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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 12 Issue 47
Volume 12, Issue 47 Atari Online News, Etc. November 19, 2010
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2010
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:
Fred Horvat
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1247 11/19/10
~ Holiday Phishing Scam! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Facebook's Messaging!
~ AOL's Project Phoenix! ~ 'Path' Social Network! ~ GeekBuddy Instant Help
~ Malware At Record High ~ Yars' Revenge Is Back! ~ Pirate Sites, Beware!
~ MySpace Syncs Facebook ~ Re-tweet Costs Woman! ~ "at" Is So much More!
-* Pentagon Aware of Re-routing *-
-* Majority In Favor of Video Game Laws *-
-* U.S. Sees "Huge" Cyber Threat in the Future *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
It's been another one of those long and arduous weeks around here - plenty
of work either on the job or working at home. But, as most of you know all
too well, it's stuff that has to be done. And at this time of the year,
it's leaves and more leaves! The trees, after some good rainstorms and
days with gusty winds, are almost bare. Hopefully it will only take one or
two more days out there cleaning them up; and then I'll be finished for
another fall season. We'll see.
As is typical for Joe this time of the year, I'm sure that in his column this
week, he'll mention a reminder to you all about making a donation of food to
a local food pantry or something comparable. It's a reminder that needs to
be made on occasion.
My wife and I did something this week that, now that I think about it, is
an act similar to helping the needy. As you might recall, we're avid dog
lovers. Over the years, we've rescued three dogs from area shelters; and
they've become loved members of our family. A couple of years ago, we lost
one of them, and then adopted a "cast-off" greyhound a few months later.
Every once in awhile my wife or I take a look at the shelter's web site to
see what kinds of dogs are waiting to be adopted. We jokingly comment how
we'd like to adopt a bunch more, but we also realize that to do so wouldn't
be the best thing to do, for us. Facts are, taking care of dogs, while an
amazing source of enjoyment and affection, requires a lot of work. It
wouldn't be fair to have a house full of dogs and not be able to give them
all the attention that they deserve. However, that doesn't stop us from
looking!
Earlier in the week, I happened to look at the shelter site again. There
were a lot of great-looking dogs - all types and sizes. Personally, I enjoy
the "real" dogs - larger breeds, the active types. But, there was one dog
shown on the site that attracted my attention - not so much for the type of
dog, but the write-up that accompanied the picture. This was a 6-year old
female chihuahua. Yes, a small dog. But what got me intrigued was learning
that this dog, "Precious", has Cushing's Disease, a terminal disease. Just
knowing that with the couple of dozen of dogs available, it was likely going
to be a slim chance that this small dog was going to garner much attention.
Seriously, most people are interested in puppies, or healthy "older" dogs.
What are the chances someone is going to take a second look at a dog that
may only live another year or so? No, it's not cruel, but it's realistic.
But somehow, something in me made me realize that this dog was facing a
questionable future. It just didn't seem fair that she should be faced
with the possibility of spending her last days in a shelter. Sure, she'd
be given the best care, but what she really needed was a caring home. So,
I mentioned it to my wife and suggested that we should look into possibly
adopting this dog. But, I wanted to check into Cushing's Disease, and
find out the financial needs to care for the dog - medication and other
treatment.
We went to the shelter the next day, bringing our two dogs to see how they
interacted. The three dogs seemed to get along, at least negative behavior!
We sat down and talked to one of the shelter counselors, and expressed
interest. Our concern over medications and some treatments were quickly
negated when we learned that the shelter would take care of the costs of
medication and quarterly blood-testing. Routine check-ups and annual
treatments were something that we figured was manageable, or we wouldn't
even consider another dog.
And, of course another positive factor was that Precious seemed to take to
us! So, my wife and I looked at each other, and we both knew that this
was something the wanted, and needed to do. We wanted this dog to spend
whatever remaining time it had left to be in a good home. And now she is!
So, I guess it's fairly appropriate for this time of the year, with
Thanksgiving less than a week away. for us to be able to find a "different"
way to give thanks, as well as help "someone" else.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday, and try to remember how this holiday came
about and why we celebrate it. Sure, there's turkey and all the fixin's,
football games, and more. Family is another important part of it. A good
reason to give thanks is the all-important reason, however.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. If you read Dana's editorial last week,
then you know that I finally found one of those "job" things. I'm in the
process of settling in and getting accustomed to my new 'situation', as
they used to call it. It's a tough job, but a pretty good one, and I'm
finding that I like the job and the people. I'm quality assurance manager
at a small-ish manufacturer. Lots of stuff to do, lots of stuff to learn.
I'm hanging in there... and so are they. [grin]
But switching subjects here, I want to talk a little bit about one of my
pet interests: High energy physics. No, I'm not educated in particle
physics or anything, but it's always interested me, and I can grasp some of
the simpler concepts involved... sometimes.
Well, this past week scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were
actually able to create... wait for it... antimatter!
Yes, that's right, trekkies. Real, honest to goodness antimatter. It's
been done before, actually, antimatter electrons, or positrons, have been
made in the lab for quite a while now. But what's different this time is
that the scientists at CERN were able to create antiprotons along with the
antielectrons and 'mate' them so to speak to make anti-hydrogen.
This is a fairly big achievement, to put it lightly, since antimatter is
so difficult to deal with. As you might know, antimatter and matter
annihilate each other when they come into contact with each other,
releasing large amounts of energy... incredible amounts, actually.
So creating antimatter... any antimatter... is a big deal. There are
certain radioactive elements that decay and shed antiparticles, by the
way. The PET scans that are often used in medical scans. Yep, PET stands
for Positron Emission Tomography. Basically (and this is a very simplified
version), they inject a radioactive substance bonded to sugar molecules
into you, give it a little time to circulate through your body and for
your tissues to grab onto the sugar to use as food. The radioactive
substance, being bonded to the sugar, is drawn in too. Over a short amount
of time, the stuff decays and emits, among its various byproducts,
positrons. When the positrons meet up with electrons, they annihilate one
another and produce gamma rays (if I remember correctly). Each
annihilation results in 2 gamma rays, heading in different directions.
