, the audiences of older media have
declined," Harvard University professor Thomas Patterson said in a report
on the year-long study issued by Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the
Press, Politics and Public Policy.
"In the past year alone... newspaper circulation has fallen by three
percent, broadcast news has lost a million viewers," said the study,
entitled "Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look and News on the
Internet."
Meanwhile, the numbers of people using the Internet as a news source have
increased - exponentially, in some cases.
Traffic to websites that post news produced by a third source, including
search engines and service providers, aggregators, such as topix.net or
digg.com, which use software to monitor and post web content; and blogs
- increased across the board between April 2006 and the same month in
2007.
Monthly visitors to Digg.com, an aggregator which lets users decide on
site content, skyrocketed in the 12 months to April 2007, from two
million to more than 15 million.
Other online news sources grew more modestly, with user rates growing by
14 percent for community websites and six percent for blogs.
The Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN websites between them have about 100
million monthly visitors, far outpacing user numbers on websites of major
television networks, which averaged 7.4 million visitors a month.
"Brand name" daily newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington
Post, averaged 8.5 million monthly visitors.
But newspapers in medium-sized to small cities saw either a drop in or no
change to the numbers of visitors to their websites, which have already
taken readers from hard-copy editions.
The authors of the study predict that many small newspapers could have
difficulty holding on to even their web audience, and counsel that they
include "national and international news in the mix."
FCC Tested Defective Prototype Device
Microsoft Corp. on Monday gave a simple reason why its prototype for
beaming high-speed Internet service over unused television airways failed
a government test: the device was broken.
The Federal Communications Commission said on July 31 that the device did
not reliably detect unoccupied spectrum and could interfere with other TV
programming and wireless microphone signals.
On Monday, Microsoft sent the agency a letter explaining that a
subsequent test determined the equipment was defective.
Representatives for Microsoft and other technology companies met with FCC
engineers last week and determined the device "was working improperly and
an internal component was broken," Microsoft's managing director for
government affairs, Jack Krumholtz, said in a statement on Monday.
"This accounted for the FCC's aberrant test results," Krumholtz said.
An FCC spokesman declined to comment on the matter.
Microsoft said in an FCC filing that it sent a duplicate device that was
functioning properly, but that the agency never tested it.
Microsoft is part of a coalition of companies that wants to beam
high-speed Internet service through unoccupied TV channels, also known as
"white spaces."
The coalition submitted two prototype devices, one developed by Microsoft
and another developed by Phillips Electronics North America Corp., a
division of Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics NV.
The coalition said the Philips device was able to detect both TV and
wireless microphone signals in a laboratory setting.
The FCC's engineering office plans to hold a hearing Thursday to provide
an overview of the tests and consider suggestions for further evaluation
of the devices.
While FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he wants the white spaces to be
utilized, he's facing resistance from TV broadcasters, who fear that it
won't work and would cause problems with TV programming and with a
federally mandated transition from analog to digital signals in early
2009.
The coalition said it's confident the FCC will be able to designate the
white spaces for high-speed Internet service, which would be accessible
and affordable especially in rural areas.
According to its timetable, the FCC could adopt rules for operating
unlicensed devices in the white-space spectrum by October and start
certifying similar devices that meets its technical requirement. In any
case, no devices would go on sale before the digital TV transition in
February 2009.
In addition to Microsoft and Philips, the technology coalition includes
Google Inc., Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp. and EarthLink
Inc.
Couple Tries To Name Baby 'at' Symbol
A Chinese couple seeking a distinctive and modern name for their child
chose the commonly used Internet 'at' symbol, much to the consternation
of Chinese officials.
The unidentified couple and the attempted naming were cited Thursday by
a Chinese government official as an example of bizarre names creeping
into the Chinese language.
The father "said 'the whole world uses it to write e-mails and translated
into Chinese it means 'love him,'"' Li Yuming, the vice director of the
State Language Commission, said at a news conference.
The symbol pronounced in English as 'at' sounds like the Chinese phrase
"love him."
Written Chinese does not use an alphabet but is comprised of characters,
sometimes making it difficult to develop new words for new or foreign
things and ideas.
In their quest for a different name, Li said that the parents of baby
'@' were not alone. As of last year, only 129 surnames accounted for 87
percent of all surnames in China, Li said, suggesting that the
uniformity drove people to find more individual given names.
"There was even a 'Zhao-A,' a 'King Osrina' and other extremely
individualistic names," Li said, according to a transcript of the news
conference posted on the government's main web site, http://www.gov.cn.
Li did not say whether police, who are the arbiters of names because they
issue identity cards, rejected baby '@' and the others. But nationwide
last year there were 60 million people's names that used "unfamiliar
characters," Li said.
=~=~=~=
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