Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 09 Issue 18
Volume 9, Issue 18 Atari Online News, Etc. May 4, 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:
Yvan Doyeux
Jean Pat
Djordje Vukovic
Rob Mahlert
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 #0918 05/04/07
~ Spammers Evade Filters ~ People Are Talking! ~ Google and Information!
~ Windows Live Hotmail! ~ How The Web Took Over! ~ TeraDesk 3.90 Released!
~ Xbox 360 Goes Elite! ~ Copyright Piracy List! ~ Net Radio Is Hopeful!
~ New Yahoo Ad Campaign! ~ The Floppy Rises Again ~ New CDLab Released!
-* Microsoft Beats AT&T Dispute *-
-* CAFCRACK for Cubase Audio Falcon Out *-
-* Mac Native OpenOffice Gets Shot In the Arm *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, this is going to be really short this week!! When I left my job
just over a year ago, I was hoping that I'd either find something right
away, or enjoy some really quality "retirement" time. Well, nothing
panned out on the job front - at least anything that I thought that I
would enjoy doing (a self-imposed requisite). The free time this past
year was enjoyable. I managed to have some time to really work out in
the yard and get things done that I never really had the time to do
previously. And, I was also able to do a few things inside the house. To
top it all off, I was successful in getting out to the golf course to
play - much more than I have over the past who-knows-how-many years!
But, to really stay retired these days, one's financial stability still
needs to be maintained. And as I'm sure that you're all aware, it's not
easy living off of one income these days. So, unless I was going to
start to collect my pension ten years early (and a 50% cut), I knew that
I was going to have to find something to bring some extra cash into the
household.
With the nice weather approaching, I really didn't want to take on a
full time, Monday through Friday job. I still wanted to get out in the
yard, plus play some golf. I started working this week. Now, not only
was there the possibility of making my wife a "golf widow" by playing a
"lot" of golf, but I've now insured that possibility because I'm working
at the golf course! I never thought of being a groundskeeper although
I've been around them for a long time, playing golf. I don't know how I
even considered thinking about it, not to mention even looking into the
possibility, but I did. So now rather than worrying about hitting an
errant golf shot and beaning someone on a tractor in the fairway, I'm now
looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm out of the range of golfers!
So this column isn't short because of the lack of ideas to write about,
but because I'm sore and tired. Not being too active over the winter has
resulted in a lot of reduced muscle tone. Doing some "strenuous" work
and exercise without any type of preparation does a job on the old
muscles! So, while I try to work out the kinks and get rid of some of
these minor aches and pains, I'll leave you all to the rest of this week's
issue!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
TeraDesk 3.90 Released
Version 3.90 of TeraDesk open-source desktop for the 16-bit and 32-bit
lines of Atari computers is available at:
http://solair.eunet.yu/~vdjole/teradesk.htm
New features in this release are related to:
- Capability to set font effects (bold, italic...) in the font selector;
- Capability to recognize and handle (on suitable filesystems) executable
files having names without extensions;
- Increased ranges of desktop or window background colours and patterns;
- Improved name-pattern matching, including the capabilities to specify
exclusion name masks, and to use in single-TOS some wildcard options
that, in previous versions, were available only in Mint/Magic.
Also, some noncritical bugs were fixed and a number of optimizations were
made, so that, in spite of the added features, program size has shrunk to
slightly smaller than in any of the the previous three releases.
See the history file for more information.
Have fun.
Djordje
CDLab 0.91 Released
CDLab 0.91 is available.
http://doyeuxyvan.free.fr/cdlab/v0.91/CDLAB091.ZIP
A CD-R burning tool for Atari-compatible computers.
---------------
New features
---------------
- New audio formats for audio extraction. ( AU/SND, AIFF, AIFF Cubase
Audio ).
- Filenames mask for audio extraction.
- Interface improvement in Monochrome.
---------------
Main features
---------------
- Audio track extraction.
- CD-RW blanking function.
- DAO (Disc-At-Once) copy for any single-session discs. ( But it doesn't
work with my MMC compliant drive )
- TAO (Track-At-Once) multisession mode.
You need the SCSIDRV interface. ( already included in HDDriver )
You can also run this program before CDLab.
http://doyeuxyvan.free.fr/scsidrv/SCSIDRV.PRG
CDLab is now released under terms of the GNU General Public License.
The source code can be retrieved here:
http://doyeuxyvan.free.fr/cdlab/v0.91/
Original Francois GALEA website:
http://fgalea.free.fr/cdlab/
Yvan Doyeux
CAFCRACK v1 (M) Crack For Cubase Audio Falcon 2.06
Minor update with the complete Cubase Audio 2.06 package including
CAFCRACK. Outputs of mixermap objects are switched to 'DSP'. It affects
*.MIX and DEF.ALL files. You can now enjoy a more easier work with the
built-in DSP effects!
More than ten years after Steinberg's withdrawal from the Atari Market,
here is a new crack called CAFCRACK for Cubase Audio Falcon 2.06.
