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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 11 Issue 44
Volume 11, Issue 44 Atari Online News, Etc. October 30, 2009
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:
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1144 10/30/09
~ Ready for Non-English? ~ People Are Talking! ~ Gamers "Wink" Glasses!
~ Facebook Spammer Fined ~ Icahn Resigns Yahoo ~ New Data-Breach Law?
~ Game Footage Leaked! ~ GeoCities Is Shut Down ~ Internet Turns 40!
-* Icahn Resigns Yahoo Board! *-
-* Piracy: UK Threatens Web Access Block *-
-* ICANN Approves Use of Non-Latin Characters *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Here it is, Halloween night in a few hours. The neighborhood ghosts and
goblins will be making their way to houses, hoping for treats rather than
invoking a few choice tricks. If you've never been to Salem, Massachusetts,
it may be difficult for you to truly understand this entertaining little
"holiday". Yes, Salem, the home of witchcraft in America. A great place to
visit, especially if you can manage it on Halloween night.
In our neighborhood, we get lots of trick o' treaters, but usually a few
less when the holiday falls on a weekend. Must be a lot of Halloween
parties to go to on a weekend rather than a school night. I'm not sure, but
it always seems to work out that away around here. While I watch the dogs,
my wife gets to see all of the costumes adorned by the kids, and pass out
a variety of treats. Every once in awhile, I'll venture a look out the
window and catch a glimpse. A number of my neighbors' houses are fully
decorated with scenes of horror and lights - a great scene.
All in all, it's a fun holiday for everyone involved, unless you don't like
kids or could be bothered to answer the door to a child's "Trick or Treat!"
Yes, we have a couple of Halloween Scrooges in the neighborhood, leaving the
house darkened so no one will approach their doors. Guess they were never
allowed to go out trick o' treating when they were kids!
Anyway, please be careful Saturday night if you're out and about after dark.
There will be kids everywhere, and they may not be paying attention to
drivers! Now, pass me another Reese's!!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. Well, another week has come and gone and,
as Harry Chapin wrote in a song, all the changes keep on changing.
I KNOW I'm getting old now. More and more I'm finding that I agree with
the old adage that change is change for the worse. For instance, the
changes in the medical industry have us really roped and hogtied these
days. I mean, the health care industry is completely different than what
it used to be... there are tests and procedures and drugs that there
never were before, and the cost is simply astronomical... because it CAN
be.
Look at it this way: It used to be that you'd go to the doctor, sit in
the waiting room for half an hour while he or she saw other patients,
then got into the examination room and you were his only patient. He'd
charge you a couple of bucks because, heck, he worked out of his parlor,
or he'd long since paid off the mortgage on the building and all he
really needed to pay for business-wise was the cotton balls and alcohol
and penicillin and iodine, and maybe a new glass syringe and hypodermic
needles and of course old magazines for the waiting room. (I always
wondered where doctors bought 18 month old magazines [chuckle])
Then came the change. Doctors were now corporations. The have to pay
rent on these luxury business suites, pay for purchasing and maintaining
the latest whiz-bang equipment, pay a whole staff of office and computer
people, and last but certainly not least, pay those huge premiums on
malpractice insurance. Then there's the cost of becoming a doctor in the
first place. Medical school costs have become outrageous.
And through it all, we the public paid little heed to it, since we had
insurance that was going to pick up the tab. Sure, insurance costs money,
but our employer paid that. It was part of our compensation. So costs
rose and the insurance companies picked up the tab. Drug companies got
into the act, spending what they had to to develop new drugs, knowing
they could pass on the costs plus a nice little profit, and we'd pay
it... or let our insurance company pay it.
So costs rose and we contented ourselves with the idea that we could go
to a doctor anytime we wanted and not have to worry about affording it,
that But we forgot the golden rule; That NOTHING is free. There's a price
to be paid for everything. We thought it would be alright because that's
what insurance was for. We also forgot that INSURANCE isn't free. We grew
accustomed to it. Now we feel entitled to health care; all the doctor's
visits we want along with all the expensive tests and therapies. And we
feel entitled to have someone else pay for it.
