Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 10 Issue 19
Volume 10, Issue 19 Atari Online News, Etc. May 9, 2008
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2008
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:
To subscribe to A-ONE, change e-mail addresses, or unsubscribe,
log on to our website at: www.atarinews.org
and click on "Subscriptions".
OR subscribe to A-ONE by sending a message to: dpj@atarinews.org
and your address will be added to the distribution list.
To unsubscribe from A-ONE, send the following: Unsubscribe A-ONE
Please make sure that you include the same address that you used to
subscribe from.
To download A-ONE, set your browser bookmarks to one of the
following sites:
http://people.delphiforums.com/dpj/a-one.htm
Now available:
http://www.atarinews.org
Visit the Atari Advantage Forum on Delphi!
http://forums.delphiforums.com/atari/
=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1019 05/09/08
~ Amazon Suing New York! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Atari Gets Delisted!
~ Texas Wants Net Taxes! ~ .org Domain Fees Rise! ~ Microsoft Appeals EU!
~ MS: Independent Paths! ~ Crimeserver Discovered ~ More Net Neutrality!
~ Comcast Mulls Net Usage ~ Microsoft and Facebook ~ E-mail Bouncebacks?
-* Microsoft & Yahoo - Now What? *-
-* eBay's PayPal Rule in OZ Draws Fire *-
-* Free Software Taking On Microsoft Office! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
I must be getting old(er)! Either I'm more out of shape from a long and
lethargic winter, or I might just have to admit that I'm getting older!
Gotta be the long winter! I think that I just have to get out more, get
some exercise, and get back into some semblance of condition! Some nice
weather (and that's something we haven't had a whole lot of lately!)
would give me some inclination to do just that. Heck, it hasn't even
been too nice around here to get back out and play some golf! Ouch!
So, for another week, I just haven't had a lot of time to really sit down
and contemplate a topic or two to get your brain cells a-churning! So,
before I start to ramble on about about yard work (plenty of it!) and the
lousy weather (plenty of that too!), I'll just quit while I'm ahead, and
relax these poor muscles in a nice soft easy chair for awhile!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
The following is pieced together excerpts from a Florida television
station web page. My comments follow. The story comes from:
http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=79533
Magic trick costs teacher job
Land 'O Lakes, Florida -- The stories in the news about
inappropriate relationships between teachers and students have been
overwhelming. There was even a substitute teacher in New Port
Richey who got in trouble after investigators say she had a
relationship with an underage student.
Well, another Pasco County substitute teacher's job is on the line,
but this time it's because of a magic trick.
The charge from the school district - Wizardry!
Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a
toothpick disappears then reappears.
But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle
School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing
act of its own.
"I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of
substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue. You
can't take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,'"
he said.
When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a
spell that went much farther than he'd hoped.
"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been
accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he asked.
Tampa Bay's 10 talked to the assistant superintendent with the
Pasco County School District who said it wasn't just the wizardry
and that Picular had other performance issues, including "not
following lesson plans" and allowing students to play on unapproved
computers.
Piculas said he knew nothing about the accusations.
"That... I think was embellished after the fact to try to cover
what initially what they were saying to me," he said.
After the magic trick, Rushe's principal requested Piculas be
dismissed. Now, Piculas believes the incident may have bewitched
his ability to get a job anywhere else.
"I still have no idea what my discipline involves because I've
never received anything from the school district actually saying
what it entails," said Piculas.
As a substitute teacher, the Pasco County School District considers
Piculas to be an "at will employee." That means the district
doesn't need to have cause for not bringing him back at all.
Now, if I were part of the administration of this particular school
system, I'd just chuck it all. I'd buy myself a boat and a bunch of
Jimmy Buffett CDs, and go on an extended vacation.
Let's face it: The substitute's magic trick WAS the reason he was let
go. How do I know that? Simple. If it wasn't, this assistant
superintendent would have said "it wasn't the magic trick, it was
because he wasn't following lesson plans, and he let the kids use
computers when they weren't supposed to".
Did he say that? No. He said "It wasn't JUST the wizardry"! JUST the
wizardry? What's next? Are they gonna "throw out them thar computin'
machine thangs"? Will they get rid of science books that steadfastly
maintain that the Earth revolves around the sun, even though a quick
read of the Bible reveals the truth? Will they replace standardized
testing of teachers for hire with a dunking chair or by searching their
bodies for a "Devil's Mark"?
Have we completely forgotten what school is? Do you expect to be able to
turn out world-class scientists, artists, philosophers, etc. by
worrying about 'wizardry'?
This one is right up there with those 'Creation Museums'. You know the
ones. The ones run by fundamentalists who believe that the Earth is
only 6,000 years old, and that it was actually created in six literal
days.
Now, if you want to believe that, go right ahead. I'll even fight for
your right to believe it. But will you then also refuse modern
medicines because they're based on the very sciences that your belief
system refutes? Will you forego even simple things like microwave ovens
because they're based on that godless quantum physics and the work of
that atheist Einstein?
Give me a second to see if I can find a picture from one of the Creation
Museums... nope.... I seem to have lost the link. There WAS a picture
out there on one of the Creation Museum web sites that had a dinosaur
with a saddle on it, being ridden by a caveman.
I'm sorry folks, but I knew that this was silliness the first time I saw
it... back when I was about 8 years old... when it was called THE
FLINTSONES.
I'm all in favor of you being able to believe whatever you want... but
your rights shouldn't interfere with the rights of others. You don't
have to right to demand that someone else believe as you do. And I
don't care how religious or holy you think you are, faith-based science
is an oxymoron. I just don't understand why some people feel that faith
and science are mutually exclusive. The narrow-mindedness necessary to
make the two mutually exclusive in your head just blows me away. Of
course, I believe in a 'living Constitution' too. [grin]
Well, enough of that. Let's get to the news, hints, tips and info from
the UseNet.
From the comp.sys.atari.st NewsGroup
====================================
Francois Le Coat asks about XaAES:
"If I trust what's written in the freeMiNT mailing-list at
<http://tinyurl.com/59efu7>
by Frank Naumann, there is a very recent tagged version in the
freeMiNT & XaAES developments' CVS.
What I would like to know is about a binary release of kernel,
AES and tools. It use to be released binary at unofficial WEB
<http://xaaes.atari.org/>
but it's not. Not either on official sparemint atariforge
or <ftp://sparemint.org/pub/sparemint/mint/kernel>, strange.
Is there a public announce currently pending ? Is there a
binary package prepared for those who can't build the binaries
themselves ? Any good news about freeMiNT & XaAES release ?
We're looking forward to get binaries, not RPM please but in
an ATARI readable format, if you care for "old school" users."
Martin Byttebier asks Francois:
"What's wrong with RPM? IMHO, RPM is as much readable as anything else
on a MiNT based system.
Anyway if you really want a for you readable format get the RPM's and
extract it. Then you can make a gzip or whatever for you suitable
format.
rpm2cpio foo_bar.rpm | cpio -ivd
-i extract the files
-v show name and size of every file in the rpm
-d create the needed dirs "
Francois replies:
"I'm working with a minimal ATARI disk image that doesn't include
a command shell. I really can't install RPM packages. If I could
install packages, that'd mean I would have installed a peculiar
freeMiNT distribution, what I haven't done ... It's a simple
"old school" ATARI installation, looking like what was installed
with my Falcon30 in 1993 when Multitos was provided with it.
The minimal installation disk image I'm working on is located at
<http://eureka.atari.org/xa-my-aes.zip>
The command line shell is not strictly required for an ATARI OS.
This is also the case of my Hades 60 that boots with freeMiNT 1.15.12
and N.AES 2.0, because I had so many troubles with recent kernels. RPM
packages are useless for me, and I won't change that. I already tried
to install recent kernels, but I was forced to reformat my hard disk
and reinstall from CDROM backup, from scratch, really painful indeed.
