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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 11 Issue 28
Volume 11, Issue 28 Atari Online News, Etc. July 10, 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:
Fred Horvat
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Visit the Atari Advantage Forum on Delphi!
http://forums.delphiforums.com/atari/
=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1128 07/10/09
~ CompuServe Shut Down! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Google's New OS!
~ Bing To Pass Yahoo? ~ Internet Explorer Fades ~ PS3 Price Cut? No!
~ Oldest Bible Is Online ~ TinyURL Spam Is Growing ~ Antivirus Glitch!
-* Windows 7 On Sale, Buy Now? *-
-* Government Web Sites Are Attacked! *-
-* White House Among Targets of Cyber Attacks *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, we've finally seen the sun again, and felt some warmer weather for
a change. What a difference it makes to be able to go outside and enjoy
some seasonal weather! It won't last long, but I'm happy for the moment!
On a sad note, this week it was reported to this editor that CompuServe,
the first real successful online community, has been shut down after 30
years of service. CompuServe, lately owned by AOL, was THE place to be
for many years. While I haven't used its services for a number of years,
I remember being a member with fond memories.
For Atari users, the loss of CompuServe is just one more rusted nail, of
many, in the coffin that belongs to what we all remember as Atari. Back
in the day, Atari users had three primary online services which boasted
a lot of activity: GEnie, Delphi, and CompuServe. I was a member on all
three services, and each had its merits. As Atari died - even before
the final funeral - these online services started to wane, especially
regarding Atari activity. GEnie was the first to go, and now CompuServe.
Ironically, the Atari Advantage forum on Delphi (now DelphiForums) is
still around. How do I know that? I happen to be the forum manager,
that's how I know! Granted, the Atari Advantage forum is a mere shadow
of its former self; activity has all but ceased to exist other than a
few messages now and again, and the weekly posting and announcement of
A-ONE.
During those years of incredible online activity, all three services
attracted a wide assortment of Atari users. We came to discuss Atari the
company, software, shows, and everything in-between. There were good
times, bad, and heated - just mention STReport, Ralph Mariano, or various
staff members - and you'll know what I mean! But in those days, all
facets of Atari life were discussed online. And whether you liked it or,
not, these discussions were interesting. And now they're all but gone.
It's a shame, but comes to no surprise - even if these services weren't
available just for Atari users.
So, if you're a long-time Atari user, and perhaps a former member of any
of the "big three" online services, give a brief tip of the hat in memory
of one more thing Atari users have lost over the years.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
AOL Shutters Classic Dial-up Provider
CompuServe, the first commercially successful online and email provider
in America, has been shut down by AOL after 30 years of service.
The original CompuServe - later renamed CompuServe Classic - was laid to
rest July 1, 2009. In a message sent to its remaining subscribers, AOL
urged customers sticking with cheap dial-up to move on to the company's
surviving sub-brand ISP, CompuServe 2000.
CompuServe's online service for consumers debuted in 1979 and soon
become synonymous with the online experience for a generation of
computer users. It was the first service to offer electronic mail
capabilities and tech support to PC users. By 1991, the company boasted
having over a half a million users simultaneously online. At its prime,
CompuServe's moderated forums were also the de-facto place online for
the tech crowd.
Competing upstart services like AOL, however, eventually surpassed
CompuServe in popularity by offering perks such as monthly rates instead
of per-hour online access.
When AOL went on to purchase CompuServe's online services and browser
software in 1997, the company was preserved as a separate service. After
the acquisition, however, CompuServe as a brand became woefully
neglected. For example, the latest version of the access software for
CompuServe Classic is dated January 11, 1999 - for Windows NT.
And now with AOL finds itself at the brink of total obscurity, the
online provider has finally unplugged its fore bearer.
It's important to note that CompuServe users will be able to convert
their ridiculous classic 9 and 10-digit email addresses to the CompuServe
2000 service in order to retain their well-earned sense of superiority
over youngster internet users everywhere. Nothing says stay off my lawn
like 76453.1032@compuserve.com
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. Another week has come and gone and things just
keep getting more and more interesting. I think I was probably the only writer
in the entire world who didn't mention Michael Jackson last week. And of those
who did mention MJ, some of them even remembered to mention that Farrah Fawcett
died the same day as he did, and of a horrible, painful, wasting disease. Then
there was Billy Mays and several other 'celebrities', whose names escape me
right now.