And to be honest, I believe that everyone should have access to quality
health care. I think it should be affordable, and the snakes on
the caduceus should, like Lady Justice, be blind. But I also believe that
there's a line we should observe. There are things that just shouldn't be
considered 'health care'. Elective surgeries like most cosmetic
procedures, for instance.
The problem is, as I see it, that we haven't dug down to the root of the
problem yet. We're concentrating on what it costs US. The real problem
goes much deeper than that. Today's health care is a completely different
animal than it used to be. But even though it's different world health
care-wise, we are still trying to pay for it the same way we always have.
It's just not going to work.
Okay, enough about health care. I have one political question not related
to health care debate, and I'm not going to answer my own question this
time either. So here it is:
Why is it that it's taken someone in this administration almost ten
months to show some signs of... ummm... testicular fortitude... and why
is it that, when someone finally DOES, IT'S HILLARY!?
Yes, Hillary gave as good as she got in Pakistan this week. Key phrases
like "You don't HAVE to take our money" and "It's your country and you
can do what you want... but _I_ wouldn't do it..." endeared her to me
like nothing else has. And let's face it, where friendship in the face of
adversity is concerned, Pakistan may well be one of those countries that
ends up being... how did she put it about Bill?... A hard dog to keep on
the porch. [grin]
Well, that's it for this week. Tune 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 - Video Game Footage Leaked!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Gamers: Get "Wink" Glasses!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Leaked Video Game Footage Shows Terrorist Attack
Footage leaked from "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" reveals that
players of the upcoming video game can shoot innocent civilians in an
airport in a realistic rendering of a terrorist attack.
The game, which has an "M" rating for mature audiences, comes out next
month in what its publisher hopes may be the most lucrative launch in
the history of entertainment, not just for games but counting music and
movies too.
In a statement, game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. said Wednesday
the footage was taken illegally and is not representative of the game's
overall experience. Instead, the game is designed to evoke the
"atrocities of terrorism," Activision's public-relations agency said in
an e-mailed statement.
The game follows players as they "face off against a terrorist threat
dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse," the company
said. This includes a plot line in which the player infiltrates a
Russian villain's inner circle to defeat him. Presumably the airport
attack is one of the scenes in which the player acts as part of the
villain's group.
Gamers are warned that the scene may be disturbing, and they can choose
not to play through the part. It's unlikely, though, that most gamers
will heed the warning, since it means skipping part of the game's
intricate story.
Infinity Ward, the game's developer, hasn't shied away from disturbing
imagery in the past. "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" begins with a
character being driven through an occupied city, dragged out of the car,
tied to a pole and then executed - all from the victim's point of view.
But what's different in the upcoming game is that people can play from a
terrorist's perspective, just as they can play criminal in the "Grand
Theft Auto" titles.
New Japanese Glasses Bring Tears to the Eyes
The Japanese eyewear company behind Sarah Palin's designer glasses has
come up with a high-tech solution for obsessive video-gamers and
bookworms whose eyes dry out from lack of blinking.
Masunaga Optical Manufacturing Co. Ltd. said Tuesday its "Wink Glasses" -
retailing for 40,000 yen (430 dollars) - were an answer to the ocular
dehydration caused for instance by prolonged computer use.
When a sensor detects that the wearer has not blinked for more than five
seconds, the glasses "fog up" by gradually making a liquid crystal
display over one eye turn opaque.
A simple blink clears the lens again.
Masunaga, based in the central Japanese city of Fukui, has enjoyed a
boost in sales since Palin burst to international prominence last year
as the Republicans' vice presidential pick in the United States.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Internet Set for Change with Non-English Addresses
The Internet is set to undergo one of the biggest changes in its
four-decade history with the expected approval this week of
international domain names - or addresses - that can be written in
languages other than English, an official said Monday.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN - the
non-profit group that oversees domain names - is holding a meeting this
week in Seoul. Domain names are the monikers behind every Web site,
e-mail address and Twitter post, such as ".com" and other suffixes.
One of the key issues to be taken up by ICANN's board at this week's
gathering is whether to allow for the first time entire Internet
addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters. That
could potentially open up the Web to more people around the world as
addresses could be in characters as diverse as Arabic, Korean, Japanese,
Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic - in which Russian is written.