Sensors pick up the 'matched pairs' and they're traced back to their point
of origin. Active muscle (and cancer cells) 'eat' a lot of sugar for
energy, so the more gamma rays that are traced back to a particular area,
the more energy they're using. This is a good way to see 'soft tissue',
since they use more energy than bone does.
But creating antimatter this way isn't useful for physics research. To be
useful for scientific research, there's got to be another way. Slamming
stuff together at very high speeds (approaching the speed of light) and
capturing the resulting anti-particles requires that a lot of things be
taken into account. There's the need for those huge superconducting
magnets to contain and speed the stream of particles, a vacuum to keep the
antiparticles from meeting up with their mirror counterparts and, maybe
most importantly, a way to contain any antimatter you're lucky enough to
make.
Think about it; how do you contain something that will not only explode
when it comes into contact with normal matter, but causes whatever it comes
into contact with to blow up too?
As some of you may know, the answer is a sort of "magnetic bottle" or
trap. Think of it as a Thermos, but with magnetic fields instead of that
silvery glass. Inside the trap is mostly vacuum. Otherwise the newly
created and trapped antimatter would come into contact with its
counterpart and both would be instantly converted from matter to energy.
The energies involved are equally incredible. Positrons are created by,
basically, slamming things together. Think of it as firing a stream of
very hot, very fast 'stuff' like a bullet fired at a target and then
'catching' the fragments that come flying off. That's what those big
superconducting magnets we've all heard about are for. It takes such a
strong magnetic field to contain this stream or, in my analogy up above,
"the bullet", that whizzes around the large tunnel... 17 miles of it...
going faster and faster, spurred on by those superconducting magnets,
slamming into another stream of particles going just as fast in the
opposite direction and, to use a physics term... BLAMMO!
Now comes the fun part. Not only do you have to keep these new
anti-particles from touching their twins, you have to slow them down.
They're incredibly hot and, therefore, incredibly energetic and traveling
at a large percentage of the speed of light. If you're going to keep them
safe and sound, you've got to slow them down. The best way so far to do
that is with lasers; 'cooling' them with light.
So let's pretend for a moment that we understand how all of that is done.
From there, you have to keep these puppies from wandering around and
banging into anything with 'normal matter'.
THAT is why antihydrogen is interesting. You see, if all you have is, say,
positrons (aka anti-electrons), they all have the same charge (positive)
and repel each other. They ricochet here and there and bounce around until
they hit something and... boom.
But antihydrogen is a bit different. Since hydrogen is neutral, so is
anti-hydrogen. That means that individual atoms of antihydrogen won't
repel each other; they just kind of exist side by side. Now you have
antimatter that doesn't fight itself, only its matter counterpart. Under
the right circumstances, you can compress it into a gas, or maybe even a
liquid. And maybe, just maybe, if you can cool and compress it enough,
hydrogen ice.
From there, if you can control how you handle it, you can actually control
the flow of it and let meet up with regular hydrogen and actually create
energy. Huge amounts of energy. That's why the starships in Star Trek used
antimatter. The energy produced when matter and antimatter meet is far,
far beyond what we're used to with our petroleum based engines.
This latest experiment proved that we (or at least they) can create, trap
and release in a controlled manner, antihydrogen.
So is the age of energy from antimatter right around the corner?
Unfortunately, no. For one thing, it's incredibly expensive, for another,
it's incredibly difficult. And perhaps most importantly, we create
incredibly little of it.
The CERN experiment, at a cost of millions upon millions of dollars,
created and trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms. Yes, that's right. Thirty
eight. More were created (although I'm not sure of how many more), but 38
of them were trapped and released in a 'controlled' manner. By comparison,
a single grain of salt is composed of somewhere around 10000000000000000
atoms. And when physicists talk about time, they don't quite have the same
scale as we do. When they say they captured and released these atoms,
they're talking about one sixth of a second. Yep. Millions upon millions
of dollars, 38 atoms and 172 milliseconds. And ya know what? It's worth
every penny.
So what exactly is this whole thing good for? Well, for one thing, we can
study it. You see, according to current theory, when the Universe began,
almost 14 billion years ago, there SHOULD have been equal amounts of
matter and antimatter created. So where did it go? IS there a difference
that we're not seeing? Are there things about antimatter and, by
extension, physics itself that we don't understand yet? Are there galaxies
out there somewhere composed entirely of antimatter? Did matter and
antimatter go in different directions when the Universe was born, driven
by fundamental forces that no longer exist or that changed a billionth of
a second after things started? We don't know. But it'd be cool to find
out, wouldn't it?
Oh, one last thing. It's totally unrelated to antimatter, but this coming
week is Thanksgiving. When you go shopping this weekend, pick up a couple
of extra things... cans of food, bags of this and that, maybe... if you're
doing well enough for yourself, a turkey... and drop it off at the local
shelter or food share. You know what I'm talking about. Things are still
tough out there, and if you can swing it, do a little to help someone else
out. Heck, make it a family thing and take the kids with you and let them
pick out a couple of things. If YOUR kids pick them out, you can pretty
much bet that someone else's kids would like it. And you'll not only be
helping someone out, you'll be making yourself a little more thankful,
believe me. But over and above that, you can show your kids what they (and
you) have to be thankful for. And I guarantee you, you'll see in your
children's' eyes the reflection of what you always wanted to be. Give it a
shot. What have you got to lose; a couple of cans of cranberry sauce?