Of course with this crack, you needn't the 128 bits key dongle plugged
on your Falcon. (OKI japan M7H007-024 SYNS0 E 3432351)
This crack is better than other existing Cubase Audio cracks on Atari.
This cute hack is the result of months of tough research.
Attention was turned to Cubase stability and data integrity which were
the lack of the other previous cracks.
You must understand that it's impossible to know if this crack is
perfect. If you encounter any bugs you can report them on Atari
newsgroups or forums.
There are only 2 drawbacks (I think they are minor):
- Cubase takes up more memory (+25%).
- Each part or track data needs twice more memory size ( 192 bytes instead
of 96 ) but no influence on MIDI events.
But one thing is sure: this is the BEST crack ever made for Cubase Audio
Falcon!
You must put in the same folder CAFCRACK.PRG and CAF_206.PRG of your
current Cubase folder. CAF_206.PRG needs to be unpacked. If you are using
the cubase score editor, you must put a specific patched SCORES35.MOD file
in the MODULES folder. Be sure that the files attributes are not in
read-only mode. Data is written in SCORES35.MOD for each cubase launch
with CAFCRACK.
You will find in CAFCRACK.ZIP:
- Unpacked CAF_206.PRG
- Patched SCORES35.MOD
- CAFCRACK.PRG
- CAFCRACK.TXT
http://jeanpatatari.site.voila.fr/cafcrack/v1/CAFCRACK.ZIP
http://jeanpatatari.site.voila.fr/cafcrack/v1/CAF206JM.ZIP
Jean Pat
Atari-Users of the World Map
Hi Gang,
I added a new section to Atari-Users.Net today. It's a google
map for Atari-Users, aka a frapper map.
The map interface requires a modern browser (I think it's Javascript
based)
Log on and add your self to our Atari Map!
While logged in, zoom in on your location then select the "add" button
on the right side.
Thanks for adding your location!!
Rob
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho, friends and neighbors. Well, again this week, there aren't
enough messages in the newsgroup to make a good column, so we're going
to just sit here and chat for a while, okay?
Those of you who read this column frequently probably remember that I
keep in pretty close touch with my family. We all live within 10 miles
of one another. Most of the group gets together on Sunday mornings at
my parents' house.
Oh, one or two will miss one week, and a couple of others will miss the
next, but by and large I can count on seeing most of my siblings (I
have 6) just about every week.
My parents, both now retired, try to keep active. My mother cooks and
bakes constantly. There's always homemade cookies or bread or pizza or
something to be had.
My father contents himself with coin and stamp collecting, and his
collection of classic car models, and reading the newspapers and AARP
magazine.
One of my clearest memories of my father when I was growing up was his
penny-pinching when it came to spending money on energy. Being the
bread-winner of the family, he made sure that not a cent's worth of
electricity or fuel oil was wasted.
When we were growing up, you could only take a 3 minute shower, you HAD
to close the refrigerator door while you were pouring that glass of
milk, and Gawd help you if you left a room without turning out the
light.
His favorite complaint, however was about leaving a window or door open
on a cold day. My clearest memory, even to this day, of my father's
voice is his yelling, "Close that damned door... you're letting the
heat out!"
So I wasn't at all surprised when I showed up at my parents' house last
Sunday to find my father holding a newspaper up, opened to an inside
page and folded in half, with the headline "HUMANS RESPONSIBLE FOR
GLOBAL WARMING" shouting at me.
With a look of triumph in his his eyes he yelled, "Y'see? I TOLD you
that you were letting the heat out, dammit!"
Have a good week, one and all. Tune in again next week, same time, same
station, and be ready to listen to what they are saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Sony 'Goat' Ad Sparks Outrage!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Microsoft Xbox 360 Goes Elite!
Atari Plans Huge Layoff!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Microsoft's Xbox 360 Goes Elite
The Xbox 360 has gone Elite, as Microsoft launched yesterday the high-end
version of its video game console. With a larger storage capacity, a sleek
matte-black look and a high-definition video port, the Xbox 360 Elite will
retail for $479.
Although the price tag is about $80 more than the Pro version of the Xbox
360, it is still slightly less expensive than the lower-end model of
Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3). Both are substantially more than Nintendo's
popular Wii.
The Elite includes a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI),
component video cables and the Xbox Live headset, as well as a wireless
game controller. The HDMI connection is a single cable which combines both
high-definition video and digital audio output. Both the headset and the
controller come in Elite black.
The Elite's detachable 120GB hard drive, six times larger than previous
360 drives and twice the size of the PS3's, is available for sale
separately to owners of existing Xbox systems.
The larger hard drive on the Xbox 360 Elite and some of its other
"premium accessories" are designed for gamers who seem to have an
"insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content," according to
the Microsoft announcement.
To date, the Xbox has sold more than 10 million units worldwide. It was
the first of the "next generation" videogame consoles to hit the shelves,
in the fall of 2005. As with other videogame consoles, though, it is not
only a game machine. A digital camera, music player or flash card reader
can be plugged into a USB port. And, with free software downloads such as
Microsoft's Windows Media Player 11, Zune software or Windows Media
Connect installed on a Windows XP or Vista PC, the Xbox can stream music
or video, or display photos, from the computer.