But I'm willing to be that no one... none of all the writers in the world,
professional writers, I mean, stopped to mention the (probably) thousands of
others who died the same week in relative anonymity. Those mourned by their
families and friends but relatively unnoticed by the rest of us. I browsed
obituaries.com just now, and was going to throw together a short list of people
none of us had ever heard of, and who died the same week as MJ and Farrah...
but that's cheesy, isn't it? A... device. Not worthy of note and certainly not
respectful of those I'd be listing.
Personally, I always thought MJ was a 'tragic case'. He was deprived of his
childhood because of his talent... I'm not going to get into by whom or for how
long or in what way... because I don't know the facts. But it SEEMS clear that
he was a guy who never got a chance to be a kid because he was a
money-making-machine, and craved what he'd missed. Hell, I had a GREAT
childhood and I STILL don't want to grow up!
Okay, enough about Mickey J. There's nothing I can say about him and nothing
that I think about him that you haven't heard a couple of dozen times already.
I just wish the media circus would die down and allow his family and close
friends to cope with their loss in a way befitting to them... and to him.
Well, let's get on with the news, hints, tips and info available every week
from the UseNet.
From the comp.sys.atari.st NewsGroup
====================================
Peter Slegg asks about the specifics of the 'Atari' Coldfire computer:
"Does anyone know if the acf will have enough speed to be able to run
a Java VM to some degree? I know there isn't an Atari JVM yet."
Götz Hoffart tells Peter:
"As 266 MIPS is much faster than the old Sparcstations where Java run
initially: Yes.
It depends on what you mean by »some degree«."
'Calimero' adds this question:
"And will ACC (Atari Coldfire Computer) be fast enough to run
FireFox?? If it will be then there is no real need to have any other
computer in the house except my original Falcon and the ACC! [grin]"
Götz replies:
"Dunno. Firefox is in my opinion bloat software. Just look at it using an
older X11 Terminal -- you'll see frame by frame and border by border
drawn ... unusable.
Perhaps Epiphany is faster. Or a browser integrating the WebKit engine."
Zoe Stephenson adds:
"When I've used a lightweight browser on slightly older machines, it's
usually been Skipstone. Seemed to work out pretty well, but it does
involve having GTK on the system."
Piotr Mietniowski asks for help with a Falcon Game:
"I have a problem with H2O (falcon game). When I launch this game I see Intro
and It is OK, but next press space key, play and enter my name, the game is
crashed, black screen and music is crashed. Does anybody know what is the
problem. I try to run on the clean system with control key during the boot
computer, but the problem is the same..."
Then Piotr posts:
"Yesterday I solved a problem with this game. It is very strange, because I can
run this game but another disk driver with HDDriver it is not working, I can try
it with ICD and everything it is OK."
'PPutnik' tells Piotr:
"From my experience after hard disk adapting a lot of games: Hddriver
is not best for gaming. If Timer C (200Hz timer) is stopped or works
different than in regular TOS - Hddriver will stick. It happens only
after the game starts, when it changes timers, vectors, etc. So, if the game
needs hard disk access (loading some files) after starting it may happen that
the game will stick with hddriver. Examples: Defender 2, Dark Castle,
Car Vup etc.
I made a small TSR program which fixes it by reactivating Timer C
before hard disk access and restoring it's state after (for game). I
will post it on my site with source.
However, I use my hard disk driver for gaming and everything... It is
made to not be sensitive on Timer conditions + some other gaming
support things. I will check H2O on my Falc..."
Joakim Högberg posts this about his ataricq website:
"After a rather long period of no real news on my webpages, I decided
something needed to be done about it. I have noted over time that
updates have been slipping, often due to the fact that it involves
more work to maintain a website consisting of handcrafted HTML-pages -
especially when a site spans over wide areas such as icons archives,
software support pages and so forth.