Have a happy, healthy and save holiday. Enjoy yourself, enjoy those around
you. And come on back next week, safe and sound, and be ready to listen to
what they are saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Majority Want Video Game Laws!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Atari's Yars' Revenge Is Back!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Atari's Classic Arcade Shooter Yars' Revenge
Is Back With New Cinematic Gaming Experience
30 years ago Yars' Revenge took the gaming world by storm as one of the
first arcade shooters and became the best-selling original title for the
Atari 2600. Now three decades later, gamers will once again get the chance
to avenge the annihilated race of the Yar. Atari, one of the world's most
recognized publishers and producers of interactive entertainment will
unleash Yars' Revenge onto Xbox LIVE Arcade for the Xbox 360 video game
and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStationNetwork and Windows
PC Download in Q1 2011.
Yars' Revenge brings the legendary title to new artistic heights with an
anime inspired art style and captivating narrative that expands upon the
original story. The game also features local co-op gameplay, multiple
endings, intense battles, and visually striking landscapes designed to
appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers.
In Yars', players will take on the role of a nameless Yar, who has
been brainwashed by the evil Qotile empire to do their bidding. After
being shot down and rescued by the ancient and mysterious Bar Yargler,
she sets off on a ferociously focused mission, to seek revenge on her
former master and his deadly squad of assassins. The bio-technological
nightmare of the Qotile home world provides stunning backdrops for
players to fly through in aerial combat with their enemy.
"Yars' Revenge is one of the most popular Atari games of all time,
leaving fans eager to experience the next chapter," says Jim Wilson,
President and CEO of Atari, Inc. "The new Yars' Revenge updates this
classic with anime inspired art direction, intense aerial battles and
local co-op gameplay."
Developed by Killspace Entertainment, Yars' Revenge will be available in
early 2011.
Majority in Favor of Video Game Laws, Poll Says
Although most Americans are concerned about the level of violence in
video games, those with children are slightly less worried than those
without, according to a recent study.
In the latest Rasmussen poll, 70 percent of child-less adults surveyed
said they were either "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned," about
levels of violence in video games, compared to 65 percent of parents.
Furthermore, parents were far more likely to assume the chief role of
limiting a child's exposure to in-game sex and violence.
Still, 54 percent of those polled thought video games led to violent
behavior. Unsurprisingly, the concern increases by age and skews towards
women above 40.
Despite the fact that the Supreme Court is debating the merits of an age
requirement for violent video games, parents believe they, not the
government, should play a chief role in limiting a child's exposure to
violent video games. Seventy-one percent of those surveyed believed parents
should have the most responsibility. Only 5 percent thought it was up to
the government.
The survey of 1,000 adults nationwide was conducted on November 8-9, 2010.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
U.S. Sees "Huge" Cyber Threat in the Future
The United States faces a major threat in the future from cyber
technologies that will require civil-military coordination to shield
networks from attack, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday.
"I think there is a huge future threat. And there is a considerable
current threat," Gates told The Wall Street Journal CEO Council. "And
that's just the reality that we all face."
The U.S. Defense Department estimates that over 100 foreign intelligence
organizations have attempted to break into U.S. networks. Every year,
hackers also steal enough data from U.S. government agencies, businesses
and universities to fill the U.S. Library of Congress many times over,
officials say.
The Pentagon's biggest suppliers - including Lockheed Martin Corp,
Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp - are investing in the growing
market for cyber technology, estimated at up to $140 billion a year
worldwide.
Gates said the U.S. military had made considerable progress protecting
its own sites and was working with its private-sector partners "to bring
them under that umbrella."
But how to allow Pentagon know-how to be applied to protecting domestic
infrastructure can be tricky for legal reasons, including fear of
violating civil liberties.
"The key is the only defense that the United States has against
nation-states and other potential threats in the cyber-world is the
National Security Agency," Gates said, referring to the super-secretive
Defense Department arm that shields national security information and
networks, and intercepts foreign communications.
"You cannot replicate the National Security Agency for domestic affairs.
There isn't enough money. There isn't enough time. And there isn't
enough human talent."
Last month, President Barack Obama's administration announced steps to
allow greater cooperation between the NSA and the Department of Homeland
Security. That includes stationing the DHS' privacy, civil liberties and
legal personnel at the NSA.
"So you have the domestic security agency, DHS, being able to reach into
NSA in a real-time way to get the kind of protection we need," Gates said.
"And my hope is that over time that will lead to better protections for
both '.gov' and '.com.'"
McAfee Reports Malware at All-Time High
McAfee today revealed its McAfee Threat Report for the third quarter of
2010. Information like that provided by McAfee in these quarterly reports
is valuable for IT admins - enabling them to keep a finger on the pulse
of malware, and to stay in touch with emerging attack techniques and
trends.
With the holiday shopping season upon us, cyber criminals will be pulling
out all the stops and shifting into high gear to capitalize on the spike
in online transactions and part naive or gullible users from both their
personal information and their money. Businesses and consumers both need
to be on high alert and take a more proactive stance to guard against
attacks.
McAfee press release about the McAfee Threat Report states, "average daily
malware growth has reached its highest levels, with an average of 60,000
new pieces of malware identified per day, almost quadrupling since 2007,"
adding, "At the same time, spam levels decreased in volume this quarter,
both globally and in local geographies. Spam hit a two year low this
quarter while malware continued to soar."
McAfee warns that, "Most recently, cybercriminals unleashed a Zeus
botnet that is aimed at mobile devices and designed to intercept SMS
messages to validate transactions. As a result, the criminal can perform
all bank transactions, stealing funds from unsuspecting victims. McAfee
also saw an increase in email campaigns attempting to deliver the Zeus
botnet, under the disguise of the following recognized organization
names: eFAX, FedEx, Internal Revenue Service, Social Security
Administration, United States Postal Service and Western Union."
This report looks in-depth at the Stuxnet worm, which appears to have
been crafted specifically to target the nuclear facility capabilities of
Iran. More relevant to most IT admins, though, are the findings and
analysis of social engineering attacks, and the potential risks
associated with social networking.