Some initial reviews of the Elite have expressed disappointment over
whether the machine delivers more than current models. They note that the
WiFi adapter and HD DVD must still be purchased separately.
But Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research, said features
are "always a balance" against costs. "Wireless can easily be added on,"
he noted, "and HD DVD is still available if consumers want it."
In general, he said he found the Elite to be "a nice evolution for the
console. It adds HDMI and a larger hard drive," which supports the
console's growing profile as a hub for entertainment beyond games. "If
you look at the whole Xbox line," he said, "it's laid out pretty well,
from low to high."
Gartenberg said he didn't think that users who already owned an Xbox
would upgrade to this model, but that it might be chosen by someone
looking to buy their first Xbox.
Sony 'Goat' Ad Sparks Outrage
Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has launched an internal inquiry
following an event in Athens last month that featured a decapitated goat
and topless models to promote its new game "God of War II."
The game carries a "mature" rating and is intended for those at least 17
years or older because of its "blood and gore," "intense violence" and
"nudity," according to Sony's Web site. It recently launched in various
European countries.
The event was held last month but has come to light now because photos of
it are being published in the June issue of the "Official PlayStation
Magazine" in the U.K. The Daily Mail newspaper published one of the photos
on its Web site Sunday, featuring a scantily clad woman and a man dressed
as a cave man standing over the dead goat.
Sony has decided to halt distribution of the magazine to remove the
two-page section from 80,000 copies that were due to hit newsstands in the
U.K. on Tuesday, according to a spokesman at the magazine's publisher,
Future PLC. Removing the section is "quite a task," the spokesman said.
About 2,000 copies of the magazine have already been mailed to
subscribers, however.
Animal welfare groups were quick to condemn the incident. "Causing
unnecessary suffering to an animal for fun is completely unacceptable," a
spokeswoman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare said on Monday.
Sony in the U.K. acknowledged that "an element of the event was of an
unsuitable nature" but played down its gruesomeness. The goat was supplied
by a butcher and the event, organized by a Greek production company, was
intended to be based on Greek mythology, the company said in a statement.
Guests were not "invited to reach inside the goat's still-warm carcass to
eat offal from its stomach," as the Mail had reported, the company said.
Rather, they were offered bowls of food intended to represent the goat's
intestines, it said.
The controversy is unlikely to win Sony much favor from those opposed to
violent video games, although some gamers seemed bored by the brouhaha.
"Anyway, the game is really good," one reader from Sweden wrote on the
Daily Mail's Web site.
"At the end of the day, we eat meat every day of our lives, why don't we
complain about that?" added a reader named Tom from England. "You can bet
money on it some of them are slaughtered in inhuman ways anyway."
Kostas Farkonas, a freelance journalist who covers the gaming industry in
Greece, said he did not attend the "God of War II" but had heard about it.
"It was a bit extreme, sure," Farkonas said. "But in all the years of
covering gaming, we've seen worse."
Atari Announces Significant Staff Layoffs
Long time industry publisher Atari is set to move ahead with substantial
layoffs in the near future, cutting its workforce by a total of 20
percent, including an estimated 26 percent of its administration staff.
The layoffs, which will be finalised by the end of July, comes after the
departure of Atari's former CEO Bruno Bonnell from his positions at parent
company Infrogrames early last month, and his replacement by Patrick
Leleu. The company's redundancy plan in relation to laid off staff was
approved on April 10, and is expected to cost Atari between US$800,000
and $1.1 million in restructuring charges.
Atari's CEO and president David Pierce hopes that this restructuring will
help alleviate the company's ongoing financial problems, commenting, "We
expect that today's reorganization will continue to reduce Atari's general
and administrative cost. These actions, though difficult, are a
significant first step in reorganizing Atari and demonstrate our
commitment to restoring shareholder value."
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
12 Nations Put on Copyright Piracy List
The Bush administration on Monday targeted China, Russia and 10 other
nations for extra scrutiny in the piracy of American movies, music,
computer programs and other copyrighted materials.
The 12 nations were put on a "priority watch list" in the area of
copyright piracy, which costs the American industry billions of dollars in
lost sales annually.
"We must defend ideas, inventions and creativity from rip-off artists and
thieves," U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab said in a statement
accompanying this year's report.
The administration earlier this month announced that it was filing two new
trade cases against China before the World Trade Organization. One of
those cases charged that China was lax in enforcing its laws on protecting
American copyrights and patents.
The annual report, known as a "Special 301 Report," for the section of
U.S. trade law that it covers, said that China has a special stake in
upgrading its protection of intellectual property rights, given that its
companies will be threatened by rampant copyright piracy as they increase
their own innovation.
For Russia, the report said the United States will be closely watching to
see how Russia fulfills the commitments it made to upgrading copyright
protection as part of a U.S.-Russia accord reached last year which was
seen as a key milestone in Russia's efforts to join the World Trade
Organization.