"This is the biggest change technically to the Internet since it was
invented 40 years ago," Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the ICANN
board, told reporters, calling it a "fantastically complicated technical
feature." He said he expects the board to grant approval on Friday, the
conference's final day.
The Internet's roots are traced to experiments at a U.S. university in
1969 but it wasn't until the early 1990s that its use began expanding
beyond academia and research institutions to the public.
Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's new president and CEO, said that if the change is
approved, ICANN would begin accepting applications for non-English
domain names and that the first entries into the system would likely
come sometime in mid 2010.
Enabling the change, Thrush said, is the creation of a translation
system that allows multiple scripts to be converted to the right address.
"We're confident that it works because we've been testing it now for a
couple of years," he said. "And so we're really ready to start rolling
it out."
Of the 1.6 billion Internet users worldwide, Beckstrom - a former chief
of U.S. cybersecurity - said that more than half use languages that have
scripts based on alphabets other than Latin.
"So this change is very much necessary for not only half the world's
Internet users today, but more than half of probably the future users as
the use of the Internet continues to spread," he said.
Beckstrom, in earlier remarks to conference participants, recalled that
many people had said just three to five years ago that using non-Latin
scripts for domain names would be impossible to achieve.
"But you the community and the policy groups and staff and board have
worked through them, which is absolutely incredible," he said.
ICANN is headquartered in the United States in Marina del Rey, California.
Hebrew, Hindi, Other Scripts Get Web Address Nod
The nonprofit body that oversees Internet addresses approved Friday the use
of Hebrew, Hindi, Korean and other scripts not based on Latin characters in
a decision that could make the Web dramatically more inclusive.
The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - or
ICANN - voted to allow such scripts in so-called domain names at the
conclusion of a weeklong meeting in Seoul, South Korea's capital.
The decision by the board's 15 voting members was unopposed and welcomed
by applause and a standing ovation. It followed years of debate and testing.
The result clears the way for governments or their designees to submit
requests for specific names, likely beginning Nov. 16. Internet users
could start seeing them in use early next year, particularly in Arabic,
Chinese and other scripts in which demand has been among the highest,
ICANN officials say.
"This represents one small step for ICANN, but one big step for half of
mankind who use non-Latin scripts, such as those in Korea, China and the
Arabic speaking world as well as across Asia, Africa, and the rest of
the world," Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's CEO, said ahead of the vote.
Domain names - the Internet addresses that end in ".com" and other
suffixes - are the key monikers behind every Web site, e-mail address
and Twitter post.
Since their creation in the 1980s, domain names have been limited to the
26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English - A-Z - as well as
10 numerals and the hyphen. Technical tricks have been used to allow
portions of the Internet address to use other scripts, but until now,
the suffix had to use those 37 characters.
That has meant Internet users with little or no knowledge of English
might still have to type in Latin characters to access Web pages in
Chinese or Arabic. Although search engines can sometimes help users
reach those sites, companies still need to include Latin characters on
billboards and other advertisements.
Now, ICANN is allowing those same technical tricks to apply to the
suffix as well, allowing the Internet to be truly multilingual.
Many of the estimated 1.5 billion people online use languages such as
Chinese, Thai, Arabic and Japanese, which have writing systems entirely
different from English, French, German, Indonesian, Swahili and others
that use Latin characters.
"This is absolutely delightful news," said Edward Yu, CEO of Analysys
International, an Internet research and consulting firm in Beijing.
The Internet would become more accessible to users with lower incomes
and education, said Yu, who was speaking before the widely expected
decision.
Countries can only request one suffix for each of their official
languages, and the suffix must somehow reflect the name of the country
or its abbreviation.
Non-Latin versions of ".com" and ".org" won't be permitted for at least
a few more years as ICANN considers broader policy questions such as
whether the incumbent operator of ".com" should automatically get a
Chinese version, or whether that more properly goes to China, as its
government insists.
ICANN also is initially prohibiting Latin suffixes that go beyond the 37
already-permitted characters. That means suffixes won't be able to
include tildes, accent marks and other special characters.
And software developers still have to make sure their applications work
with the non-Latin scripts. Major Web browsers already support them, but
not all e-mail programs do.
In China, Guo Liang, a researcher who studies Internet use for the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government's top think tank,
questioned whether all Chinese will embrace the new domains.