"Our Q3 Threat report shows that cyber criminals are not only becoming
more savvy, but attacks are becoming increasingly more severe," said
Mike Gallagher, senior vice president and chief technology officer of
Global Threat Intelligence for McAfee. "Cyber criminals are doing their
homework, and are aware of what's popular, and what's insecure. They are
attacking mobile devices and social networking sites, so education about
user activity online, as well as incorporating the proper security
technologies are of utmost importance."
As a security vendor, it could be argued that McAfee has a vested interest
in alarming IT managers and the general public regarding computer security
issues. It would be a sort of self-serving, and self-fulfilling prophecy
to create a panic that drives sales of computer and network security
tools.
I have never bought into the conspiracy theory that security vendors
incite fear to boost sales. It would be a thinly-veiled con, and the
short term gain would damage the reputation of the vendor and lead to
irreparable long term harm.
McAfee has nothing to gain - at least not long term - from "crying wolf".
The other way of looking at reports such as this is that McAfee - by
virtue of being a major security vendor with an army of security
researchers and customers scattered around the globe - is in a unique
position to collect and study relevant data in order to provide expert
analysis to identify trends and work more proactively to develop more
effective security measures.
Pentagon Says "Aware" of China Internet Rerouting
The Defense Department is aware that Internet traffic was rerouted briefly
through China earlier this year, a Pentagon spokesman said on Friday,
referring to what a congressionally appointed panel has described as a
hijack.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission charged in its
annual report on Wednesday that state-owned China Telecom advertised
erroneous network routes that instructed "massive volumes" of U.S. and
other foreign Internet traffic to go through Chinese servers during an
18-minute stretch on April 8.
Marine Colonel David Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, told
reporters, "We're aware that on the 8th of April ... Internet traffic
was rerouted through China."
He added at one point that he did not know if "we've determined whether
that particular incident ... was done with some malicious intent or not."
Moments later, he said there was no evidence that anything malicious had
occurred, a position he repeated when pressed about the discrepancy in
his remarks.
The U.S.-China Commission in its 2010 report said the incident affected
traffic to and from U.S. government and military sites, including those
for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' office, the armed forces and some
commercial websites.
In Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned the
commission's report on China's military capabilities and economic
policies, saying it distorted reality and was symptomatic of Cold War
thinking.
China Telecom separately has denied the charge that it "hijacked" U.S.
Internet traffic by sending false notifications that prompted other
servers to route traffic through China on the assumption that it was the
most efficient path.
The commission said the evidence did not clearly show whether the
incident was perpetrated intentionally "and, if so, to what ends.
However, computer security researchers have noted that the capability
could enable severe malicious activities," the report said.
Commissioner Larry Wortzel, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served two
tours as a military attache in China, told reporters that the incident
could have let someone mine email addresses and then send
authentic-looking messages bearing attachments with malicious code or
other harmful software.
"When I see things like this happen, I ask: 'Who might be interested in
all the communication from the entire Department of Defense and the
federal government? It's probably not a graduate student from Shanghai
University,'" Wortzel said on Wednesday.
Lapan, the Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department's internal
networks would not have been affected by any improper rerouting of
traffic through Chinese servers.
"We do have tools to protect any of the traffic that goes outside" the
internal networks, he added, referring to encryption and devices that
warn when Internet traffic is being rerouted.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who led a Senate Intelligence Committee
cyber task force that submitted a classified report to the panel in July
on cyber threats, said on Wednesday that certain threats cannot be
countered without the U.S. government's unique "authorities and
capabilities."
In a Senate floor speech, the Rhode Island Democrat reiterated a
proposal to create a "dot.secure" domain to protect crucial U.S.
services such as power grids, financial networks, transportation and
communications hubs.
"We simply cannot leave that core infrastructure on which the life and
death of Americans depends without better security," Whitehouse said.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission was set up in
2000 to examine the security implications of growing economic ties with
China.
Dean Cheng, an expert on Chinese security issues at the conservative
Heritage Foundation, said the alleged Internet hijacking appeared to be
part of what he described as a disturbing pattern of aggressive Chinese
cyber activities.
"All of this suggests that, from China's view, a global conflict is
already underway - in the virtual world of cyberspace," he wrote. "The
ability to redirect vast amounts of data constitutes a threat, not only
to national security, but also to private companies and individuals, as
their information, too, has now been put at risk."
Facebook Takes On Google and Yahoo in Web Messages
Facebook rolled out an all-in-one messaging service that for the first
time allows its half-billion members to communicate with people outside
the social network, intensifying a battle with Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.
for users' Internet time.
Addressing speculation the world's largest social networking site was
planning a "Gmail-killer," Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark
Zuckerberg said the new system will let users own "@facebook.com"
addresses, but stressed it went beyond mere email.
The new feature - to be rolled out over coming months - lets users
send and receive instant and text messages in addition to standard email
and Facebook notes.
"This is not an email killer. This is a messaging system that includes
email as one part of it," Zuckerberg told reporters at the St. Regis
hotel in San Francisco.
Zuckerberg, who said more than 350 million of Facebook's half-billion
users now actively send and receive messages on his website, did not
expect people to stop using traditional email tomorrow.
But he hoped more and more will shift to an integrated, cross-platform
mode of communications over the longer term, such as the service he
debuted Monday.
Analysts say that email users are particularly valuable to Web portals
like Yahoo, which seek to funnel the traffic into their other online
services.
Facebook and Google's intensifying rivalry is expected to play a crucial
role in shaping the future of the Internet. The industry is closely
watching their pitched struggle for Web surfers' time online,
advertising dollars, and increasingly costly Silicon Valley talent.
Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray said the new messaging service will
help Facebook in its quest for user-engagement.
"What this allows is Facebook to become more central to people's
communications, and with that they have more (of people's) time, they
have more page views, and with that they have the opportunity to serve
more ads," Ray said.
More than 4 billion messages get sent everyday through Facebook, whose
backers include Digital Sky Technologies, Microsoft, Hong Kong tycoon Li
Ka-shing and venture capital firms Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and
Meritech Capital.