So, because I can't handle RPM with freeMiNT, I must do it with
`rpm2cpio` with a Linux Red Hat like distribution (Mandriva).
It would be very simple for peoples like me to release kernel,
AES and tools (not all the freeMiNT distribution) like it always
used to be done :
<ftp://sparemint.org/pub/sparemint/mint/kernel>
It's about four years there's no such a release I'm afraid."
Phantomm asks for help with his MegaST:
"I've run into a weird problem with a Mega ST. Maybe someone who still
reads this group may have seen something similar or knows more about
the mega chips.
Upon boot up the internal drive will not read any disk (even a blank
format). The desktop will come up on screen and I can change
resolutions. However if I attach a 2nd Disk Drive, the Mega ST seems to
try to format the drive(disk).
I can try to access the internal drive from the desktop, when doing so,
the drive sounds like there is no disk in the drive to read.
I though that the Drive chip may be bad, but I know that other chips in
the Mega also have something to do with Drive signals. I think the
Sound Chip and maybe the Video Shifter relate drive signals, but not
sure what part each control?
And does the keyboard have anything to do with the drives?
The Mega is a version 5.0xxx motherboard. with TOS 1.4.
Stock unit with 4megs. Used very little."
Ronald Hall tells Phantomm:
"I know you've got a lot of other ST stuff lying around - how
about switching out the floppy drive with a known working one? At least
that way, you could rule out the drive, before you started chip-chasing.
The Mega models aren't too hard to take apart."
Phantomm tells Ronald:
"[I've] already switched out the internal drive, with a known working
mech and got the same results. Also tried an original Atari external
disk drive and a GoldenImage which all work fine on my 1040STe. I
replaced the power supply and it's purring like a panther. I mean
kitten.
I've had the Mega apart, as I was going to do a few upgrades before this
problem came up.
Reason I ask about the keyboard, is I plugged in a TT keyboard before
this problem came up. Unless all TT keyboards are the same, the one I
used seems to be a non-US version.
Due to what appears to be a Sign for the UK Pound on one of the number
Keys.
I then tried a original Mega keyboard but get the same. I think it's a
chip problem. By the way, the mega acts, you'd think it has its NVRAM
messed up. But the mega doesn't have NVRAM.
If a bad keyboard can mess up the drives then it's possible that I have
2 bad keyboards, I have another Mega keyboard that I'm getting ready to
try just to make sure. Then going after the Yamaha chip.
Most of the chips in this mega are socketed, maybe one's loose."
Mitchell Spector tells us that he...
"...Found and bought an Atari ST (1024 FM) tonight for $3!
Figured I should grab it up, years ago I bought a 520 FM
and never was able to do much with it, considering its
lack of memory and single-sided floppy drive.
This one is in good cosmetic shape, apart from the
'Backspace' key steam broken (nothing some crazy
glue won't fix) and coming with a generic PC serial
mouse with an AM/AT switch on bottom. Still, I'm now
wondering if it's dead or alive...
Plugged into the RF connector to my TV set but all I
get is a black screen. If I tap on the keyboard, I get a
"beep" feedback sound through the TV's speakers if
that means anything. I can hear the floppy drive trying
to seek, looking for a disk for about a minute, but when
it gives up, GEM does *not* load up. Shouldn't be in ROM?
The power LED for the floppy stays lit up orange, it never
goes out. Shouldn't I see some image on screen?
I tried an old Windows-based program called WDFCopy
v0.09 to create a bootable disk, but after inserting it in the
ST, it just gives up after a few brief seconds (not certain it
created a proper disk though, it's been years since I last
tried tinkering with an Atari ST).
Anyhow, I used the Apple IIGS back in the 80's, and
tinkered with the Amiga on and off in the 90's but never
had a chance to play with the Atari ST. Any chance of
getting this one working, or am I out of luck, again?"
Mark Bedingfield tells Mitchell:
"Its not serial, its an Amiga/Atari mouse.
It [TOS/GEM] is in ROM.
[The solid orange LED floppy status light] can occur if there is no disk
in the drive and the desktop hasn't booted.
You should see the green desktop.
I would build/buy a video cable to suit composite output. It is better
than mucking around trying to tune the TV to as a monitor.
Something like this;
http://tinyurl.com/5fftyf
To make a composite cable you just use pins 1, 2 and 13. I will draw a
schematic for you when I get a minute. Bugger it, here you go;
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~startreks/stcct.html "
Mitchell replies:
"Ahh, that's what the AM/AT stands for (AMiga/ATari) [on the mouse].
At the very least it looked like a modified PC serial mouse,
underneath the switch I can see "MS" and "PC" embedded
in the plastic. Interesting, I have a similar Amiga mouse with
the same switch and never realized it was Atari compatible."
Well folks, that's it for this time around. Tune in again next week,
same time, same station, and be ready to listen to what they're saying
when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - 'Mario Kart Wii' Is Familiar!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Video Games Don't Create Killers!
Atari Gets Delisted!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
'Mario Kart Wii' Is Familiar - In A Good Way
Theres an old saying that goes "if it aint broke, dont fix it," and
Nintendo definitely took that to heart when they made Mario Kart Wii.
Thats a good thing.
The E-rated Mario Kart Wii has all the things fans love about the
family-friendly racing series: Players still slide through corners in
order to gain speed bursts, and use crazy power-ups, like banana peels
and turtle shells, to make their competitors spin out, but there are some
new tricks to learn as well.
Mario Kart Wii features the usual Nintendo characters, but this time you
can also race as your very own Mii (thats your Wii avatar). And along
with 16 new racetracks, there are 16 retro tracks ripped right out of
previous Mario Kart titles.
Plus, for the first time ever in franchise history, you can ride
motorbikes. Like the karts, bikes get power boosts when you slide them
through corners, but bikes can also get a power boost by popping a
wheelie. You have to be careful though, as youre more susceptible to spin
outs while your tire is in the air - not to mention its much harder to
steer that way.
The most delightful part of "Mario Kart Wii" is that it's playable online
via Nintendo's Wi-Fi connection, letting you race your friends either
beside you in the room or halfway around the world - or even both at the
same time. The game allows two people using the same Wii to play online
simultaneously (though a second controller will be needed, natch).
The online aspect of the game actually outshines the single player mode.
Not only does it allow for up to 12 people to race at once, it lessens the
"rubberband" effect (the clumping together of karts by the games
artificial intelligence) that the series has been faulted for in the past.
Those pesky power-ups still keep the better players from really pulling
away from the pack, but racing against real people instead of an A.I.
definitely makes for an improved experience.
Furthermore, while these matches are being set up, youll be shown each
racers Mii and where on the globe they come from. Its a charming little
touch that reminds us just how small our world has become.
But the best part about playing online is that its all included in the
games $49.99 price tag (though you do have to provide your own Internet
service).
On the downside, to connect with your peeps online you have to enter a
clunky 12-digit friend code. Even when you do hook up with them you
cant chat, as theres no voice support. That is a real shame because
Mario Kart Wii is a game ripe for bravado and friendly barbs.
So while Nintendo didnt exactly try to - if youll pardon the pun -
reinvent the wheel with the latest Mario Kart incarnation, they do include
one when you purchase the game. Its a small plastic steering wheel that
fits into your Wii remote. As gimmicky as it may sound, it actually works
pretty well. Its much more comfortable to hold for long periods of time
than the remote is by itself.
The wheel also extends the B button (the "trigger" on the bottom of the
remote), which makes it easier to press while youre racing. Thats good
because that B button controls your brakes, something youll use a lot as
you slide into corners and create those speed boosts.
Unfortunately, if you have multiple gamers in your household, buying a
second wheel will set you back $14.99, and thats on top of the $39.99 it
costs for a second Wii remote.
On the bright side, Mario Kart Wii is designed to work with a bunch of
different controllers: the Wii remote either by itself or with the
nunchuk attached, the Wii classic controller, and the GameCube controller.