In addition to Russia and China, the 10 countries placed on the priority
watch list were Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India, Israel, Lebanon, Thailand,
Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela.
In elevating Thailand to the priority watch list, the administration said
it was concerned by a range of issues including what an administration
statement called a "deteriorating protection for patents and copyrights."
Top Court Rules for Microsoft on Patent
The Supreme Court on Monday overturned a ruling that Microsoft Corp.
should be held liable for patent infringement on copies of the Windows
operating system sold overseas.
By a 7-1 vote, the justices rejected arguments by AT&T Inc. that Microsoft
software code that infringes on its patents could be deemed a "component"
of a computer, making overseas sales of the Windows operating system an
infringement under U.S. patent law.
The Microsoft-AT&T dispute is one of a series of important patent cases
that the court has agreed to hear in the last year. It hinges on a
provision of U.S. patent law that holds products sold overseas can be held
liable for infringement if they include a U.S.-supplied "infringing
"component."
A U.S. appeals court upheld a lower court decision that, under that
provision, Microsoft was liable for infringing an AT&T patent for
converting speech into computer code in copies of Windows sold overseas.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the world's largest
software maker was liable for the unauthorized distribution of codec
technology, used to compress speech signals into data, in copies of
Windows overseas.
But the Supreme Court's majority opinion, written by Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, reversed the appeals court's ruling.
The U.S. Justice Department has sided with much of Microsoft's argument
and said the appeals court ruling "improperly extends United States patent
law to foreign markets" and puts U.S. software companies at a competitive
disadvantage.
Only Justice John Paul Stevens dissented from the court's ruling.
Spammers Use New Technique to Evade Filters
Spammers have stepped up efforts to use encrypted attachments to evade
filtering systems, service provider Email Systems has reported.
The technique relies on the fact that many spam systems can't scan inside
emails containing encrypted or password-protected attachment, and work out
that they are not legitimate. Without a rule to block such attachments,
most systems will pass on the email to recipients, handing spammers an
important victory in the battle to get spam through.
In recent weeks, Email Systems detected a small but steady stream of such
spam emanating from bot-compromised hosts, containing a zipped-up version
of the pervasive 'Storm' bot-loading Trojan that plagued Internet users
in January.
Recipients would have been able to inadvertently unzip the Trojan using an
embedded password, after being attracted by a number of eye-catching
subject lines, including 'Worm Detected!', 'Virus Detected!', 'Spyware
Alert!' and 'Warning!'
Although the technique has been around for some months, spammers appear to
be stepping up their attempts to use it, said Greg Miller of Email
Systems. The company had quarantined hundreds of thousands of copies of
attachment spam, up from levels a tenth this volume some months ago.
"We have moved on from spam being just a guy sending out huge amounts of
spam," said Miller. The vast bulk of spam was now automated via bots, and
this made finding new infection methods even more critical to the spam
economy. "Every six months or so we see a new attack that is very
successful," he said.
As anti-spam systems adapted to popular techniques such as image spam,
criminals were having to look further to engineer spam stealthiness.
The easiest means of detecting the current encrypted file attacks would be
the attachment's filesize, 77KB, but this could be varied in future
attacks quite easily. The best approach was simply to disallow encrypted
emails to pass through the system at all.
Yahoo's New Ad Campaign Plays to Users' Needs
Yahoo, the Web brand that's a distant No. 2 behind Google in search market
share and search ad revenue, will try to click better with consumers with
a new message: Be a better - (whatever you want to be).
"We'll let our customers fill in the blank," says Allen Olivo, vice
president, global brand marketing. The idea? "Whatever they want to be,
Yahoo's tools and services allows them to be better."
In the case of Yahoo, its search engine needs to be a better money engine.
Yahoo's first-quarter ad revenue was $1.6 billion, less than half of
Google's $3.8 billion in the same period. Yahoo's share of search requests
in the quarter remained flat at about 28%, while Google's rose slightly to
48%, according to Internet tracker ComScore.
Yahoo will blast the campaign all over the Web - on Yahoo-related and
other sites - and use traditional media outlets as well, including
prime-time TV, radio and print. The offbeat ads promote two of its latest
services: Yahoo oneSearch mobile search service introduced in January and
Yahoo Answers, introduced a year ago. The services are designed to make
Yahoo more competitive not only with Google but also with other popular
sites, such as Wikipedia.
One TV ad, for instance, shows how Yahoo can help two friends be better
explorers.
In the first part of the ad, a hiker is eaten alive by a red flower that
is not identified in their guidebook.
In the second part of the ad, one hiker is equipped with Yahoo's mobile
oneSearch, and he learns that the flower is a "crimson man-eater" and a
"potent herbal enhancer" that causes the first hiker's hair to grow great
lengths.
Some of the marketing will try to demonstrate Yahoo services. The TV ad,
for instance, will be available online where users can click on their
favorite clips and create a new commercial.