Its new product will automatically route messages from a person's most
frequently-contacted acquaintances into a main inbox, with messages from
other contacts pooled in a separate inbox.
It also does away with some traditional email customs, such as the
"subject" line. Instead, all the messages between two people are
threaded together into one long-running conversation.
Users will also be able to view Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint
documents as attachments to their messages, without having to download
or pay for the software. Licensed users can create and send such
documents as attachments.
Should all of Facebook's active users adopt the new service, the social
network would begin to approach the number of users now on Microsoft
Corp's hotmail, the most popular Internet email service.
Google, which controls roughly two-thirds of the global search market,
offers the third-most popular Web email service, behind second-placed
Yahoo, according to Web analytics firm comScore.
Last week, Google began blocking Facebook from importing user contact
data from its Gmail email service - until Facebook reciprocates with
its own trove of personal data.
In terms of potential privacy concerns, Zuckerberg stressed that the new
service may actually be less intrusive than others'.
For instance, it would not automatically scan the contents of people's
email to display ads based on similar keywords, as is done by many of
today's popular Web-based email products like Gmail, he argued.
"Email is still really important to a lot of people. And we just think
that this simpler kind of messaging is going to be how a lot more people
shift a lot of their communications," Zuckerberg said.
AOL Cracks Open Door to New Project Phoenix E-mail
You've still got mail - but AOL is redesigning it from the ground up to
be faster and easier to use.
AOL Inc. is opening the doors to its new Web-based e-mail program,
code-named Project Phoenix, for a limited number of users. Starting next
year, anyone will be able to sign up for access to a beta test site.
The Project Phoenix inbox page was designed to make it easier to fire
off a quick e-mail, text or instant message with just a few clicks on a
"quick bar" at the top of the page. People can also send short replies
right from the inbox page, without having to click on a message first.
The new design displays thumbnails of recent photo attachments at a
glance, and lets people toggle between several open e-mails at a time.
When someone is reading an e-mail with pictures attached, the photos
will also show up as thumbnails next to the message. Addresses in the
body of the e-mail will trigger the system to display a map from AOL's
Mapquest on the right-hand side, with the option to click for directions.
Like Yahoo and other competitors, AOL is trying to become the one-stop
shop for reading messages from other providers. Project Phoenix lets
people link up their e-mail accounts on services from Microsoft Corp.,
Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. In future versions, AOL plans to pull in
Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn messages, too.
The early beta felt sluggish when a reporter tried it out recently, but
AOL said its tests show that the Phoenix inbox page loads about twice as
fast as Google's Gmail inbox.
Markedly absent from the new design: advertising. Fletcher Jones, the
project lead for Phoenix, said AOL is working on other ways to make money
from the free e-mail service because the old model - at least one
towering, animated ad dominating the right-hand side of the screen - isn't
very user-friendly. Jones would not say exactly what AOL's plan is, but
one tactic is placing links to top AOL stories inside the inbox. AOL's
content sites are more ad-heavy.
"We're a different company than we were a year ago," Jones said in an
interview. "The prior administration had priorities on revenue versus
audience growth. Our priorities are on audience growth."
About two weeks ago, the New York-based company overhauled the main
AOL.com home page with more white space, hipper logo art, bolder photos
and icons and a stronger focus on content from its network of websites
and blogs. AOL Mail, which accounts for about 45 percent of AOL's total
page views, is an important way to help users find all this new content.
After all, Jones said, no matter what else is going on, people check
their e-mail every day.
But AOL is juggling the need to attract new traffic with the fact that
many of its users have been around since the days of dial-up Internet
access. The company plans to give existing customers the option to use
the Project Phoenix system, and is providing live chat and other 24-hour
customer service to support the transition. AOL doesn't have a firm plan
for switching everyone over to the new design.
As people are invited into the Project Phoenix beta, they'll also have a
chance to sign up for a new AOL e-mail address - a gift for folks who
have come to regret their early aol.com screen name choices.
'Path' Social Network Limits Users to 50 Friends
Most people on Facebook have several hundred "friends," so it's safe to
assume that the average person does not divulge their most private
thoughts on the site. A new social network from a former Facebook
executive, however, aims to tighten your personal network to just 50
people so you can feel more comfortable sharing details of your life.
The Personal Network, or Path, is a photo-based service that lets you
upload photos and share that moment with your closest family and friends.
It launched Monday as an iPhone app, but a Web-based version is also
available.
Path is the brainchild of Dave Morin, a former senior platform manager
at Facebook who will serve as Path's chief executive.
"Path allows you to capture your life's most personal moments and share
them with the 50 close friends and family in your life who matter most,"
Morin wrote in a blog post.
"Because your personal network is limited to your 50 closest friends and
family, you can always trust that you can post any moment, no matter how
personal. Path is a place where you can be yourself."
Path is available as a free app in the App Store. Once downloaded, snap
a photo with your iPhone or iPod touch and tag it as people, places, or
things. "Think of it as a place for the memories along your path through
life," he said.
When you upload a photo, you will be able to "See" who else shared in
that moment. "The idea is that understanding enables trust and
storytelling amongst close friends and family," Morin wrote. To keep
things organized, you can view certain moments via a map of the world.
Why 50? "We chose 50 based on the research of Oxford Professor of
Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar, who has long suggested that 150 is
the maximum number of social relationships that the human brain can
sustain at any given time," he said. "Dunbar's research also shows that
personal relationships tend to expand in factors of roughly three. So
while we may have five people whom we consider to be our closest
friends, and 20 whom we maintain regular contact with, 50 is roughly the
outer boundary of our personal networks." There is no friending or
following on the service, the company said, "just sharing with the
people who matter most."
Those without an iPhone can register their username via the Path Web site.
The company's jobs site also says they are looking for Android and
BlackBerry engineers, so versions for those platforms are likely
forthcoming.