Actually, veteran gamers may even prefer to use their old familiar
controllers. But no matter which controller you pick, no matter if youre
an old fan of the franchise or brand new to gaming, you can instantly
pick up Mario Kart Wii and have a fun time.
Video Games Don't Create Killers, New Book Says
Playing video games does not turn children into deranged, blood-thirsty
super-killers, according to a new book by a pair of Harvard researchers.
Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team at Harvard
Medical School, detail their views in "Grand Theft Childhood: The
Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do,"
which came out last month and promises to reshape the debate on the
effects of video games on kids.
"What I hope people realize is that there is no data to support the
simple-minded concerns that video games cause violence," Kutner told
Reuters.
The pair reached that conclusion after conducting a two-year study of
more than 1,200 middle-school children about their attitudes towards
video games.
It was a different approach than most other studies, which have focused
on laboratory experiments that attempt to use actions like ringing a
loud buzzer as a measure of aggression.
"What we did that had rarely been done by other researchers was actually
talk to the kids. It sounds bizarre but it hadn't been done," Kutner
said.
They found that playing video games was a near-universal activity among
children, and was often intensely social.
But the data did show a link between playing mature-rated games and
aggressive behavior. The researchers found that 51 percent of boys who
played M-rated games - the industry's equivalent of an R-rated movie,
meaning suitable for ages 17 and up - had been in a fight in the past
year, compared to 28 percent of non-M-rated gamers.
The pattern was even stronger among girls, with 40 percent of those who
played M-rated games having been in a fight in the past year, compared
to just 14 percent for non-M players.
One of the most surprising things was how popular mature games were
among girls. In fact, the "Grand Theft Auto" crime action series was the
second-most played game behind "The Sims," a sort of virtual dollhouse.
Kutner and Olson said further study is needed because the data shows only
a correlation, not causation. It is unclear whether the games trigger
aggression or if aggressive children are drawn to more violent games.
"It's still a minority of kids who play violent video games a lot and get
into fights. If you want a good description of 13-year-old kids who play
violent video games, it's your local soccer team," Olson said.
The researchers also try to place video games in a larger context of
popular culture. The anxiety many parents voice over video games largely
mirrors the concerns raised when movies, comic books and television
became popular.
"One thing I like about their approach is that they've tried to
historicize the whole concept of a media controversy and that we've seen
this before," said Ian Bogost, a professor at Georgia Tech known for his
studies on video games.
The book urges a common-sense approach that takes stock of the entire
range of a child's behavior. Frequent fighting, bad grades, and obsessive
gaming can be signs for trouble.
"If you have, for example, a girl who plays 15 hours a week of
exclusively violent video games, I'd be very concerned because it's very
unusual," Kutner said.
"But for boys (the danger sign) is not playing video games at all,
because it looks like for this generation, video games are a measure of
social competence for boys."
Many video game fans have embraced the pair as champions of the industry,
a label that makes them uncomfortable.
"We're not comfortable doing pro and con. We've been asked to do the
pro-game side in debates, and I don't consider myself a pro-game person.
Video games are a medium," Olson said.
Atari Gets Delisted by Nasdaq
Atari, which has gone from a once high-flying video game company to
little more than a placeholder brand name owned by another company,
announced Thursday that it has been delisted by Nasdaq.
The company, which is now fully owned by games publisher Infogrames,
said in a statement that it received a letter on May 7 from Nasdaq
"stating that a Nasdaq listing qualifications panel has determined
to delist Atari Inc.'s securities from the Nasdaq Global Market and will
suspend trading of Atari...shares effective" Friday.
The release also said that Atari plans to appeal the delisting, but that
its doing so would not delay the process of having its shares taken off
of Nasdaq.
On April 30, Infogrames, which owned 51.4 percent of Atari, announced
that it would buy the remaining shares.
All in all, this is an ignominious step in the once-famed Atari's story.
In many ways, Atari started the modern video games industry, and in the
1980s it was one of the biggest names in consumer electronics. But over
the years, its fortunes fell and more recently, it has been little more
than a brand name used by Infogrames.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Microsoft and Yahoo: Now What?
Microsoft's three-month courtship of Yahoo has ended but it changed both
companies forever and neither can expect to return to the way they were.
Microsoft and Yahoo will need to deliver on promises, address questions,
reassess and adjust plans and deal with challenges that grew from and
during the attempted acquisition.
"The key thing is that both companies are going to have to articulate very
clearly what their strategies going forward will be," said Forrester
Research analyst Charlene Li in a phone interview.
Yahoo has the most to prove and deliver upon, while facing a more
uncertain future.
"For Yahoo, this is a situation of 'Be careful what you wish for,'" said
industry analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence in a phone
interview. "Yahoo's directors and management very strongly indicated that
they wanted to remain independent and now they get that opportunity."
First order of business for Yahoo will be to monitor its stock, which got
a boost after the acquisition bid and now faces a possibly negative
reaction from financial markets.
If the stock gets clobbered in the coming days and doesn't rebound, Yahoo
could find itself an acquisition target again from other suitors, and
possibly under less favorable conditions and terms.
Even if the stock holds up, it's still very likely that Yahoo will be
pelted with a flurry of lawsuits from shareholders that feel the company
didn't look out for their best interests when rejecting Microsoft's
offer.
In addition, Yahoo will have to hustle to deliver on all the ambitious
plans and promises it made these past three months, and prove that it can
indeed turn its ship around as an independent company.
Financial analyst Clayton Moran from Stanford Group Company is
pessimistic about Wall Street's reaction to Yahoo and about the
company's ability to significantly improve its financial situation.
"Yahoo has missed an opportunity. We expect the stock to drop
materially," he said in an e-mail interview.
Moran doesn't believe that in the coming 12 to 18 months Yahoo's stock
will reach the $37 per share value that the company wanted Microsoft to
offer and over which negotiations eventually broke down.
"Yahoo's best alternative was to sell to Microsoft. As an independent
company, Yahoo has lost market share and struggled to grow cash flow. We
suspect these trends will remain intact for the foreseeable future,"
Moran said.
Beyond the potential financial turmoil, Yahoo will need to follow through
on the many lofty projects it has kicked off, such as its new AMP
advertising management platform and its Yahoo Open Strategy (YOS) for
letting outside developers create applications across its network of
sites and services.
"Yahoo has some very ambitious plans they have announced these past three
months and now they have to deliver and start fulfilling the promise some
of these projects represent," Sterling said.
"The onus is on Yahoo to explain why it's worth $37 per share and in
particular to articulate very quickly what its strategy is, now that it's
been given this reprieve," Li said.
It's also unclear how wise it will be of Yahoo to outsource a significant
portion of its search advertising business to Google, a deal that, if
completed, may be announced as early as next week, according to a source
close to Yahoo.
"While Yahoo may pursue a Google search partnership as a way to appease
shareholders through enhanced cash flow, we believe such a deal would
face intense anti-trust scrutiny. In addition, it would cede control of
search to Google," Moran said.
Li isn't convinced that the deal's short-term financial boost will
justify passing up the long-term advantage of being able to integrate
search into its overall ad strategy. "That's going to be interesting to
watch," she said.
Microsoft also has its own set of challenges created by its bid. For
starters, it needs to explain how it plans to boost its Internet unit now
that the bid collapsed, after outlining many reasons why it needed Yahoo
to do it, she said.
This would be a good time for Microsoft to change course and stop vowing
to catch Google in search advertising. "That game is over and Google
won," Li said.
However, by focusing on unifying display advertising, such as banner ads,
with search advertising in a single platform, Microsoft, as well as
Yahoo, could compete more effectively against Google, whose display
advertising business is very small, she said. The synergy between search
and display ads can make both formats significantly more effective and
valuable to advertisers, Li said.
While Google has said that it will make significant progress in display
ads now that it owns DoubleClick, Li isn't so sure. "Google doesn't have
a good feel for the display ad market, which is an old network of
agencies and creative types and media people who all know each other from
ages ago," she said. "Yahoo and Microsoft really had to earn their way
into that space over the past decade."