Although the move will reflect linguistic and cultural diversity, Guo
said, "for some users it might even be easier to type domains in Latin
alphabets than Chinese characters."
China has already set up its own ".com" in Chinese within its borders,
using techniques that aren't compatible with Internet systems around the
world.
Most Chinese and Japanese computer users write characters in their
native scripts by typing phonetic versions on a standard English keyboard.
China is among a handful of countries that has pushed hardest for
official non-Latin suffixes and could be one of the first to make one
available, said Tina Dam, the ICANN senior director for
internationalized domain names. The other countries, she said, are
Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
About 50 such names are likely to be approved in the first few years.
The Internet's roots are traced to experiments at U.S. universities in
1969 but it wasn't until the early 1990s that its use began expanding
beyond academia and research institutions to the public.
The U.S. government, which funded much of the Internet's early
development, selected ICANN in 1998 to oversee policies on domain names.
ICANN, which has headquarters in the United States in Marina del Rey,
California, was set up as a nonprofit with board members from around the
world.
Beckstrom said Friday's approval is not simply aimed at enhancing
convenience for Internet users using different scripts.
"It's also an issue of pride of people and their own culture and their
own language, and a recognition that the Internet belongs to everyone,"
he told The Associated Press in an interview. "It's a shared resource.
So I think it's a really exciting step for all of us."
How Will New Internet Domain Names Change the Web?
Finally, the World Wide Web will live up to its name. The decision by
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that Web
sites written in Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and other non-ASCII character
sets will be able to have their Internet domain names displayed in their
own languages truly makes the Web a global worldwide network. For the past
40 years (the Internet turned 40 this week) the Internet and the Web have
been the exclusive domain of English language addresses. For non-English
speaking countries it has been the real world equivalent to forcing them
to use English language stationary.
No longer will entire countries be forced to use Latin-based characters
and their Web addresses and e-mail addresses will now be as recognizable
as their telephone book. The move is being heralded by ICANN as the
biggest technical change to the Internet since its birth.
For that reason many around the world are cheering the move as a way of
opening up Internet access to more people.
"The net result will be an expansion of the Internet in terms of
resources and users. Small local businesses are likely to benefit as
their Internet and e-mail address can now be in their own local
language," according to a writer for Asia Times Online.
The Korea Herald pointedly quoted ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom as saying the new
Internet names are "very important not only for more than half of the
current [Internet] users but also for half of the Internet users to come."
More than 50 percent of the current total of 1.6 billion Internet users
speak languages that aren't Latin-based, according to widely used
estimates.
Yet on the other hand, the new names carry risks for new security
concerns and general user confusion. Some fear the Web might grow
increasingly fragmented into areas easily accessible only to those
conversant in local languages.
There are certainly lots of languages in the world, a problem
mythologized in the Biblical tale of the fall of the Tower of Babel,
in which God punished people by scattering them across the face of the
Earth and splitting the human language into many different tongues.
Google, the world's leading search engine, now does support searches
conducted with the use of Korean and Arabic character sets, for instance.
But ICANN's actions, although well intended, also raise nuts-and-bolts
questions that are yet to be answered.
How will you be able to type the domain names of international Web sites
when your keyboard doesn't support their character sets?
It would be logistically just about impossible for a PC maker to supply
a keyboard supporting the Western "ABC" alphabet, along with the
disparate character sets used in all of these tongues, for example:
Japanese, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and the Central and European
languages.
It's true that you can download fonts used in these languages, along
with "virtual keyboard layouts" that spare you the need to buy separate
physical keyboards.
But things can get very dicey here. For instance, Russian keyboards are
reportedly slightly different on Windows and Mac PCs.
And to handle the virtual keyboards with much efficiency, you need to
put special stickers on your keys. Just how many virtual keyboards and sets
of stickers is anyone supposed to have on hand in the house or office?
It looks as though we could see the development of a whole new class of
Web domains that most people won't be able to get to easily -- even
though they might be able to find those Web sites with a search engine.
Certainly language translation services and technology may be the
biggest winners with today's news. I predict both will flourish along
with an international land grab for variations of the word "sex" dot-com.