Walmart to Sell Sub-$200 Laptop
Walmart plans to sell a fully equipped laptop with a 15.6-inch screen
for US$198 on Black Friday as part of a promotional offering, one of the
few times the $200 price barrier has been cracked.
The laptop will be on sale for a few hours in the retailer's stores on
Nov. 26, which is one of the most active shopping days in the U.S.
Made by eMachines, the laptop includes features that could make it good
for basic computing and day-to-day activities like Web surfing or word
processing. It will come with an Intel Celeron processor running at
2.2GHz, a 250GB hard drive and 2GB of memory.
Further details about the laptop configuration were not immediately
available. Walmart did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Laptop prices have hovered over $399 most of the year, and the $198
price represents one of the few times a laptops has been priced under
$200. Last year, Walmart offered an HP Compaq Presario for $298 during
the July back-to-school shopping season, and that prompted a pricing war
with rival Best Buy, which started offering a Toshiba Satellite laptop
at the same price.
Laptops offered at low prices typically lack some components. For
example, the $298 Compaq Presario sold through Walmart last year lacked
a webcam.
Consumers in the past have also expressed concerns about the Celeron
processor, which sits on the lower rung of Intel's processor family
ladder. Laptops with Celeron chips are not designed for high-end gaming
or multimedia activities. Faster processors - like Intel's Core chips -
are more expensive.
Walmart is also selling other consumer electronics such as Blu-ray
players at low prices, according to the Walmart's Black Friday Web page.
Laptops are among the top technology products on holiday shopping lists
in the U.S., topped only by tablets, according to a study released by
Retrevo on Wednesday.
Once-Mighty MySpace Deepens Facebook Integration
In a sign of the companies' divergent fortunes, MySpace said Thursday it
will let its users log in to their Facebook accounts through their
MySpace page.
Doing so will port the likes and interests they have listed on their
Facebook profiles to MySpace, where they will get a stream of
entertainment content based on these interests.
MySpace users have already been able to sync their status updates to
their Facebook profiles. Thursday's announcement is a deeper integration
of Facebook's technology into MySpace. It doesn't involve any financial
transactions.
The integration of Facebook Connect into MySpace's home page will be
followed by the addition of Facebook's "Like" buttons across MySpace,
the company said.
Once a mighty rival, MySpace has conceded that it is no longer a social
network but a social entertainment destination - think MTV for the Web
2.0 generation. To this end, the company recently overhauled its website
to give its mostly young audience more ways to consume music, videos and
celebrity gossip. CEO Mike Jones said in a conference call Thursday that
the users' initial response to the redesign is "very, very positive."
Facebook, meanwhile, is working to become the social overlay of the Web.
Dan Rose, a Facebook vice president, called the integration with MySpace
a "powerful demonstration of the Facebook platform."
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005.
After a promising start, the site began to lose its luster. Users and
advertisers flocked to Facebook. In its most recent quarter, which ended
Sept. 30, News Corp. said its "other" business segment, which includes
MySpace and the rest of the Digital Media Group, reported an operating
loss of $156 million, $30 million greater than a year earlier. The main
reason for this was lower search and advertising revenues at MySpace.
PayPal Users Beware of Holiday Phishing Scam
With Black Friday quickly approaching, and retailers racing to outdo
each other with earlier and earlier deals, it is safe to say that the
holiday shopping season has begun. If you're shopping online, though,
and paying with PayPal - be warned. There is a phishing attack targeted
just for you.
The holidays come with a dramatic spike in shopping, and nobody
appreciates the increase in online commerce more than cyber criminals.
While you're preparing for a Thanksgiving celebration of beer and watching
the Detroit Lions make a mockery of professional football... Hey, don't
judge. You try supporting a team that has been consistently sad for 60
years and see if you aren't a little bitter. Fine. While you're preparing
for a traditional Thanksgiving feast and plotting your Black Friday
shopping strategy, malware developers are hard at work finding ways to
capitalize on the shopping season.
PayPal is established as a leading method of online payments. It is an
integral part of eBay purchasing--a very popular way to acquire gifts
during the holiday season, and it is widely accepted as a method of payment
by online retailers of all sorts. It makes sense that cyber criminals would
try to capitalize on the spike in PayPal transactions to catch naive or
unsuspecting users off guard.
AppRiver's Troy Gill has uncovered just such a scam. "Since so many people
use PayPal in conjunction with the impending holiday shopping spree,
scammers are looking to take full advantage of unwary consumers. The
latest PayPal related scam targets PayPal users via email. Unlike most of
the PayPal scams that we have seen in the past that included a link in the
body of the message, these have an attached HTML. When the attachment is
clicked a Java Script will produce a Phishing page that mimics a
legitimate PayPal page. The input information is then sent off to another
domain that will make it available for the cybercriminals."
As Gill notes, this attack attempts to dupe victims by using an attachment
as opposed to a link. Granted, users should be conditioned to avoid both
links and file attachments in suspicious or questionable e-mails, but just
switching things up from the normal malicious URL might be enough to snare
some unwary users.
Once the attackers have the PayPal credentials entered on the spoofed
PayPal page, they can transfer the funds out of the PayPal account, make
purchases using the money in the PayPal account, request funds to be
sent to the PayPal account, or anything else the legitimate account
holder is normally able to do with a PayPal account.
Most avid PayPal customers hopefully know better than to fall for such a
thing, but with the holidays and the spike in online shopping comes a
deluge of newbies who know enough to use PayPal to make purchases, but
aren't seasoned in how to protect it.
Gill warns, "During the next few months you should be aware that you
will be a broader target for scammers looking to take advantage of your
increased purchasing activity. Since most people will be making a far
greater number of purchases on their credit cards around the holidays
they would be less likely to notice fraudulent activity on their cards."
Just remember the mantra that common sense and cautious skepticism will
prevent almost all attacks. Happy Holidays!
Pirate-Slaying Censorship Bill Gets Unanimous Support
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) sets up a
system through which the US government can blacklist a pirate website
from the Domain Name System, ban credit card companies from processing US
payments to the site, and forbid online ad networks from working with the
site. This morning, COICA unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary
Committee.