Since it obviously has the cash, Microsoft should go shopping for other
companies that could give it some of the products, services and
innovative technology it was hoping to get from Yahoo, said Gartner
analyst Allen Weiner. "I'm looking for Microsoft to get aggressive with a
buying spree," he said in a phone interview.
In an April 25 report, Moran and his colleague Kevin Buttigieg [cq]
listed some companies that, if the Yahoo acquisition failed, might make
sense for Microsoft to consider acquiring: Time Warner's AOL, News
Corp.'s Fox Interactive (which includes MySpace), ValueClick, CNet and
Facebook.
For his part, Weiner thinks we might see Microsoft pursue an acquisition
of a video platform provider like Brightcove and ExtendMedia, and an
online presence company to complement its strong webmail and IM services
like Twitter.
But whatever it does, Microsoft should take some concrete steps to move
on in the public eye. "I think Microsoft should do something quickly to
show the world that Yahoo bid wasn't a setback," Weiner said.
Bill Gates Says Microsoft Will Make its Own Advances
Microsoft will pursue independent paths as it figures out how to compete
with Google in the aftermath of its failed bid for Yahoo. Speaking at a
press conference in Tokyo, Chairman Bill Gates said Microsoft is
committed to making its own advances in search and online advertising.
"We will make the advances that give people the great choice there," he
said.
While not ruling out deals with other top-tier players, Gates emphasized
the current plan is to build new capabilities internally. "The key
decisions on (other acquisitions) will be made by Microsoft CEO Steve
Ballmer, who took a look at Yahoo and decided that, on our own, he likes
the stuff that we're doing," Gates said. "I wouldn't rule out some
partnerships, but we don't have anything imminent there."
Despite Ballmer's decision to walk away from a Yahoo takeover and Gates'
supportive comments, many analysts think Microsoft will be back later
this summer if Yahoo's stock price slides to pre-offer levels.
"If Yahoo misses its forecasts and the stock takes a hit, Microsoft would
definitely look to step back in," Ross Sandler, an analyst with RBC
Capital Markets, told the San Franciso Chronicle.
While that may be, Gates' comments likely reflect the thinking in
Redmond, said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies, in
an e-mail. "I believe Microsoft learned a lot through this Yahoo bid and
most likely ended up giving a great deal of thought about what they need
to do to compete if the Yahoo deal did not go through," he said. "I think
Gates' comments reflect this and at the moment they seem prepared to go
it alone."
Even so, "you cannot rule out the potential of Microsoft at some point
entertaining another Yahoo bid if their stock and market value goes down
and they could get it for a reduced price," he added.
The roughly $45 billion Microsoft was prepared to spend on Yahoo would go
a long way toward internal research and development efforts, said Charles
King, principal analyst with Pund-IT, in a telephone interview.
"What Yahoo would have given Microsoft is a much quicker ramp for its
online goals," King said. "But that's a lot of money. I don't see any
reason they couldn't very effectively invest that money."
In any case, it's not clear what companies other than Yahoo would make
sense for Microsoft. One option frequently mentioned is a
social-networking company like Facebook. "But there's no evidence
Facebook has figured out the online advertising model," King noted.
At the end of the day, does Microsoft's failure to close this deal
further tarnish Microsoft's reputation as the dominant computing company?
And with Gates departing soon, how much nervousness is there about
Ballmer steering the ship alone? "Anytime there's a changing of the
guard, there's a certain amount of anxiety," King said.
"Vista was supposed to be the final polish on Gates' legacy - the
world-class operating system for the enterprise. It hasn't worked out the
way the company hoped it would," King said. Ballmer is a "very bright,
very able guy, he's delivered in the past and he'll continue to deliver
in the future," King said, but "he's also under far closer and more
intense scrutiny than he's been before."
Microsoft Sends Out Feelers to Facebook
Microsoft Corp gauged Facebook's interest in a possible acquisition after
the software giant's failed takeover attempt of Yahoo Inc, the Wall
Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The newspaper reported on its Web site that Microsoft's bankers put out
subtle signals to Facebook, the social networking Web site, to see if it
would be open to a full acquisition.
The talks were first reported by Web site All Things Digital, owned by
Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones.
Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker declined to comment on the report.
Microsoft officials were not immediately available for comment.
In October, Microsoft took a $240 million stake in Facebook, which valued
the start-up at $15 billion. Citing an unnamed source, the report said
there are no active discussions between the two companies.
The news came a few days after Microsoft dropped its unsolicited offer to
buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion. The aim of that proposal was to build an
online advertising powerhouse to rival Google Inc.
Facebook, founded in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, has become
one of the hottest properties on the Internet because of its rapid
growth and the loyalty of its users. Facebook has more than 70 million
active users.
In the past, Zuckerberg has resisted selling the entire company, opting
to work toward an initial public offering.
Amazon Suing NY State Over Sales Tax Law
Amazon.com Inc has sued the state of New York, challenging a new statute
requiring Internet retailers based elsewhere to collect New York sales
taxes.
Amazon, the world's largest Internet retailer, said in a complaint filed
in the Supreme Court of the State of New York on April 25 that the new
law, passed by the state legislature in early April, was
unconstitutional, vague and overly broad.
Through its "Associates Program," the company pays unaffiliated Web site
operators around the country a commission if they advertise Amazon on
their sites. Those ads often allow consumers to click through from the
advertiser's Web site to Amazon.com.
The new law presumes that this amounts to solicitation of business in the
state, a claim Amazon denies. Amazon has no "substantial" physical
presence in the state, and independent advertisers are not authorized to
act as Amazon's agents, according to the company's complaint.
Furthermore, Amazon claims the lawsuit unfairly singles out the company.
Seattle-based Amazon wants the law be declared invalid and to be awarded
costs of the legal proceedings.
Besides newly appointed New York Governor David Paterson, Amazon also
named the commissioner of New York's state department of taxation and
finance as a defendant in the case.
Amazon.com said it had no further comment on the case.
Texas May Claim Amazon Owes Sales Taxes
Texas officials may claim that Amazon.com owes millions in sales taxes
on purchases that state residents made from the Internet retailer.
A 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling lets states collect sales taxes from
out-of-state retailers that have a "physical presence" in their state.
Seattle-based Amazon runs a distribution center in Irving.
The Dallas Morning News reported in Friday's editions that it asked the
Texas comptroller's office why the retailer didn't charge sales taxes on
Texas customers. Robin Corrigan, a sales tax policy executive in the
comptroller's office, said the agency didn't know Amazon operates a
facility in the state.
Company officials "told me they don't have a distribution center in
Texas," Corrigan said. "We will definitely send out a team to
investigate."
Amazon media officials did not immediately return calls from The
Associated Press for comment Friday.
Texas officials didn't say how much they think Amazon may owe, but
Comptroller Susan Combs said in December that the state lost $541
million in sales taxes on Internet and mail-order sales during 2006.
The question of Texas taxes arose after Amazon sued the state of New
York last month, saying it shouldn't have to pay sales taxes because it
doesn't have a presence there.
The conflicts with Amazon are part of a larger debate over taxing
Internet sales.
Some retailers, such as Plano-based J.C. Penney Co., have complained
that competitors who don't collect sales taxes have an unfair advantage.
Legislation now pending in Congress would standardize the taxation of
Internet sales while exempting small online retailers.
On its Web site, Amazon says purchases shipped to Kansas, Kentucky,
North Dakota or Washington are subject to sales tax. It has operations
in all four states. According to its Web site, it doesn't charge sales
taxes in several other states where it also has operations, however.
EBay's PayPal Rule in Australia Draws Fire
EBay Inc. is exploring whether to require customers to use its online
payment service PayPal, a move that has angered users and prompted
antitrust scrutiny in Australia, where a PayPal-only rule takes effect
next month.