That is why I came to the conclusion that a Content Management System
of some kind was needed to allow for easier maintenance. I did chose
Joomla, since it seemed to be flexible and powerful enough and also is
free to use. The downside with going the CMS route might be a loss of
the original website feeling. However, when considering the option
being a less frequently updated website with decreasing value to
visitors I think the chosen path will turn out for the better.
What about The Orphaned Projects Page? Well, when working with moving
all the website content for my www.ataricq.org page, it occurred to me
that moving the source codes to the very same website would make
things even more convenient to handle - not to mention the advantage
of suddenly having all of the TOPP sources available in categories,
and fully searchable through the website search engine!
Anyway, please have a look at the revamped website, and do let me know
how you like it, or if there is something you find is missing.
Check things out here: http://www.ataricq.org/ "
Our buddy Lonny Purcell checks it out and replies simply:
"Search option rocks!"
Well folks, that's it for this time around. Tune in again next week, same time,
same station, and be ready to listen to what they are saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - PlayStation 3 Price Cuts? No!
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Sony Dismisses PlayStation 3 Price Cuts
Sony Corp Chief Executive Howard Stringer brushed off concerns that the
PlayStation 3 video game console is too expensive, and said the company is
unlikely to sell parts of its business amid the recession.
Stringer, arriving at the Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on
Tuesday, described recent comments about PlayStation's price by Robert
Kotick, the CEO of video game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc, as
standard business tactics.
"He likes to make a lot of noise," Stringer said, when asked about the
comments. "He's putting pressure on me and I'm putting pressure on him.
That's the nature of business."
Last month, Kotick told the Times of London that Activision might cease
developing games for the PlayStation if Sony did not cut the price of
the console, which competes with Microsoft <#> Corp's Xbox and Nintendo
Co Ltd's Wii.
"When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support
the console," Kotick had said.
Asked about the logic of not cutting prices, Stringer said, "I (would)
lose money on every PlayStation I make?how's that for logic."
Stringer and Kotick are among the couple of hundred tech and media
executives convening in Sun Valley this week for the annual confab.
Asked about consolidation in the entertainment industry, Stringer said
Sony was not looking to get rid of any assets.
"We're learning to fuse content and hardware <#>. This wouldn't be a
time to get rid of either," he said.
Stringer said he will be participating in a panel about the recession at
the conference.
"I see green shoots but it's a very light shade of green," he said.
While the executive said that the economic situation <#> in most of Asia
is looking good and that he sees a bottom in China, it was still too
soon to call a bottom to the recession overall.
"It's very hard to tell whether this is just a minor trough on the way
to recovery or a trough on the way to a trough," said Stringer.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Government Web Sites Attacked; N. Korea Suspected
A widespread computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites
of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service and other U.S. government
agencies, according to officials inside and outside the government.
Sites in South Korea were also affected, and South Korean intelligence
officials believe the attack was carried out by North Korean or
pro-Pyongyang forces.
The U.S. government Web sites, which also included those of the Federal
Trade Commission and the Transportation Department, were all down at
varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week. South Korean
Internet sites began experiencing problems Tuesday.
U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack.
But South Korea's National Intelligence Service, the nation's main spy
agency, told a group of South Korean lawmakers Wednesday it believes
that North Korea or North Korean sympathizers in the South "were behind"
the attacks, according to an aide to one of the lawmakers briefed on the
information.
The aide spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the
information. The National Intelligence Service - South Korea's main spy
agency - said it couldn't immediately confirm the report, but it said it
was cooperating with American authorities.
Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the
agency's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to
federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems
and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."
Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of
service attack, said the fact that the government Web sites were still
being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy
and sophisticated attack.
Two government officials acknowledged that the Treasury and Secret
Service sites were brought down, and said the agencies were working with
their Internet service provider to resolve the problem. The officials
spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to
speak on the matter.
Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, said
problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and
continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.
Keynote Systems is a mobile and Web site monitoring company based in San
Mateo, Calif. The company publishes data detailing outages on Web sites,
including 40 government sites it watches.