"We are disappointed that the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning
chose to disregard the concerns of public-interest groups, Internet
engineers, Internet companies, human-rights groups and law professors in
approving a bill that could do great harm to the public and to the
Internet," said Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn, who pledged to craft
a "more narrowly tailored bill" next year to deal with "rogue websites."
But the content industries don't mind the current version. Bob Pisano, who
runs the MPAA, trotted out the "2.4 million hard working, middle-class
jobs in all 50 states" that his industry creates. "For these workers and
their families, digital theft means declining incomes, lost jobs and
reduced health and retirement benefits," he said. "Unfortunately, this
means nothing to the operators of rogue websites who seek to benefit
illegally from the hard work of others."
The industry is well aware that "censorship" doesn't go down well with
many Americans, so it has been playing up the "free speech protections"
in the bill lately. RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol made sure to stress the point
again this morning.
"With this first vote, Congress has begun to strike at the lifeline of
foreign scam sites, while protecting free speech and boosting the legal
online marketplace," he said. "Those seeking to thwart this bipartisan
bill are protecting online thieves and those who gain pleasure and profit
from de-valuing American property."
That last jibe is the sort of comment made by those who can't understand
why, say, people accused of horrific crimes still get defense lawyers.
("Why do you want murderers to go free?") It's sad to see Bainwol resort
to it. As we noted earlier this week, we have concerns about this approach
that are premised in large part on the content industries' almost
comically misguided attempts to lock down or shutter innovative
technologies and websites that turn out in fact to be legal and hugely
useful - like the VCR, HD radio, MP3 players, HDTV, DAT, and YouTube.
Giving that industry a special process, one that doesn't apply to sites
that traffic in other sorts of illegal-in-the-US-activity, raises concerns
that have nothing to do with a love of widespread piracy. COICA could
censor even sites that "enable or facilitate a violation" of copyright, it
mucks about with DNS, and it actually requires the US Attorney General to
keep a list of "naughty" sites even though no action has been taken
against them. There has to be a more careful approach.
Chinese Woman Sent to Labor Camp for Retweeting
China has sentenced a woman to a year in a labor camp for "disrupting
social order" by retweeting a satirical message urging Chinese protesters
to smash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, an international rights
group said.
Cheng Jianping, 46, re-posted a message from the social networking site
Twitter last month hinting that Chinese protesters should smash the
Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo and adding on the message "Angry
youth, charge!" according to Amnesty International, which condemned the
sentence in a statement late Thursday.
Amnesty and Cheng's fiance said her retweet was meant as satire, mocking
anti-Japanese protesters who had grown in number since tensions between
the countries increased after a dispute erupted in September over
islands claimed by both Japan and China.
"Sentencing someone to a year in a labor camp, without trial, for simply
repeating another person's clearly satirical observation on Twitter
demonstrates the level of China's repression of online expression,"
Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Director Sam Zarifi said in a
statement.
Cheng's fiance, Hua Chunhui, said he thought the government reacted the
way it did to the tweet was because they are activists. The two had
planned to get their marriage license Oct. 28, the same day Cheng was
detained.
"My personal opinion is that this sentencing wasn't about this one
statement. The government wants to make an example of us activists,"
said Hua, who lives in Wuxi in China's eastern province of Jiangsu. "The
government doesn't like what we do. We actively communicate with other
Chinese activists and celebrated on Twitter Liu Xiaobo's Nobel prize."
Hua told The Associated Press that he posted the original tweet because
he was mad at all the anti-Japanese protests.
"So I posted that message on Twitter, satirically saying that if they
really want to do something big, they should just get on a plane and
attack the Japan pavilion at the expo. Of course, that is not possible."
The Shanghai Expo was a major event treated with great sensitivity by
China and any threats against it would have been taken seriously by the
government. Authorities pulled out all the stops to make sure it was a
success and imposed heavy security to ensure there were no disruptions.
More than 70 million people visited it before it closed at the end of
October after its six-month run.
Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Twitter is blocked in China, but some human rights activists use it by
bypassing government controls.
Hua said his fiance arrived at a labor re-education center in central
China's Henan Province on Wednesday evening. He said he is not allowed
to visit her.
Cheng's sentencing comes as China is under fire for its hardline
reaction to the Liu's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize. A Nobel official
said Thursday that the award and prize may not be able to be handed out
this year because China is not likely to let anyone from Liu's family
attend the ceremony.
Outraged by the award, Beijing has reportedly clamped down on Liu's
relatives and pressured other countries not to send representatives to
the Dec. 10 award ceremony in Oslo.
The prestigious 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award can only be
collected by the laureate or close family members.
Liu, a Chinese dissident, is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion
after co-authoring an appeal calling for reforms to China's one-party
political system. His wife, Liu Xia, has been under house arrest and
subject to police escort since the award was announced last month.
E-mail's Lowly `at' So Much More Around the World
The squiggly little "at" symbol that makes our e-mail go is more
colorful in translation.
It's an elephant's trunk in Sweden. A monkey in Serbia - and a more,
ahem, delicate part of the monkey in Holland. It's a snail in Korea, a
little mouse in Taiwan.
In any language, it's come a long way since it was plucked from
obscurity by e-mail godfather Ray Tomlinson back in computer-heady 1971.
At the time, the character was used almost exclusively by grocers and
accountants.
Its use made good sense to an English speaker, shifting definitions from
a rate or amount of something to a location.
"It's the only preposition on the keyboard," Tomlinson said from
Cambridge, Mass., where he works as he has for decades at Raytheon BBN
Technologies.
But the connection was lost in other languages, and more visual
references to food, animals and body parts sprang up, many based on the
at's swirling shape. The symbol is still so unfamiliar that some
newspaper and web systems can't print it in this story.