It's unclear whether eBay will institute a similar policy in the United
States and other countries. However, the online auction company often
tries big changes in smaller markets before expanding them worldwide,
and says it is open to that in this case.
"We are going to take learnings from it and apply them accordingly,"
said eBay spokesman Usher Lieberman.
EBay says it wants to reduce disputes and restore trust in its
marketplace with the PayPal-only plan. Because eBay and PayPal can share
information on each transaction, eBay says use of PayPal allows it to
stop fraud more efficiently than outside payment services. Pressing that
safety argument in a heated discussion with Australian users, an eBay
executive compared the new rule to banning the sale of heroin on street
corners.
But critics lament that PayPal is costlier than other payment options,
and they suspect eBay is just interested in increasing PayPal's revenue.
Australian banks say the plan will eliminate competition for the sake of
exaggerated benefits.
"Competition will be restricted, innovation and development will be
constrained, new entry will be discouraged and PayPal will be able to
increase fees and charges to eBay users," the Australian Bankers
Association said in a filing with regulators Thursday.
Because eBay sellers are commonly independent merchants who don't accept
credit cards, PayPal acts as a go-between. Buyers use their credit cards
and bank account information to make payments, and PayPal relays the
funds to sellers' PayPal accounts, charging them 30 cents plus a
commission - up to 4.4 percent in Australia. The second-most common
method of payment on eBay Australia, bank transfers, cost 20 cents each.
Australia's bankers group says PayPal is not as immune to fraud as eBay
claims. While PayPal does keep bank and credit card account information
secret between trading partners, the bankers group decried that it does
not verify identity as banks do.
EBay's financial reports indicate that PayPal, while hardly fraud-proof,
is getting better at cracking down. Its loss rate is 0.24 percent, down
from 0.33 percent a year ago. That means that for every $100 transacted
with the service, PayPal has to eat 24 cents because of fraud. That is
slightly lower than the rates seen in credit and debit card transactions
involving the top 20 online retailers, said Avivah Litan, a payments
security analyst with Gartner Inc.
EBay contends that when users opt for methods like bank transfers, their
transactions are four times more likely to result in a disputed payment.
EBay says reducing that risk will attract new buyers to the site.
And, the company adds, it doesn't stand to profit directly from the
PayPal rule. It claims its investments in new buyer protections could
outweigh any gains from increased PayPal fees. For instance, under
Australia's new plan, if a buyer doesn't get what he or she paid for via
PayPal, eBay will refund the buyer up to 20,000 Australian dollars
($18,600).
To make the PayPal rule possible, eBay has applied for - and
automatically gets - immunity from Australia's anti-monopoly Trade
Practices Act. But the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission,
which is investigating, could revoke that immunity if it finds the plan
will harm the marketplace. A decision is expected soon.
Critics say eBay is just trying to fatten its bottom line. Growth in
eBay's core auction listings has slowed in recent quarters, pushing eBay
to expand other parts of its business, which includes PayPal,
classifieds sites and online telecommunications service Skype. And eBay
has already taken other steps viewed as protecting PayPal, such as
banning Google Inc.'s rival Checkout service on alleged safety concerns
months after it was launched in 2006.
Sellers in Australia are "absolutely furious" and resent that they are
subjects of an experiment, said Phil Leahy, president of the 600-member
Australia chapter of the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance.
Leahy sells DVDs, movies and CDs through eBay, a high-volume, low-margin
business. He says using PayPal instead of bank transfers would cost him
$4,700 per month, based on his January sales numbers of $332,000. "It's
the difference between making money and not making money," he said.
Leahy estimates Australian buyers use PayPal about 50 percent of the
time - eBay would not confirm the figure - versus an 85 percent rate in
the United States. He said bank transfers are used in 30 percent of
transactions. The rest are conducted with bank and personal checks,
money orders, or cash on delivery, all of which are banned under eBay's
new plan unless the payments are exchanged in person. That happens rarely.
Shaun O'Brien, a seller of home theater accessories, said many
Australians trust their banking system more than online services like
PayPal. He worries buyers will leave when they are deprived of a choice.
"Australians here have been heavily educated against putting credit card
details online," O'Brien said. "There are plenty of customers out there
that refuse to use PayPal."
The Australian experiment could lead to a less-stringent step: Perhaps
eBay will require all sellers to at least offer PayPal as a payment
choice. No matter how it turns out, however, eBay surely has more big
plans for PayPal, which has grown steadily since the auction company
bought the payment service in 2002. Last year it accounted for $1.9
billion in revenue, 25 percent of eBay's total.
In fact, eBay's top e-commerce executive, Rajiv Dutta, PayPal's former
president, said last year he was convinced PayPal would someday be
bigger than eBay's better-known auction and marketplace business.
Fees for `.org' Domain Names To Increase 10 Percent
Wholesale fees for Internet addresses ending in ".org" will increase 10
percent Nov. 9.
Public Interest Registry, which operates the ".org" domain name,
disclosed the planned fee increase in a May 1 letter to the Internet's
key oversight agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers. The fee increase does not require the organization's approval.
The per-name fee is what PIR collect annually from registrars, the
companies that sell domain names on their behalf. Such charges are
generally incorporated in the prices companies, groups and individuals
pay to register names, and they apply to new registrations, transfers
and renewals.
The increase brings the annual fee to $6.75. Last year, PIR imposed a
2.5 percent fee increase to $6.15.
PIR did not cite a reason in its letter.
With nearly 7 million names registered, ".org" is the world's sixth most
popular domain name suffix. Although the suffix was originally intended
for organizations like nonprofits, the designator is now open to anyone
who wants to use it.
Earlier this year, VeriSign Inc., the company that keeps the master list
of domain names ending in ".com" and ".net," also announced price
increases. Effective Oct. 1, the annual fee for ".com" names will go up
7 percent to $6.86 and the ".net" fee will increase 10 percent to $4.23.
Both suffixes also are available to any company, group or individual.
Free Software Takes on Microsoft Office
Pierre Avignon is no pirate, but he does not believe in paying for
software. His computer is filled with programs like Symphony - a free
suite that he downloaded from an International Business Machines Corp
website (http://symphony.lotus.com).
It performs work for which he used to rely on Microsoft Corp's Word
word processor, Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation builder,
all components of the Microsoft Office software suite.
"It is free. It is a great deal," says Avignon, a 43-year-old graphics
designer from West Newbury, Massachusetts.
Free software was once almost exclusively borne of a grass-roots effort
- with an anti-Microsoft bent - seeking alternatives to paid software.
The movement produced myriad programs, but only a handful of widely used
titles such as the Linux operating system.
Microsoft says Office has 500 million users.
Growth in the availability of broadband Internet access has spawned a
new type of free software - programs that its developers host on their
own servers and have designed to foster collaboration among users by
making documents easy to share.
Google Inc and smaller Internet companies such as privately held Zoho
offer free office suites over the Web. (http://docs.google.com and
http://www.zoho.com).
Users don't have to install the programs or even keep documents on their
own PCs.
You can't set up mass mailings or run sophisticated data analysis using
most free, Web-based software, says Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst with
Nucleus Research. But she says few people actually use such features.
Google Docs and other free programs are looking increasingly attractive
to businesses, she said, as they seek ways to keep down their
information technology budgets.
Microsoft's entry-level business version of Office costs $325 at
Amazon.com, about triple the price of its version targeted at
home users.
"Ninety percent of the users don't need all the functionality that
Office provides," Wettemann said. "Ninety percent of people basically
just use Excel to make lists."
More demanding users who don't want to pay may look to Symphony and its
cousin, OpenOffice, a package developed by a nonprofit group that also
includes a database program and drawing software.
Rob Tidrow, a computer programmer who has written several guides to
using Microsoft Office, says that Symphony does not lack many features
that even power users of Office need.
Tidrow, who just finished writing "IBM Lotus Symphony for Dummies," said
he installed the IBM program on computers that his two children use, but
it is also robust enough to meet the needs of churches, schools and
small businesses.