According to Rushlo, the Transportation Web site was "100 percent down"
for two days, so that no Internet users could get through to it. The FTC
site, meanwhile, started to come back online late Sunday, but even on
Tuesday Internet users still were unable to get to the site 70 percent
of the time.
Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, including the
presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, and some banking sites
were paralyzed Tuesday. An initial investigation found that many
personal computers were infected with a virus ordering them to visit
major official Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. at the same time,
Korea Information Security Agency official Shin Hwa-su said.
White House Among Targets of Sweeping Cyber Attack
The powerful Internet attack that overwhelmed computers at U.S. and
South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than
initially realized, pestering the White House, the Pentagon and the New
York Stock Exchange and shutting down other official Web sites.
Targets of the most widespread cyber offensive of recent years also
included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department and
State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post,
according to an early analysis of the malicious software used in the
attacks.
The cyber assault on the White House site had "absolutely no effect on
the White House's day-to-day operations," said spokesman Nick Shapiro.
Preventative measures kept whitehouse.gov "stable and available to the
general public," Shapiro said, but Internet visitors from Asia may have
experienced problems.
South Korean intelligence officials believe the attacks were carried out
by North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces, but many experts in cyberwarfare
said it was simply too early to know where the offensive originated.
Many of the U.S. government targets appear to have successfully blunted
the sustained computer assaults. But others, such as the Treasury
Department, were knocked off-line at times.
Two government officials acknowledged that Treasury's site was brought
down, and said the agency had been working with its Internet service
provider to resolve the problem. The officials spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
As of last night, Shapiro said, "all federal Web sites were back up and
running."
Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service, said that the cyber
attacks slowed access to the agency's Web site, which operates on the
same computer server as Treasury's. But Secret Service's site remained
in operation despite the crippling effects of the cyber offensive,
Donovan said.
"Our site was never knocked down, but it was slowed down at points,"
Donovan said. He added that Secret Service's "operational side" was not
affected by the attacks.
State Department spokesman Ian C. Kelly told reporters that the
department's state.gov Web site has been under attack since July 5.
"It's still ongoing but I'm told it's much reduced now," Kelly said.
The Associated Press obtained the target list from security experts
analyzing the attacks. It was not immediately clear who might be
responsible or what their motives were.
The cyber attack did not appear, at least at the outset, to target
internal or classified files or systems, but instead aimed at agencies'
public sites, creating a nuisance both for officials and the Web
consumers who use them.
Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, said
problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and
continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.
Keynote Systems is a mobile and Web site monitoring company based in San
Mateo, Calif. The company publishes data detailing outages on Web sites,
including 40 government sites it watches.
According to Rushlo, the Transportation Web site was "100 percent down"
for two days, so that no Internet users could get through. The FTC site,
meanwhile, started to come back online late Sunday, but even on Tuesday
Internet users still were unable to get to the site 70 percent of the
time.
Dale Meyerrose, former chief information officer for the U.S.
intelligence community, said that at least one of the federal agency Web
sites got saturated with as many as a million hits per second per attack -
amounting to 4 billion Internet hits at once. He would not identify
the agency, but said the Web site is generally capable of handling a
level of about 25,000 users.
Meyerrose, who is now vice president at Harris Corp., said the
characteristics of the attack suggest the involvement of between 30,000
to 60,000 computers.
He said it appears there was one attack on July 4, which some agencies
were able to contain, and then a second round on Tuesday. Meyerrose said
that since the attackers would have used surrogate computers, it is
still too early to tell where it originated.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service, the nation's principal spy
agency, told a group of South Korean lawmakers Wednesday it believes
that North Korea or North Korean sympathizers in the South were behind
the attacks, according to an aide to one of the lawmakers briefed on the
information.
The aide spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the
information. The National Intelligence Service - South Korea's main spy
agency - said it couldn't immediately confirm the report.
Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the
agency's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to
federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems
and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."
New York Stock Exchange spokesman Ray Pellecchia could not confirm the
attack on the trading institution, saying the company does not comment
on security issues.
Attacks on federal computer networks are common, ranging from nuisance
hacking to more serious assaults, sometimes blamed on China. U.S.
security officials also worry about cyber attacks from al-Qaida or other
terrorists.