Yahoo hopes that the marketing attracts more users to draw in more
advertisers. "If from a brand-marketing standpoint we are creating more
value and more choice for our users, we are also creating a more engaged
audience for our advertisers," Olivo says.
But will more ad spending bring in more ad revenue? Yahoo hopes so. It
traditionally spends a lot more on advertising and marketing than its
bigger rival in the race for ad dollars. Last year Yahoo outspent Google
by 72%, $353 million in advertising vs. Google's $205 million, according
to TNS Media Intelligence.
"More engaged consumers also tend to have more interest and give more
permission to be introduced to our next generation of products such as
Yahoo oneSearch," says Nick Chavez, senior director of brand advertising.
"And through word of mouth they are more likely to share their experience
with those products."
Mozilla Releases eBay Add-On for Firefox
Mozilla Corp. is asking users to test a new add-on for the Firefox browser
that lets users monitor their deals on eBay Inc.'s auction site in real
time.
Add-ons are small programs designed to provide supplemental functions to
Firefox. The gadgets have proved to be one of the browser's most popular
features.
The beta test program for the so-called Firefox eBay Companion is only
open to users in the U.K., Germany and France, but will eventually be
opened up to the U.S. and other countries, according to a Mozilla
spokeswoman.
The eBay add-on is a sidebar that synchronizes with the eBay auction and
e-commerce site, and displays alerts as items are sold or change status.
It also has an integrated search tool. For security, it uses irefox's
antiphishing technology and eBay's Account Guard feature, which also
detects spoof Web sites.
No more features will be added, although the add-on could be improved as
feedback is received, the spokeswoman said. The final release will come
by August, she said.
Google: Privacy vs. Open Government
As Google CEO Eric Schmidt has repeatedly said, the goal of his company is
nothing less than to index all of the world's information and make it
available to anyone with an Internet connection. It is a lofty, even
visionary goal that already has begun reshaping how we look at (and look
up) information.
But as George Orwell might have said, had he written "Server Farm," not
all information is created equal. In its relentless, Borg-like pursuit of
information, Google is increasingly handling and indexing vast quantities
of personal information that all too easily can be used to commit identity
theft and other modern data crimes.
The announcement this week that Google has struck deals with four states
to assist them in providing more effective searches for public records
and other online state information has only heightened those concerns.
At the Center for Digital Democracy, founder and CEO Jeff Chester has been
tracking the privacy implications of Google's growth. "My concern about
all of this," Chester said, "is that to the extent that Google can match
up public records with other user data that goes into advertising
targeting programs, that's a problem."
Chester said that as more and more data is bundled together, companies
such as Google will be able to create "very sophisticated and dangerous
marketing schemes."
"Google has the ambition to create and release the most powerful
advertising tools ever," Chester declared. "As the state Web site search
program expands, Google will know every public action you've done -
weddings, divorces, house urchases and sales, bankruptcies, etc. Google
likely will become your personal cradle-to-grave data mining company."
In Chester's opinion, what is needed are stronger privacy laws in the
United States that require a company such as Google to get an
individual's permission before indexing his or her personal information,
even if that information is contained in a state database.
Over at OpenTheGovernment.org, Director Patrice McDermott had a slightly
different take on the issue. "As long as the software that is provided to
the states and the data that comes out of it," McDermott said, "is open,
nonproprietary, the government owns the search results, and they are
readily available to the public, we think it's terrific."
McDermott said that her chief concern is the possibility that Google
would exert some type of proprietary control over the results generated by
searches of the "deep Web" lurking in state sites.
"That's not what I understand that Google is trying to do with
site-mapping," McDermott acknowledged. "They may be doing that in other
areas, but not in this respect."
When asked if Google's open-state initiative would encourage to Congress
to be more open about aspects of its operation, such as Senator holds on
legislation or the origin of funding earmarks, McDermott laughed. "Will
Google influence Congress to be more open? One would hope," she said. "One
will be disappointed, but one would hope."
The Floppy Rises Again
We all thought that the floppy disk had joined punched cards in the IT
graveyard. But Lindy Electronics has used a USB port to resurrect this
traditional device.
Long left behind by USB thumb drives in capacity, Lindy's USB-connected
floppy drive can read and write 1.44MB floppies. Data is transferred at
12Mbit/s; that is a faster per-second transfer rate than the floppy
diskette's capacity. It is bus-powered and there is no need for an
additional power supply.
Barry Edmonds, Imation's UK MD, says that floppy disks are still being
purchased for use in the education sector. Their manufacture by Imation
has not yet ceased.
Stephen Fawcett, Lindy Electronics' senior product manager, said: "We
know that customers are using 3.5-inch floppies, because we are still
seeing a demand for them." It's an obvious way of retrieving data from a
legacy device and there are situations where a floppy drive can be useful:
"Even those of us who prefer pen drives and the like, have probably found
ourselves presented with a floppy of "important data" and wished we still
had an easy way to access it. So our USB floppy drive can be a useful
tool."