"They can save hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars by using free
software," he said.
Kirk Gregersen, a Microsoft product manager, says that cost is generally
not a prime deciding factor for Office customers.
Surveys show that price is generally the eighth most important factor,
he said.
And "free" has its setbacks.
"As soon as you say it's free, (people) feel less comfortable," says
Avignon, who has encouraged friends to try Symphony but has won few
converts. "They say 'What's the catch?"'
Even so, Microsoft is closely watching these products.
"We take the competition super-seriously," says Gregersen. "We have to,
or we wouldn't be doing the right thing."
Comcast Mulling Net Usage Cap To Discourage 'Excessive' Use
Comcast Corp., the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, is
considering setting an official limit on the amount of data that
subscribers can download per month and charging a fee for those who go
over.
As more consumers download movies and music online, Internet service
providers have to grapple with how to manage their traffic so that
bandwidth hogs don't slow down the network for the lighter users among
the company's 14.1 million subscribers.
For years, Comcast directly called customers who used up several times
more bandwidth than the typical subscriber's 2 gigabytes per month - for
instance, by downloading hordes of movies. The big users were asked to
reduce their use or have their accounts canceled.
Some Comcast customers have griped that the company hasn't been more
forthcoming about the bandwidth ceiling at which they would get a call.
Comcast's shift aims to improve transparency.
Comcast and other ISPs, however, may be acting too late to change consumer
behavior, said Phil Redman, research vice president at Gartner Inc.
"Once you're on an unlimited plan, it's hard to go back," he said. "On the
wireline side, it's almost an inalienable right to use as much bandwidth
as you want for a set price."
A report that Comcast was considering limits on monthly use appeared in
the online tech forum BroadbandReports.com and was confirmed Wednesday by
the company.
Jennifer Khoury, a company spokeswoman, said Comcast is "currently
evaluating this service and pricing model to ensure we deliver a great
online experience to our customers."
Comcast describes excessive users as those who send, for instance, 40
million e-mails or download 50,000 songs a month.
One option is to cap the bandwidth usage at 250 gigabytes per month. If
the 250 gigabytes is allotted for just downloads, that's enough to handle
about 50 high-definition movies, 250 standard-definition movies or more
than 6,000 songs every month.
If users exceed that cap, they could be charged $15 for every 10
gigabytes they go over.
Because the plan is still in its early stages, Comcast could still change
the details or decline to impose any caps or charges.
Time Warner Cable Inc. is on track this year to roll out a test run of a
plan to charge different rates depending on Internet use, said spokesman
Alex Dudley.
The trial in Beaumont, Texas, will offer five-, 10-, 20-, or 40-gigabyte
plans to new customers priced tentatively from $29.95 to $54.95 a month.
Those who go over will be charged a fee. Subscribers can check their
bandwidth use through a Web site.
New York-based Time Warner said 5 percent of subscribers use 50 percent
of the bandwidth.
Cox Communications in Atlanta said it has had usage caps on its Internet
plans for three years. Consumers who go over the limit will be warned
first, usually by e-mail, after which they will have service suspended
until they call customer service. Spokesman David Grabert said customers
appreciate that Cox has "clearly communicated ... what our limits are."
Bend Cable Communications, a cable operator in Bend, Ore., is already
charging $36.95 to $74.95 a month for plans ranging from 10 to 100
gigabytes, with subscribers who go over the limit charged $1.50 per
gigabyte.
Microsoft Appeals $1.4B EU Antitrust Fine
Microsoft Corp. on Friday said it has appealed a $1.39 billion fine
imposed in February by the European Commission for the company's failure
to comply with a 2004 antitrust order.
Spokesman Jack Evans said Microsoft filed an application with the Court
of First Instance in Luxembourg to annul the Commission's decision.
"We are filing this appeal in a constructive effort to seek clarity from
the court," Evans said in an e-mailed statement. He declined to
elaborate.
The fine had marked the tentative end to a long-running fight between
the European Union and Microsoft, triggered by a 1998 complaint by Sun
Microsystems Inc. Sun alleged Microsoft was refusing to supply all the
information servers need to work with its market-dominating Windows
operating system.
Microsoft later made the information available to rivals, but the EU
said it charged "unreasonable prices" until last October. European
antitrust regulators have also required the Redmond-based company to
sell a version of Windows without media player software.
In all, the company has been fined just under $2.63 billion by European
regulators over the years.
Microsoft's tussles with the EU were renewed when regulators launched
new probes in January. The European Commission is examining whether
Microsoft illegally gives away its Internet Explorer browser for free
with Windows, and whether the software maker withheld information from
companies that wanted to make products compatible with its software,
including Office word processing and spreadsheet tools and some server
products.
Since then, Microsoft has pledged to make those protocols freely
available for noncommercial uses and available at low royalty rates for
commercial software developers.
US Lawmakers Introduce New Net Neutrality Bill
Two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a
bill that would subject broadband providers to antitrust violations if
they block or slow Internet traffic.
Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the
House Judiciary Committee, has sponsored the Internet Freedom and
Nondiscrimination Act along with Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat
from the Silicon Valley area of California.
The legislation requires Internet service providers to interconnect with
the facilities of other network providers on a reasonable and
nondiscriminatory basis. It also requires them to operate their networks
in a reasonable and nondiscriminatory manner so that all content,
applications and services are treated the same and have an equal
opportunity to reach consumers.
Any ISPs that do not follow these net neutrality rules would be subject
to antitrust enforcement.
The legislation, introduced Thursday, earned praised from some consumer
and online rights groups. Large broadband and mobile phone service
providers have begun to discriminate against some content, with Comcast
saying it has slowed some customer access to the BitTorrent peer-to-peer
protocol during times of network congestion, they say. Other broadband
providers have talked about managing their networks or asking some
popular Web sites to pay more for fast service, net neutrality advocates
have said.
"The bill squarely addresses the issue of the enormous market power of
the telephone and cable companies as the providers of 98 percent of the
broadband service in the country," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public
Knowledge. "The bill restores the principle of nondiscrimination that
allowed the Internet to flourish in the dial-up era, making certain that
the same freedom and innovation will flourish in the broadband era
without burdensome regulation."
But broadband providers and some congressional Republicans have argued
that net neutrality legislation isn't necessary. The broadband market is
becoming more competitive and net neutrality regulations could hamper
investment in broadband networks, some Republicans said during a hearing
this week.
Competition is happened at "all levels of the Internet," Representative
Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, said this week. "Our hands-off policy
is working."
Conyers and Lofgren were cosponsors of a similar bill introduced in
2006, when Republicans held a majority in the House. With significant
Republican opposition, the 2006 bill died, but Democrats were elected to
the majority late that year.
"Americans have come to expect the Internet to be open to everyone,"
Conyers said in a statement. "The Internet was designed without
centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services. If we
allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the
Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what
content is available."
100 E-mail Bouncebacks? You've Been Backscattered
The bounceback e-mail messages come in at a trickle, maybe one or two
every hour. The subject lines are disquieting: "Cyails, Vygara nad
Levytar," "UNSOLICITED BULK EMAIL, apparently from you."
You eye your computer screen; you're nervous. What's going on ? Have you
been hacked? Are you some kind of zombie botnet spammer?
Nope, you're just getting a little backscatter - bounceback messages from
legitimate e-mail servers that have been fooled by the spammers.
Spammers like to put fake information in their e-mail messages in order
to sneak them past e-mail filters. Because e-mail filters now just delete
messages that come from nonexistent domains, the spammers like to make
their messages look like they come from real e-mail addresses. That
means, if your e-mail address has been published on the Web somewhere,
you're a prime candidate for backscattering.
The spammer finds your address, or sometimes even guesses it, and then
puts it in the "from" line of his messages, sending them out to hundreds
of thousands of recipients. When the spam gets sent to an address that is
no longer active, it can sometimes be bounced back... to you.