The widespread attack was "loud and clumsy," which suggests it was
carried out by an unsophisticated organization, said Amit Yoran, chief
executive at NetWitness Corp. and the former U.S. government
cybersecurity chief. "This is not the elegance we would expect from
sophisticated adversaries."
Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, including the
presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, and some banking sites
were paralyzed Tuesday. An initial investigation found that many
personal computers were infected with a virus ordering them to visit
major official Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. at the same time,
Korea Information Security Agency official Shin Hwa-su said.
Google's New Operating System To Take on Microsoft
Google Inc. is working on a new operating system for inexpensive
computers in a daring attempt to wrest away Microsoft Corp.'s
long-running control over people's computing experience.
The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web
site, will be based on the company's nine-month-old Web browser, Chrome.
Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source
programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to
begin running computers in the second half of 2010.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company disclosed its plans for the
operating system shortly after an online technology news service, Ars
Technica, and The New York Times telegraphed the news on their Web sites.
Google is designing the operating system primarily for "netbooks," a
lower-cost, less powerful breed of laptop computers that is becoming
increasingly popular among budget-conscious consumers primarily
interested in surfing the Web.
The operating system represents Google's boldest challenge yet to its
biggest nemesis - Microsoft.
A high-stakes duel between the two technology powerhouses has been
steadily escalating in recent years as Google's dominance of the
Internet's lucrative search market has given it the means to threaten
Microsoft in ways that few other companies can.
Google already has rankled Microsoft by luring away some of its top
employees and developing an online suite of computer programs that
provide an alternative to Microsoft's top-selling word processing,
spreadsheet and calendar applications.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been trying to thwart Google by investing
billions of dollars to improve its own Internet search and advertising
systems - to little avail so far. In the past month or so, though,
Microsoft has been winning positive reviews and picking up more users
with the latest upgrade to its search engine, now called "Bing."
Microsoft is hailing the makeover with a $100 million marketing campaign.
Now Google is aiming for Microsoft's financial jugular with Chrome its
operating system.
Microsoft has drawn much of its power - and profits - from the Windows
operating system that has steered most personal computers for the past
two decades.
Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and its co-founders, Larry Page
and Sergey Brin, have made little attempt to conceal their disdain for
Windows in recent years.
Schmidt maintains Microsoft sometimes unfairly rigs its operating system
to limit consumer choices - something that Microsoft has consistently
denied doing. Google fears Microsoft could limit access to its search
engine and other products if Windows is set up to favor Microsoft
products in the default settings.
Page and Brin have frequently derided Windows as a clunky operating
system susceptible to computer viruses and other security problems.
Google made a veiled reference to Windows' perceived shortcomings in its
blog posting.
"We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear - computers
need to get better," wrote Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of
product management and Linus Upson, Google's engineering director.
A Microsoft spokesman didn't immediately respond to an e-mail request
for comment sent early Wednesday morning.
Schmidt and Brin are expected to discuss Google's new operating system
later this week when they appear at a media conference hosted by Allen &
Co. at the Sun Valley resort in Idaho.
Despite its own power and prominence, Google won't have an easy time
changing the status quo that has governed the personal computing
industry for so long.
As an example of how difficult it is to topple a long-established market
leader, Google estimates about 30 million people are now using its
Chrome browser - a fraction of those that rely on Microsoft's
market-leading Internet Explorer. And there have been various attempts
to develop open-source software to undermine Microsoft with relatively
little effect.
The Chrome operating system will run in a new windowing system on top of
a Linux kernel - computer coding that has been the foundation for the
open-source software movement for nearly two decades.
Google has already introduced an operating system for mobile devices,
called Android, that vies against various other systems, including ones
made by Microsoft and Apple Inc.
The Android system worked well enough to entice some computer makers to
begin developing netbooks that will eventually run on it.
Google, though, apparently believes a Chrome-based system will be better
suited for running applications in netbooks.
"We believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone,
including Google," wrote Pichai and Upson.
Bing Appears Ready To Grab Yahoo's Search Ranking
Microsoft's Bing search engine overtook Yahoo in the United States on
Thursday, according to StatCounter. The last time Bing overtook Yahoo on
a single day was on June 4, shortly after its launch, the Dublin-based
Web analytics firm said.