Once upon a time, over a quarter of a century ago, floppy diskettes stored
a computer's operating system-- DOS was, originally a floppy disk
operating system. Nowadays you would need more than a thousand floppies to
store Windows XP or Vista.
Lindy's USB floppy, compatible with Windows (98SE, ME, 2000, XP, Vista),
Linux and Mac OS 8.6 and above, is priced at US$60 and available now.
Windows Live Hotmail to Debut Monday
Microsoft Corporation on Monday will finally bring its completely revamped
version of its popular online e-mail service out of beta and into full
release.
According to sources familiar with the company's plans, Microsoft has been
quietly rolling out version 1 of Windows Live Hotmail in smaller
international markets such as Belgium and the Netherlands to test the new
system. Monday's rollout give U.S. users and the other estimated 250
million Hotmail subscribers around the world access to the application,
sources said.
Microsoft Thursday declined to comment through its public relations
agency.
It's been a long road for the revamped online hosted e-mail application.
Microsoft has been testing its new e-mail service, rewritten from scratch,
since August 2005. The company rebranded it to Windows Live under
Microsoft's new hosted services plan in November 2005. That strategy,
introduced by Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, is aimed at
making Microsoft's existing and new hosted online services more attractive
to users and advertisers so the company can catch up to competitors such
as Google.
Microsoft named the service Windows Live Hotmail in February in order to
retain the name by which users know it. Richard Sim, a Microsoft senior
product manager, outlined the reasons for keeping the Hotmail brand on the
Windows Live Hotmail team's Live Spaces blog when the name change was
announced.
"Many users were extremely loyal to the Hotmail brand and perceived the
[Windows Live Mail] beta as an upgrade to Hotmail," he wrote at the time.
"In fact, our most loyal users have been very happy with Hotmail for years
and while they loved the improvements in the beta, some were a bit
confused by (the) name change."
The LiveSide blog, which tracks Windows Live services, also has been
charting the progress of Windows Live Hotmail on a page dedicated to the
new service.
Microsoft focused on improvements in speed and efficiency of the mail
service, and also made it more powerful so it could potentially be used by
businesses; it's the mail service in Microsoft's small-business hosted
service, Office Live.
Windows Live Hotmail offers users 2G bytes of mail storage, and also
allows them to import contacts from and also export them to other
Web-based e-mail services, such as Google's Gmail and Yahoo's Yahoo Mail.
There also is a premium Windows Live Hotmail Plus Service for about $20 a
year that will offer 4GB of inbox storage and other expanded options.
Microsoft also revamped the mail service's user interface, and made
sorting through and searching for contacts and messages more efficient and
faster, according to the company.
More information about Windows Live Hotmail and its latest beta version
can be found on the Windows Live services home page.
IBM Bores Tiny Holes in Computer Chips
Computer chips, it seems, work better if they're more like Swiss cheese
than American cheese.
Chips with minuscule holes in them can run faster or use less energy, IBM
Corp. said in announcing Thursday a novel way to create them - potentially
one of the most significant advances in chip manufacturing in years.
To create these tiny holes, the computer company has harnessed a
plastic-like material that spontaneously forms into a sieve-like
structure. The holes have a width of 20 nanometers, or billionths of a
meter, placing the method in the much-vaunted field of nanotechnology.
"To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has used nanoscale
self-assembled materials to build things that machines aren't capable of
doing," said John Kelly, IBM's vice president of development.
Kelly said molecules in the material fall into a defined pattern similar
to how snowflakes form into symmetrical six-sided shapes.
IBM said the technology could be added to existing manufacturing lines and
applied to current chips, boosting performance by 35 percent or cutting
power consumption by the same percentage.
It expects to start using the technique in 2009, first on chips used in
IBM's servers and later to chips it makes for other companies, including
possibly the Cell processor used in Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3.
"It's a tremendous breakthrough," said Richard Doherty, research director
at Envisioneering Group, an analysis firm. "It's likely to save energy and
increase chip speeds more than any other single advance in the last few
years."
The holes alleviate a problem that has loomed for the semiconductor
industry: As chips have shrunk in size, boosting their speed and
efficiency, they've increasingly become susceptible to electricity leaking
between their closely spaced wires through the intervening insulator,
usually glass.
The most advanced chip technology in large-scale commercial use, which
uses circuits 65 nanometers apart, loses almost half of its power to
leakage, Doherty said. The leakage not only wastes power but also slows
down the processor.
Ideally, the glass would be replaced with vacuum, a better insulator, but
removing the glass away in the right places hasn't been possible with
current techniques. If the glass was simply etched away, the resulting
"ditches" running along the wires would simply be filled in by the next
layer of insulating glass applied, according to IBM Fellow Dan Edelstein,
chief scientist on the project.
IBM's polymer technique sidesteps that problem. First, the
self-assembling material is applied on top of the glass, forming the tiny
holes. The chip is then exposed to a gas that seeps through the material
as if it were a stencil, etching away the underlying glass to form small
holes in the top surface, and larger, continuous gaps between the wires.