Although Sophos estimates that backscatter makes up just two percent or
three percent of all spam, antispam vendors say these messages are on the
rise lately.
Users often think that the backscatter may be a sign that their computer
has been hacked and is sending out spam messages, said Brad Bartman, a
global support manager with Text 100, a public relations consultancy.
"They look at it and they're like, 'Whoa, is my PC infected with a
virus?'" he said.
Backscatter rarely hits more than one or two employees at the same time,
so it isn't particularly disruptive. But it does worry users, he said.
"It's mostly a psychological thing."
With their e-mail addresses widely circulated on press releases, Text
100's PR specialists are the ideal candidates for backscatter.
Because backscatter comes from legitimate mail servers, it can cause
special problems. In fact, some security researchers believe that the
spammers have been intentionally sending messages that will be bounced
back as a way to sneak around spam filters. That's because some mail
servers bounce back the original message as part of their notice.
Dan Wallach, like Text 100's Bartman, was hit with a flood of backscatter
messages earlier this week. Wallach, an associate professor with Rice
University's Department of Computer Science, said that many of the
messages he received contained links to suspicious executable files
hosted on different Web sites.
"I'll bet that some spammer is rationally thinking 'error messages!
Maybe I can get my message through via error messages!'" Wallach said in
an e-mail interview. "They don't need many responses before this sort of
tactic could be considered to be a success."
At its worst the phenomenon can even wipe Internet servers off the map.
Last month, Stephen Gielda, president of Packetderm, upset a fraudster
who was trying to use his anonymous Internet service. Soon his servers
were
inundated with a tidal wave of backscatter messages. At one point,
he was being hit by 10,000 bounceback messages per second, enough to
throttle the server's Internet connection.
Gielda had to take his site off-line for five days as he waited for the
problem to abate. "I'm used to backscatter, but I'd never seen it at
this level before," he said.
While backscatter is extremely hard to filter out, it is a problem that
can be fixed.
Backscatter comes in three varieties: messages from mail servers,
saying that there is no such user available; "out of office" automated
reply messages; and so-called challenge-response messages, which tell
the sender that his message will be delivered only once he responds to
the bounceback and confirms that the e-mail is coming from a legitimate
address.
Security experts say that people should simply stop using these last
two types of bounceback messages.
As for "no such user" bouncebacks, that can be fixed too. There are a
few e-mail standards that could help with the problem: Variable Envelope
Return Path(VERP) and Bounce Address Tag Validation (BATV), for example.
But the problem would largely disappear if server administrators
configured their mail servers to immediately reject mail that is sent to
nonexistent users, rather than accepting it and then bouncing it back to
the faked addresses. Some ISPs (Internet service providers), AOL for
example, have done this and have largely eliminated their role in the
problem.
If there is spam in the backscatter message, antispam software should
filter it out, but if a message has an ambiguous subject line, like
"Hey" and the spam message stripped out, the backscatter will look like
a legitimate bounceback and is probably going to get through, said
Dmitry Samosseiko, manager of Sophos Labs Canada.
"This is a serious problem that is hard to deal with, to be honest,"
he said. "We can blame spammers for causing the issue in the first
place, but it exists because of the mail servers that are not
configured to deal with spam."
'Crimeserver' Discovered with Treasure Trove of Stolen Data
Cybercriminals collect a treasure trove of data from Web surfers whose
computers are infected with Trojans. That's all-too-common news these
days, but a recent case shows that the problem is getting worse. Finjan
Inc., which makes secure Web gateway products, discovered a server in
Malaysia being used by hackers to store more than 1.4 gigabytes of
stolen data. What surprised the Finjan researchers was that the data was
stolen from businesses as well as individuals - and it was amassed in
just three weeks.
Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Finjan's chief technology officer, told us that there
were other surprises from the discovery of the Malaysian-based
"crimeserver" that was being used as a command-and-control center for
the Trojans installed on infected PCs around the world.
"Quite often we see end-user online banking information being logged,
but on this server we found a lot of business-related data, such as
e-mail communications, patient medical histories, and even screenshots
of Outlook," he said. This compromised information could lead to a host
of problems for an organization, from violations of federal regulations
about patient privacy to the loss of critical business information.
Ben-Itzhak said the crimeserver was left totally open so that data could
be accessed by anyone. The Finjan report about the attack surmised that
crimeware is evolving with a new and alarming customer-service focus.
"Crimeware has reached a new level of sophistication. After the birth of
sophisticated crimeware toolkits, closely followed by
Crimeware-as-a-Service (CaaS), we now see the availability of user data
as a 'customer' service by granting open access to the crimeware server
with the harvested data."
Finjan researchers noted that the Malaysian server had changed hosting
locations a number of times between late last year and the time the
crimeserver was discovered, "likely to prevent it from being closed down
by the ISP/hosting provider in case of complaints."
The stolen data came to the crimeware server after Web surfers were
infected via well-known vulnerabilities, Ben-Itzhak said. "We found
several Internet Explorer, Yahoo Messenger, and AOL Messenger
vulnerabilities that were used to exploit the browsers of those who were
visiting the sites," he said. "Once the browser exploit is running, the
Trojan is installed."
He told us that neglecting to update third-party applications creates an
opportunity for infection. "People and businesses are making a lot of
effort to install updates from Microsoft every second Tuesday of the
month, but they forget to install updates of the other applications
running in Windows like instant messaging, Flash and PDF, and that's
exactly where these criminals are going now."
Keeping operating systems and other applications (including Skype,
WinZip, and other non-Microsoft software) updated and patched will help
minimize the risk of infection by Trojans, Ben-Itzhak advised. He added
that reactive security measures such as signature-based antivirus and
URL filtering were important steps, but said they should be augmented
with proactive measures that detect malicious code based on suspicious
behavior (for example, trying to install software or send out data).
Those measures are critical, he said, because while the Malaysian
crimeware server was quickly shut down, "the criminal is still there."
Facebook, States Set Bullying, Predator Safeguards
Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, is
adding more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual
predators and cyberbullies under an agreement with officials nationwide
that was announced Thursday.
The measures include banning convicted sex offenders from the site,
limiting older users' ability to contact subscribers under 18 and
participating in a task force set up in January to find ways to verify
users' ages and identities.
"The agreement marks another watershed step toward social networking
safety, protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate
content," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who
announced the agreement Thursday with his counterparts in other states.
Officials from Washington, D.C., and 49 states have signed on.
Facebook, which has more than 70 million active users worldwide, already
has enacted many of the changes and others are in the works, its
officials said Thursday.
"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook
from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer.
"The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address
the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for
continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."
Texas did not endorse the agreement or a similar one reached in January
among the other states, the District of Columbia and MySpace, the
world's largest online social network with 200 million users worldwide.
Texas officials say they want the sites to work faster on verifying
users' ages and identities.
The attorneys general have been negotiating for months with Palo Alto,
Calif.-based Facebook.
"Social networks that encourage kids to come to their sites have a
responsibility to keep those kids safe," North Carolina Attorney General
Roy Cooper said. "We've now gotten the two largest social networking
sites to agree to take significant steps to protect children from
predators and pornography."
MySpace, Facebook and other online networks have created a new venue
where sexual predators could lie about their age to lure young victims
to chat, share images and sometimes meet in person, law enforcement
officials said.
The networks also have empowered cyberbullies, who have sent threatening
and anonymous messages to classmates, acquaintances and other users.
John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and
Society at Harvard University, said research shows online bullies are
far more common than sexual predators.
"It's very rare for an adult to meet a child on a social network and to
do them harm, although the ones that do occur get a huge amount of
attention, and they are terrible," he said.
Online bullying, whether through instant-message programs or social
networks, is on the rise, he said.
The issue has gained national attention after recent high-profile cases,
including the 2006 suicide of a 13-year-old Missouri girl who was
victimized by an Internet ruse. Megan Meier hanged herself after
receiving nasty online comments from a MySpace friend who turned out to
be fictional, invented by two acquaintances and the mother of one of
those girls.