Icahn Resigns from Yahoo's Board on Friendly Terms
Activist investor Carl Icahn has decided his work is done at Yahoo Inc.
after muscling his way on to the slumping Internet company's board
nearly 15 months ago.
In a resignation letter Friday, Icahn said he felt like it was time to
leave Yahoo so he could spend more time on his investments in other
companies.
"I don't believe that it is necessary at this time to have an activist
on the board of Yahoo and currently my attention is focused on other
matters," Icahn wrote.
Icahn, an outspoken billionaire, spent several months last year
denigrating Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and the rest of the company's
board after Yahoo turned down an opportunity to sell to Microsoft Corp.
for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share.
That snub still looks like an expensive mistake, with Yahoo shares
closing Friday at $17.22.
Icahn struck a truce with Yahoo to get on the board in August 2008 and
he is apparently leaving on an amicable note.
In his letter, Icahn praised Yahoo's current chief executive, Carol
Bartz, saying she is "doing a great job." Bartz replaced Yang as CEO
nine months ago.
Icahn also applauded Yahoo's decision three months ago to hire Microsoft
to provide its search results in the United States for the next decade.
It's a partnership that Icahn tried to bring together while he was still
seeking to get Yang fired. The proposed alliance between Yahoo and
Microsoft still requires regulatory approval.
Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, also had kind words for Icahn,
saying it is "grateful for his active role in shaping the future" of the
company.
A Yahoo spokeswoman said there are no immediate plans to fill Icahn's
seat on the board. Another director, Maggie Wilderotter, plans to step
aside at the end of the year.
After Wilderotter's departure, Yahoo will be left with 10 directors,
including Yang. Two of other directors, John Chapple and Frank Biondi,
joined the board as Icahn's allies.
Icahn remains one of Yahoo's largest shareholders with a 4.5 percent
stake that is currently worth slightly more than $1 billion. He and his
investment affiliates spent $1.8 billion accumulating a 5.5 percent
stake last year, but whittled the holdings two months ago by selling
12.7 million shares.
His resignation letter gave no indication whether he plans to sell more
of his Yahoo stock now that he has left the board.
Yahoo's fortunes have been sliding for the past three years as Google
Inc. widened its lead in Internet's lucrative search market and people
began spending more time at other popular online hangouts such as
Facebook.
Earlier this week, the company announced that its third-quarter earnings
more than tripled as cost cutting helped to offset a 12 percent decline
in revenue. The revenue erosion wasn't quite as bad as earlier this
year, raising hopes that the company will fare better as the U.S.
economy pulls out of its worst recession in 70 years.
National Data-breach Law Would Help Fight Cybercrime
A U.S. law that would require businesses to report data breaches to
potential victims could help law enforcement agencies fight the growth of
cybercrime, a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation official said
Wednesday.
If U.S. businesses were required to share information about their data
breaches, law enforcement agencies could link those attacks to others and
potentially stop similar attacks at other organizations, said Jeffrey Troy,
chief of the FBI's Cyber Criminal Section.
A data-breach notification bill "would help us tremendously, particularly
in terms of efficiency in conducting investigations," Troy said during a
cybersecurity discussion in Washington, D.C.
Companies need to think beyond their walls when dealing with cybersecurity
issues, Troy said. "They have to recognize that the Internet has become a
global platform for commerce," he said. "The people that are stealing
information from you ... are going after the money."
Attacks used against one company will likely be used against other
organizations, Troy said. "We're really looking forward to getting all
this data," he said.
Some members of Congress have pushed for several years to pass data breach
notification bills, without success. Although about 45 states have passed
their own data-breach notification bills, Congress has yet to pass a
federal law.
Data-breach notification will be part of a comprehensive cybersecurity
bill that the Senate Judiciary Committee will try to move to the Senate
floor this year, said Lydia Griggsby, chief counsel for privacy and
information policy at the committee. The Personal Data Privacy and
Security Act, sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat,
would also limit how data brokers can use personal information and would
establish data security rules for interstate businesses that collect
personal data.
Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will hold hearings on the
bill later this year, Griggsby said.
A national data-breach notification law is a top legislative priority
for cybersecurity products vendor Symantec, said David Thompson, the
company's CIO. It's difficult for companies to comply with 45 different
state laws, he said.