Bing grabbed 12.9 percent of the U.S. market versus Yahoo's 10.15
percent share, but both are still well behind market leader Google at
74.99 percent, reported StatCounter, which bases its research on an
analysis of 1.316 billion search-engine referring clicks -- including
336 million from the U.S.
"While (Bing's) lead over Yahoo may not last into next week, our data
suggests that it is slowly but surely closing the gap," said StatCounter
CEO Aodhan Cullen.
StatCounter reported earlier this month that Bing helped Microsoft
increase its share of the U.S. search market by one percentage point
during June. Overall, Microsoft held an 8.23 percent share last month,
trailing far behind Google (78.48 percent) and Yahoo (11.04 percent).
Cullen said the latest data indicate Bing's success is coming at
Google's expense. "We can see that Bing is gaining very slowly, but it
is gaining, and the data is almost a mirror image in that when Bing goes
up, Google goes down and vice versa," Cullen said. "But Yahoo remains
very steady - it's not losing any share."
Other recent reports suggest that Google users in particular seem to be
looking for a viable alternative to the current search-engine market
leader.
"In the first week following the announcement of brand Bing - but still
before the official June 1 launch - 97 percent of visitors to Bing.com
overlapped with Google, compared with only 37 percent and two percent
overlap with Yahoo and AOL, respectively," said Taylor Holsinger at Web
analytics firm Compete.com. "During launch week, the dramatically larger
overlap of Bing Googlers continued, relative to the Bing overlap with
Yahoo and AOL."
However, Cullen cautioned that Bing's rise in popularity also may be
getting a temporary boost from recent press reports touting the search
engine's advantages over Google. "The jump in Bing's share may reflect a
positive review of the search engine compared to Google which appeared
online in The New York Times on the 8th and in the print version on the
9th July," Cullen said.
Among other things, the Times article pointed out that the first few
paragraphs of a story can be accessed at Bing by hovering the mouse
arrow over a link. By contrast, Google users have to click on the link
and access the story directly to learn more.
As for what happens to Microsoft's new search engine in the days ahead,
"we just have to wait and see if Bing will fall back down again, and it
probably will," Cullen said. "But overall Bing is gaining traction."
Meanwhile, Microsoft is expected to continue tweaking Bing in ways that
further differentiate the new search engine from Google. For example,
earlier this month the software giant added Tweets from prominent
Twitter members to the content displayed by its search engine.
In its initial foray into integrating more real-time data into Bing's
search results, Microsoft is "starting with some of the more prominent
and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres," said Sean Suchter,
general manager of Microsoft's Silicon Valley search technology center.
"We picked a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their
follower count and volume of tweets."
Windows 7 Is On Sale. Should You Buy It Now?
Microsoft Corp.'s next installment of Windows doesn't launch until
October, but deep discounts on some versions are available through
Saturday if you want to pre-order. Before pouncing on this deal, make
sure it's right for your PC.
There are plenty of reasons why you'd want Windows 7. It appears to be
more stable - less prone to crashes - than previous versions of Windows.
It's less annoying than Vista, which could deluge users with security
warnings and other nagging reminders. Windows 7 has a cleaner, simpler
interface.
One thing that isn't simple about Windows 7 is the flavors it comes in.
Microsoft said it tried to keep the options easy, but that didn't
happen. You still must choose from Home Premium, Professional or
Ultimate versions. (There also are Starter and Enterprise, but neither
are sold directly to consumers.)
The consumer versions come in two variations, an upgrade and a full
version. If you already have a Windows computer, buy the upgrade. If
you're building a computer from scratch in the basement and don't have
an unused copy of XP or Vista that you've already bought, you'll need
the full version.
Retailers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Best Buy Co. are taking pre-orders
for the Home Premium upgrade and the Professional upgrade, for $50 and
$100, respectively. In the fall, those will cost $120 and $200.