"It's sort of like a Rorschach test. The language would sort of see in
the at sign something notable from the culture. What people are familiar
with is just so varied, so all these crazy things came out of it," said
Karen Steffen Chung, an associate professor of linguistics, English and
phonetics at National Taiwan University in Taipei.
The symbol is a strudel in Israel and a "rollmop" - for rolled pickled
herring fillet - in Czech. It's "sobachka" for doggie in Russian, was
dubbed an "alpha curl" in Norway and sometimes goes by "kanelbulle," a
type of traditional cinnamon bun, in Swedish.
Sweden can't seem to make up its mind with the longest list of monikers,
including elephant's trunk, elephant's ear, monkey's tail, cat foot,
cat's tail and pretzel.
Chung was so intrigued that she reached out to fellow linguists around
the world in (what else) e-mail for their insights.
Among the things she discovered was a variety of terms in Serbian. The
word "majmun" is one. It means monkey, appears to have been borrowed
from Turkish and was used in "majmunski rep" (monkey tail) and
"majmunsko-a" (monkey-ish a). The Serbs also invented "ludo-a" (crazy a)
for the symbol none of us can escape.
Some countries have "official" terms for the at. The Swedish Language
Board deemed it "snabel-a" (trunk-a), meaning "a" with an elephant's
trunk. Elsewhere, English prevails, including in Finland, South Africa
and India.
The spin on "at" in Holland is English, too, but "apeklootje" (little
monkey's testicle) was once in play during the sign's rapid rise to
stardom. In Sri Lanka, the government agency responsible for promoting
information technology on the island nation has no specific word for the
symbol in Sinhala, referring to it simply as the "at symbol."
Local pronunciations of the English where other languages dominate
include "et" for "a" in Serbian and "ah-te" (think Ted without the d) in
mainland China. Mandarin Chinese hasn't come up with a character for the
revolutionary sign.
Japanese, known for borrowing from other languages with a distinctive
local pronunciation, usually go for "atto maaku," meaning the English
"at," while Greek turned the squiggle into a "little duck" and Hungarian
a "little worm."
Arab speakers sometimes translate the English "at" to its equivalent,
"fi," though others see it as an "ear" instead when providing their
e-mail addresses.
In Taiwan, where Chung lives, the local meaning is "little mouse," a lot
livelier than Korean's snail. The preferred word in Spanish is "arroba,"
which is also a unit of weight, though in Spain at can transform into a
swirly pastry from Majorca, "ensaimada."
To some in Latin America, the at has grown linguistic muscle to stand in
as a gender-neutral indication of both male and female (nin(at)s means
you're talking about both ninos and ninas).
Slovenian speakers prefer "afna," possibly borrowed from German, where
the at is called, among other things, "affenschwanz" (monkey's tail). A
similar word in Slovenian means "a woman who overdresses, applies too
much makeup etc.," Chung learned.
Tomlinson didn't have the world's many "ats" on his mind when he
developed his e-mail protocol using a nearly forgotten key on a Model 33
Teletype machine for use on ARPANET, one of the networks that became the
global Internet.
It was Tomlinson who decided to append the at sign and the host name to
a user's login identity. Not only did it make sense as a preposition,
but it was unlikely to be confused for any other part of a user's e-mail
address, a term that hadn't yet surfaced.
The succinctness of the at sign, he thinks, played into the imagery in
other languages.
"They certainly all tend to be taking something that's more familiar
than some dry piece of commercial signage," Tomlinson said. "It's a
simple symbol and it's been adopted and sort of been made into a fan
icon for anything to do with computers."
The Museum of Modern Art is a fan. It "acquired" the symbol for its
collection earlier this year.
At 69, the low-key Tomlinson is still working as a programmer on
projects unrelated to e-mail. Have his two grown daughters made full use
of bragging rights over dad's e-mail claim to fame?
"They try to be cooler than that," Tomlinson said.
Comodo's GeekBuddy Offers Instant Help
Comodo recently received the Parent Tested Parent Approved (PTPA Seal of
Approval for its GeekBuddy computer help service. Products receive this
recognition after testing by a group of families selected from 40,000
volunteers belonging to the PTPA. They may be onto something.
Like LiveTech from CyberDefender, GeekBuddy offers 24/7 help for all kinds
of computer problems including, but not limited to antivirus help, PC
performance tuneup, third-party software installation and general PC
troubleshooting. But where the LiveTech service starts at $239/year,
GeekBuddy costs $49.95/year.
There are differences between the two services. LiveTech focuses on
phone-based support supplied by a team based in the United States while
GeekBuddy helps users via live chat and remote control. Don't worry; if
the computer is too screwed up to permit live chat GeekBuddy does have
24/7 phone support available - it's just not their primary mode of
communication.
CyberDefender quite reasonably touts the virtue of having LiveTech
support agents all in one secure facility with policies in place to
protect subscribers' private data. LiveTech supports both Windows and
Mac and also offers support for other tech devices such as mobile
phones. Comodo's MCSE-certified agents specifically support Windows and
third-party peripherals and software.
Comodo's Internet Security Complete, normally $69.99, comes as a free
bonus for GeekBuddy subscribers. This package includes Comodo Antivirus
5.0 as well as a full-scale firewall, a utility to secure WiFi
connections, and 10 GB of online backup. And customers get to keep this
package even if they end their GeekBuddy subscription.
Access to the service is as simple as clicking the GeekBuddy desktop icon,
but Comodo's geeks don't just wait to be called. The service will
periodically offer to perform PC maintenance tasks including checking all
drivers to make sure they're current and running performance tune-ups.
LiveTech users do get an initial diagnostic and tune-up call but
thereafter must ask for help when needed.
Both services offer unlimited help requests during the subscription
period. LiveTech admittedly aims for the less-technical user,
so phone-based support definitely makes sense for them. Comodo's
chat-based system requires at least a minimal level of familiarity with
technology. At the moment Comodo is offering 60 days of GeekBuddy support
for free. That's hard to beat.
=~=~=~=
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