UK Threatens Web Access Block in Piracy Fight
Britain is to push ahead with a law to clamp down on illegal file
sharing, that would start with a series of warning letters and could
result in repeat offenders losing their Internet connection.
The proposals, which were set out by Business Secretary Peter Mandelson,
have followed a high-profile campaign from artists such as Lily Allen
and James Blunt, and follow France's move to ban illegal peer-to-peer
sharers for up to a year.
The rules could disappoint some of the artists and executives who have
campaigned for the law, however, as the government does not plan to
introduce the disconnection element of the law for at least a year, once
the bill has passed.
Under the British proposals, the new law could be passed by April and
rights holders such as music companies and Internet service providers
would work together for over a year to send letters to those who are
uploading illegal content.
The government hopes that the warning letters will prompt many to curb
their activity but after that time, if the rate of illegal downloading
has not significantly declined, the government could then introduce
technical measures such as slowing broadband speeds and eventual
suspension.
"It must become clear that the days of consequence-free widespread
online infringement are over," Mandelson told a cabinet (correct
spelling) creative industries conference. "Technical measures will be a
last resort and I have no expectation of mass suspensions."
Mandelson told reporters the government had not caved in to the music
and film lobby and said they were simply establishing a framework of law.
"It's not lawful to thieve other people's creative work, what we're
doing is creating new measures that will bring the law up to date, make
it enforceable and clearly understood, so we can touch the first base
which is to educate people.
"Most people don't think it is illegal, most people think it is a
victimless practice that everyone does and why shouldn't they?"
The debate over how to counter illegal file sharing has raged in Britain
for the last 18 months, with rights holders and media groups calling on
Internet service providers (ISPs) to intervene and disconnect repeat
offenders.
The government has released letters of support from media executives,
such as Sony Music and Time Warner, music managers and artists, such as
Elton John and Noel Gallagher.
However, two of the largest ISPs, BT and Carphone Warehouse , have so
far objected to their new role as policemen of the Web and are likely to
continue to object.
Mandelson said the new law would be similar to the rules passed recently
in France, but said they had not yet agreed on how long any suspension
would last.
"I was shocked to learn that only one of every 20 tracks downloaded in
the UK is downloaded legally," he said. "The British government's view
is that taking people's work without due payment is wrong and that, as
an economy based on creativity, we cannot sit back and do nothing as
this happens."
Web Marketer Ordered To Pay Facebook $711 Million Damages
Facebook said Thursday a California court has awarded the social
networking Web site $711 million in damages in an anti-spam case against
Internet marketer Sanford Wallace.
Facebook sued Wallace for accessing users' accounts without their
permission and sending phony posts and messages. The company said on its
blog that in addition to the damage award, the San Jose, Calif., court
referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney's office for prosecution for
criminal contempt of court - meaning he could face jail time.
Wallace earned the monikers "Spam King" and "Spamford" as head of a
company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s.
In May 2008, the online hangout MySpace won a $230 million judgment over
junk messages sent to its members when a federal judge in Los Angeles
ruled against Wallace and his partner, Walter Rines, in another case
brought under the federal anti-spam law known as CAN-SPAM. In 2006,
Wallace was fined $4 million after the Federal Trade Commission accused
him of running an operation that infected computers with software that
caused flurries of pop-up ads, known as "spyware."
"While we don't expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we
hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these
criminals," said Sam O'Rourke, associate general counsel for Facebook,
in a blog posting Thursday. "This is another important victory in our
fight against spam."
There was no phone number listed for Wallace in Las Vegas, where he is
believed to be living, according to the ruling.
The company said the judgment marks the second-largest anti-spam award
ever. In November 2008, Facebook won an $873 million judgment against
Adam Guerbuez and his business, Atlantis Blue Capital, who bombarded
users with sexually explicit spam messages.
Yahoo Shuts Down GeoCities
Yahoo on Monday closed GeoCities, a free Web hosting service that it
purchased for over three billion dollars at the height of the dot-com boom.
"We have enjoyed hosting websites created by Yahoo users all over the
world, and we're proud of the community you've built," the
California-based Internet pioneer said in a message at the GeoCities
website.