Another layer of glass is applied in a vacuum chamber. Because the holes
in the topmost existing glass layer are small, the newly applied layer of
glass doesn't seep into the underlying cavities. Instead, it seals them
off, with a vacuum inside.
The technique was invented at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose,
Calif., and the T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, N.Y. It was
adapted for commercial use by the University at Albany and IBM's
Semiconductor Research and Development Center in East Fishkill, N.Y.
Mac Native OpenOffice Gets Shot in the Arm from Sun
OpenOffice is a multiplatform suite of office productivity applications
that already runs on the Mac using X11, the windowing system designed to
work with Unix applications. Now it looks like work is accelerating on a
Mac-native version of OpenOffice that wont require X11 at all.
In his blog on the GullFOSS Web site, Philip Lohmann, project lead for
the Graphic System Layer Project, reports that Sun engineering has added
its support to the effort to bring forth a Mac-native version of
OpenOffice.
Lohmann admits its been a long time coming.
"The MacOSX porting history is basically as old as OpenOffice.org itself.
Practically from the start there was the plan to have a native version
for Mac, however as a first step the community decided to produce an X11
port which - since OOo already had several X11 ports from the start -
seemed to be a good way to get a version quickly as temporary solution,"
he writes.
Lohmann said he and fellow Sun developer Herbert Dürr will work on the
Mac-native OpenOffice release, and he expects that other Sun developers
will join in as help is needed.
"Some may ask: Why is Sun joining the Mac porting project? If you look
around at conferences and airport lounges, you will notice that more and
more people are using Apple notebooks these days. Apple has a significant
market share in the desktop space. We are supporting this port because of
the interest and activity of the community wanting this port," wrote
Lohmann.
OpenOffice is designed to be an open-source, free alternative to Microsoft
Office and other office productivity suites. It includes a word processor
called Writer, presentation software called Impress, an equation and
formula editor called Math, a graphics application called Draw, a
spreadsheet application called Calc and Base, a database based on the
HSQL engine.
Net Radio Stations Applaud Congressional Bill
A coalition of Net radio stations hailed the introduction on Thursday of
Congressional legislation that could reverse a potentially mortal, recent
decision by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB).
The SaveNetRadio coalition applauded The Internet Radio Equality Act,
filed by Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) in the U.S. House of
Representatives. The Act would "vacate the CRB's March 2 decision and
apply the same royalty rate-setting standard to commercial Internet radio,
as well as satellite radio, cable radio and jukeboxes," said a statement
on Rep. Inslee's Web site. "A transition rate of 7.5 percent of revenue
would be set through 2010."
The March 2 ruling by the Board increases royalty fees that Web radio
stations pay, which the bill's sponsors said amounts to 300 percent for
larger stations and 1200 percent for smaller ones. On April 16, the CRB
upheld its earlier decision and refused webcasters' request to stay
implementation of the new royalty rates until legal appeals were
conducted.
SaveNetRadio's Jake Ward said that, since the decision, "millions of
Internet radio listeners, webcasters and artists have called on Congress
to take action. Today Congress took notice, and we thank Mr. Inslee for
leading the charge to save music diversity on the Internet."
The bill also provides for a webcaster to choose an alternative rate
structure, if they wish, of 0.33 cents per hour of sound recordings, per
listener. Public radio broadcasters would be required to submit a report
to Congress on how to pay for their noncommercial use of music over the
Net.
In a statement, Inslee said that "you can't put an economic chokehold on
this emerging force of democracy. There has to be a business model that
allows creative webcasters to thrive and the existing rule removes all
the oxygen from this space."
The decision by the CRB had been opposed by small Webcasters, NPR, Clear
Channel Communications and others. Under the new rules decided by CRB,
webcasters would pay $0.0008 per song per user, retroactive to 2006, and
it would increase to $0.0019 cents per song per user by 2010.
SoundExchange, the nonprofit organization that collects royalties on
behalf of the rights holders, had brought the matter to the CRB. "The idea
that this bill would help small webcasters or artists is ludicrous since
less than 2 percent of all royalty payments in 2006 came from small
webcasters," said John Simson, Executive Director of SoundExchange, in a
statement. "The true beneficiaries are the mega-multiplex services like
AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Clear Channel, which will benefit from rates
substantially lower than those set by the Librarian of Congress in 2002."
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists had applauded the
CRB's decision, saying its members "deserve to be paid fairly," while the
National Association of Broadcasters said the CRB's decision was
"disappointing" and would "dramatically raise fees for companies that
stream music over the Internet."
A previous set of agreements had expired at the end of 2005. Under those
agreements, small Internet radio stations paid 12 percent of revenues,
rather than the per-song, per-listener fee required by the new rules.
One small Net radio station, SomaFM in San Francisco, said that it had
paid about $22,000 in royalties in 2006, but that, under the new ruling,
it would have to pay about $600,000 annually. It said its total annual
revenue, from listener contributions, was about $200,000.
How The Internet Took Over
Twenty-five years ago the Internet as we now know it was in the process of
being birthed by the National Science Foundation. Since then it's been an
information explosion. From e-mail to eBay, communication and shopping
have forever changed.