Other children have been the subjects of harassment campaigns, including
whole sites set up to deride them.
"What's going on online is not much different than bullying on the
playground," Palfrey said. "It just happens to be playing out in public
spaces where kids are spending a lot of time online."
Facebook lets users block online bullies and others from contacting
them. They also can conceal their "online now" status and use privacy
controls to limit who can view their images and other measures.
Among other measures, Facebook agrees to:
* Ensure companies offering services on its site comply with its safety
and privacy guidelines.
* Keep tobacco and alcohol ads from users too young to purchase those
products.
* Remove groups whose comments or images suggest they may involve
incest, pedophilia, bullying or other inappropriate content.
* Participate in the Harvard-based task force set up in January under
the national agreement with MySpace. It includes scholars, a prosecutor,
businesses, state officials and child safety advocates.
* Send warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal
information to an adult.
* Review users' profiles when they ask to change their age, ensuring the
update is legitimate and not intended to let adults masquerade as children.
The protections included in the MySpace and Facebook pacts could be
expanded to smaller services such as Friendster and Bebo, Blumenthal said.
"We're entering a new era in social networking safety," Blumenthal said.
"This agreement is open-ended in envisioning advances in technology that
will permit even stronger steps in the future toward protecting kids'
safety."
EBay To Turn On Feedback System Changes
EBay will roll out a host of changes to its feedback mechanism this month
globally, including the controversial elimination of sellers' ability to
leave negative feedback for buyers.
EBay announced the feedback changes along with modifications to other
areas like its fee structure in January, prompting many sellers to
complain and even organize a strike.
However, eBay has stuck to its guns and proceeded to implement the
changes, seeking opinions from buyers and sellers while refining and
modifying some details.
For eBay, the overarching goal for the changes is to improve the buying
experience within the marketplace and lead sellers to improve in areas
like shipping, fulfillment and communication.
One key area eBay identified as in need of improvement was its feedback
process, intended to let buyers and sellers rate their interactions with
each other.
With this review system in place, users could rate and find out the
quality of buyers and sellers, propping up those who played by the rules
and warning against inept or malicious participants.
Unfortunately, according to eBay, the feedback system in recent years
became an increasingly common retaliatory tool used mostly by sellers to
punish and intimidate buyers.
This in turn yielded artificially inflated positive ratings for many
sellers, while discouraging buyers from leaving candid and honest feedback
and from making future purchases, according to eBay.
To remedy this, sellers now will only be able to leave a positive rating
for buyers. Meanwhile buyers will retain their ability to rate sellers
both in general - positive, neutral or negative - and in more detailed
ways. In addition, eBay is doing away with its "mutual feedback
withdrawal" option, which allowed a buyer and a seller to agree to
simultaneously remove the ratings they had given each other.
To counterbalance the sellers' loss of power, eBay is instituting several
measures, such as removing negative and neutral ratings left by buyers
who don't respond to complaints that they didn't pay for their items.
Moreover, eBay will from now on - and retroactively - remove negative and
neutral ratings on sellers from buyers who are suspended from the
marketplace.
EBay is also giving sellers new options to proactively block certain
buyers from doing business with them, such as those who have a certain
number of unpaid-item and policy-violation claims. In addition, eBay is
launching a new reporting hub that sellers can use to inform eBay about
problematic buyers.
While eBay is to be commended for striving to improve the buying
experience, the feedback changes could use further refinement and review,
said Jonathan Garriss, executive director of the Professional eBay
Sellers Alliance (PESA), a group of large sellers that has often been
highly critical of eBay.
For starters, eBay has never been very aggressive or particularly
interested in disciplining buyers who violate its policies, so the new
reporting hub and the negative-feedback removal of bad buyers will have
little effect unless eBay pumps up its enforcement, Garriss said.
"Supposedly, eBay has always been policing buyer behavior, but it never
happened quite right," he said. "Many sellers will confirm that buyers
have tended to not be held to the rules."
Garriss, also CEO of Gotham City Online, an apparel store on eBay is also
concerned about what he calls a lack of transparency in the detailed
ratings that buyers can leave for sellers. As it stands now, sellers get
aggregate results every month for these so-called DSRs (detailed seller
ratings), and don't know how individual buyers rated them.
This lack of transparency lends itself to buyer retaliation, and more so
since eBay this year started tying DSRs to sellers' visibility on search
engine results and to fee discounts, Garriss said. Now that sellers can
only leave positive ratings for buyers, eBay should tie specific DSR
evaluations to individual buyers, thus giving sellers a chance to, if
necessary, defend themselves from unfair actions, he said. DSRs let buyers
rate sellers specifically in four areas with a scale of one to five stars:
accuracy of item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping
and handling charges.
Nonetheless, Garriss said that PESA has been encouraged by eBay's
willingness to listen to sellers' concerns, and by the company's pledge
that the changes in feedback and other areas are open to revision.
Brian Burke, eBay's director of global feedback policy, said that there
will always be sellers who are intensely opposed to the feedback changes
and buyers who will try to abuse the system, but eBay is convinced that
ultimately everyone will benefit.
"Most of the sellers understood why were doing what we were doing even
back in January when we made the announcement," Burke said.
"There will still be sellers upset about the changes, and some buyers
will try to abuse it. Hopefully, the reporting structures we've put in
place and the policy changes will provide sellers with the protections
they need, and we'll correct things as needed on that front," he said.
This is the global rollout schedule for the feedback changes:
May 12: Australia
May 15: U.K., Ireland
May 19: US, Canada
May 20: France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Belgium
May 21: Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Philippines
May 22: Germany, Austria, Switzerland
Some changes will be implemented the week of May 27 worldwide.
US Court Halts Adult Site's E-mail Operation
A U.S. judge has ordered the halt to an e-mail campaign by the operators
of adult Web sites after complaints by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission
and the Department of Justice that the e-mail messages violated an
antispam law.
Affiliates of ATM Global Systems, operator of adult Web sites including
Sexyfriendsearch.com and Funhookups.com, sent out unsolicited e-mail with
false or misleading header information, and failed to include an opt-out
mechanism and a valid postal address, all violations of U.S. law, the FTC
said in a press release on Tuesday.
A May 2 order from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
Illinois, Eastern Division, bars the company and owners Mark Richman and
Nathaniel Seidman from further violations of the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act. It
also requires the company to establish an affiliate monitoring program
and imposes a US$75,000 civil penalty, the FTC said.
A representative of ATM Global Systems didn't immediately return a phone
message seeking comment on the court order.
The company, based in Boca Raton, Florida, has used affiliates to drive
users to its Web sites since January 2006 or earlier, the FTC said. The
affiliates, paid commissions for referrals who signed up as members of
the Web sites, sent spam with "lurid" subject lines, the agency said.
The e-mail messages included false header information, making it
difficult for recipients to determine the identity of the sender, the
FTC said.
The judge's order included a civil penalty of $442,900 - the amount the
defendants made from the spamming operation - and all but $75,000 was
suspended, based on the defendants' ability to pay, the FTC said. If
the court finds the defendants misrepresented their financial status,
the rest of the penalty will be due.
=~=~=~=
Atari Online News, Etc. is a weekly publication covering the entire
Atari community. Reprint permission is granted, unless otherwise noted
at the beginning of any article, to Atari user groups and not for
profit publications only under the following terms: articles must
remain unedited and include the issue number and author at the top of
each article reprinted. Other reprints granted upon approval of
request. Send requests to: dpj@atarinews.org
No issue of Atari Online News, Etc. may be included on any commercial
media, nor uploaded or transmitted to any commercial online service or
internet site, in whole or in part, by any agent or means, without
the expressed consent or permission from the Publisher or Editor of
Atari Online News, Etc.
Opinions presented herein are those of the individual authors and do
not necessarily reflect those of the staff, or of the publishers. All
material herein is believed to be accurate at the time of publishing.