"However, we have decided to focus on helping our customers explore and
build relationships online in other ways."
Yahoo said GeoCities would not be available after Monday and
recommended GeoCities refugees set up new online homes at its paid Web
hosting service, with an introductory offer of just five dollars for the
first 12 months.
The closure of GeoCities comes a week after Yahoo reported that
aggressive cost-cutting helped it more than triple its net profit
despite a 12-percent decline in revenue in its third quarter.
Yahoo said net profit soared more than 244 percent in the quarter to
186 million dollars, or 13 cents per share, from 54 million dollars, or
four cents per share, a year ago, easily surpassing analysts' forecasts.
The better-than-expected performance was due in large part to
cost-cutting measures implemented by Carol Bartz since being named in
January to replace Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive.
Yahoo has reduced its headcount by some 2,000 during the past year and
presently has some 13,200 employees.
Yahoo announced the planned closure of GeoCities early this year,
saying it was "increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in
others."
GeoCities was founded in 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet and bought by
Yahoo during the infamous dot-com boom in Silicon Valley.
GeoCities provided people with tools to build interactive websites and
eventually added chat forums and other community-oriented features.
Yahoo eventually added fee-paying premium services in an effort to make
money at GeoCities, which had trouble retaining users and getting
profitable.
Internet Turns 40 with Birthday Bash
Technology and media stars, pundits and entrepreneurs joined the Internet's
father to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his culture-changing child.
"It's the 40th year since the infant Internet first spoke," said
University of California, Los Angeles, professor Leonard Kleinrock, who
headed the team that first linked computers online in 1969.
Kleinrock led an anniversary event at the UCLA campus that blended
reminiscence of the Internet's past with debate about its future.
"There is going to be an ongoing controversy about where we have been
and where we are going," said Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the
popular news and blog website that bears her name.
"It is not just about the Internet; it is about our times. We are going
to need desperately to tap into the better angels of our nature and make
our lives not just about ourselves but about our communities and our world."
Huffington was on hand to discuss the power the Internet gives to grass
roots organizers on a panel with Kleinrock and Social Brain Foundation
director Isaac Mao.
"The Internet is a democratizing element; everyone has an equivalent
voice," Kleinrock said. "There is no way back at this point. We can't
turn it off. The Internet Age is here."
Kleinrock never imagined Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube that day four
decades ago when his team gave birth to what is now taken for granted as
the Internet.
"The net is penetrating every aspect of our lives," Kleinrock said to a
room of about 200 people and an equal number watching online.
On October 29, 1969, Kleinrock led a team that got a computer at UCLA to
"talk" to one at a research institute.
Kleinrock was driven by a certainty that computers were destined to
speak to each other and that the resulting network should be as simple
to use as telephones.
US telecom colossus AT&T ran lines connecting the computers for ARPANET,
a project backed with money from a research arm of the US military's
Advanced Research Projects Agency.
ARPANET grew into what is known today as the Internet.
"It feels to me like the alumni meeting of the framers of the US
Constitution," Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry
Barlow said as he addressed the gathering.
"There are a lot of people in this room who are honest to god uncles and
aunts of the Internet. What you did is conceivably the most important
technological event since the capture of fire."
Barlow, whose nonprofit legal organization fights for online freedom,
maintained that Internet access is on the verge of becoming an
inalienable human right.
"The reality today is that the Internet is like a new life; it is
organic," said Regina Dugan, director of what became DARPA when
"Defense" was added to the agency's name.
"It is inherently beautiful. It challenges us all to think about
ourselves, about others, about ethics, and about the future."
To test the power of the Internet, DARPA will release 10 "very large
balloons" in the continental US and then pay 40,000 dollars to the first
person or team to pinpoint their locations using online tools or
networking.
The balloons will be afloat for two days and visible only during
daylight hours.
"Individuals can make information go viral," Dugan said. "Then it was an
Internet challenge, today it is a network challenge."
The competition will be tracked on wildly popular microblogging service
Twitter, according to DARPA.
Kleinrock, who is now 75, sees the Internet spreading into everything.
"The next step is to move it into the real world," Kleinrock said. "The
Internet will be present everywhere. I will walk into a room and it will
know I am there. It will talk back to me."
=~=~=~=
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