1. World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee created user-friendly "Web pages" that could travel over
the Internet, a network built to shuttle research between universities.
The world logged on: 747 million adults in January.
2. E-mail
Tech's answer to the Pony Express. Programs such as 1988's Eudora made it
easy to use. In-boxes have been filling up ever since. Nearly 97 billion
e-mails are sent each day.
3. Graphical user interface (GUI)
Most computer displays were blinking lines of text until Apple featured
clickable icons and other graphic tools in its 1984 Mac. Microsoft's
Windows took GUI - pronounced "gooey" - to the masses.
4. AOL
AOL turned people on to Web portals, chat rooms and instant messaging.
Early subscribers paid by the hour. AOL once boasted 35 million
subscribers. It bought Time Warner for $106 billion in 2001.
5. Broadband
The answer to the drip-drip-drip of dial-up, high-speed Internet service
fuels online entertainment. About 78 percent of home Internet users in
the U.S. have broadband, up from less than 1 percent in 1998.
6. Google
So popular it's a verb. The search powerhouse, with a market
capitalization of nearly $149 billion, perfected how we find info on the
Web. Google sites had nearly 500 million visitors in December.
7. Mosaic/Netscape
Created by Marc Andreessen and others, Mosaic was the first widely-used
multimedia Web browser. Spin-off Netscape Navigator ruled the '90s until
Microsoft's Internet Explorer took off around '98.
8. eBay
Thanks to eBay, we can all now buy and sell almost anything (skip the body
parts). eBay has 230 million customers worldwide who engage in 100 million
auctions at any given time.
9. Amazon.com
Jeff Bezos' baby began as an always-in-stock book seller. It survived the
tech bubble and now is the definitive big box online store. It was the
second most-visited online retailer in December, after eBay.
10. Wi-fi
Have coffee shop, will compute: Wireless fidelity lets us lug our laptops
out of the office and connect to the Net on the fly. More than 200
million Wi-Fi equipped products sold last year.
11. Instant Messaging
LOL! Web surfers began to "laugh out loud" and BRB ("be right back") in
the mid-'90s, with the launch of ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger. Millions
use it to swap messages and photos, even telephone pals.
12. Yahoo!
Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo created
this popular Web portal in 1994. It remains a favorite for email, photo
sharing (it owns Flickr) and other services.
13. Compuserve/Prodigy
In the 1980s, they became the first mainstream companies to offer consumer
Internet access. CompuServe was more for the geek set; Prodigy was more
for the masses.
14. The Well
The precursor for social networking, the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link,
founded in 1985, was the original (now longest-running) virtual community.
It gained popularity for its forums.
15. Vices
Regulators scrapped plans for a .xxx domain, but vice remains one of the
Net's biggest businesses. Online gambling, illegal in the U.S., topped $12
billion last year; online porn was $2.84 billion. Searches for "Paris
Hilton video" return about a million hits.
16. Spam/Spyware
Unsolicited e-mail, and software that watches your Web habits, mushroomed
from annoyance to menace. Junk e-mail now accounts for more than 9 of
every 10 messages sent over the Internet.
17. Flash
Adobe's Flash player is on 98 percent of all computers. Seen a video on
YouTube or MySpace? Then you've probably used Flash. It animated the Web,
spawning zillions of online cartoons and videos.
18. Online mapping tools
MapQuest started saving marriages in 1996 by offering turn-by-turn
directions. Followers such as Yahoo and Google beam directions to
cellphones and offer satellite images of neighborhoods.
19. Napster
Created in Shawn Fanning's dorm room, Napster let more than 26 million
people tap into a free database of music. Record companies shut it down.
In its wake emerged legitimate download sites, such as Apple's iTunes.
20. YouTube
The video-sharing site, bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion,
ignited a user-generated revolution online and introduced millions to the
delights of Stephen Colbert, Chad Vader and Lonelygirl15.
21. The Drudge Report
Matt Drudge's news site helped break the Monica Lewinsky story in 1998,
paving the way for politically-minded bloggers everywhere. He claims to
have about 500 million visitors a month.
22. Bloggers
The more than 75 million Web logs have changed how the world gets its
news. Bloggers have challenged the traditional media, lobbied for and
against wars, started debates, and posted far too many pictures of their
pets.
23. Craigslist
Craig Newmark's gathering place for (mostly) free classified ads changed
the way we find apartments, cars and dates. The site relies on users who
supply friendly neighborhood information -- about 14 million ads a month.
24. MySpace
This online hangout has replaced the mall as a home away from home for
teenagers. The site has more than 173 million personalized pages. News
Corp paid $580 million for it in 2005.
25. Gaming and virtual worlds
More than 19 million globally pay to explore three-dimensional Massively
Multiplayer Online (MMO) games such as World of Warcraft and virtual
communities such as Second Life, which let players do business or just
hang out. Both use the easy connections fostered by the Web to build
communities.
=~=~=~=
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.