Here is advice on how to consider a Windows 7 upgrade, depending on
various scenarios:
* If you have Windows Vista Home Premium or Business, and you want the
equivalent Windows 7 edition, pre-ordering the upgrade makes sense. You
can trade up from Home Premium, or down from Business, with no extra
hassle during installation. When your disk or download arrives Oct. 22,
your PC will get a makeover, but your files, programs and settings
should remain intact. (Don't tempt fate. Back up everything anyway.)
* If you have Windows Vista Ultimate, you can pre-order the comparable
version of Windows 7 for $220. There is no tantalizing upgrade deal and
Microsoft won't say whether it's planning one.
* If you have Vista Ultimate but you want a lesser version of Windows 7,
you can do that, too, even though this "upgrade" will be a bit of a
downgrade. Depending on whether you switch to Home Premium or
Professional for Windows 7, you'd have to give up features like
BitLocker, which protects data if the PC is stolen, or Windows XP Mode,
which lets you run older programs that aren't compatible with Windows 7.
If you miss those high-end features you can upgrade back to Ultimate
later. Microsoft hasn't said how much its "anytime upgrades" will cost,
but for Vista, these prices ranged from $140 to $200.
* If you have Windows XP, upgrading to Windows 7 is possible if your PC
is powerful enough. But it's a bit of extra work, requiring more care
with the files on your machine.
First download and run Microsoft's Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to make
sure your hardware meets minimum requirements. Among them: You need to
have 1 gigabyte of RAM (or 2 gigs if your computer is a 64-bit machine,
a reference to how much data it processes at once). You'll also need at
least 16 gigabytes of hard disk space available (or 20 gigs on a 64-bit
machine).
The Upgrade Advisor gave my XP machine a green light for Windows 7,
though it listed several programs I'd have to uninstall first, then
reinstall after.
You can install any version of Windows 7 if your PC passes muster.
Microsoft has a step-by-step guide online. It recommends you use a
utility program on the Windows 7 disk, "Easy Transfer," to copy your
files and settings onto an external drive. Then it walks you through a
"custom" installation and helps you get your old files onto the updated
PC.
Other Browsers Advance as Internet Explorer Slides
Microsoft's share of the global and North American browser markets
continued to fall in June, according to StatCounter. The latest data
from the Dublin-based Web metrics firm shows the software giant's
Internet Explorer browser lost 9.27 percentage points of global market
share during the past 11 months.
StatCounter also notes that Mozilla's new Firefox 3.5 release rapidly
gained more than two percent of the U.S. browser market since its launch
last week.
"The fastest version yet of Firefox has certainly sprinted out of the
blocks with 2.06 percent usage in the U.S. in a short time," commented
StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. "This latest addition boosts competition
for Microsoft Internet Explorer in the browser market wars."
Rival Web metrics firm Net Applications also has noticed unusual changes
on the browser front, though what it all means isn't yet clear. The
company said it is currently conducting a review of its June data before
releasing it to the public.
"We are investigating some significant variations in browser and
operating-system statistics," Net Applications said. "The reports will
not be available until we complete our review."
According to StatCounter, which collects user statistics from more than
three million Web sites, Microsoft continues to lead the global browser
market with a combined 59.5 percent share for IE6, IE7 and IE8. However,
IE usage in North America has steadily fallen from 67.38 percent in July
2008 to 56.96 percent last month.
Mozilla remains firmly in second place in the worldwide browser market
with a combined 30.4 percent share for its Firefox releases. Microsoft's
leading browser rival also has picked up nearly 4.5 percentage points of
global market share since July last year, according to StatCounter.
What's more, Firefox has moved within striking distance of toppling
Microsoft from the top browser spot in Europe. Mozilla's browser grabbed
a 39 percent share of the regional market last month, second only to
Microsoft's 46 percent. The latest statistics give a modicum of support
to one of the software giant's central claims in its ongoing dispute
with the European Commission - that healthy browser competition is
already afoot within the European marketplace.
Firefox isn't the only Web browser picking up market share in Europe.
Opera Software's browser release is also becoming increasingly popular
within the region, according to StatCounter's latest data.
Opera's market share in Europe reached 8.47 percent last month - up
from 3.55 percent in July 2008. However, Opera's global market share has
only barely nudged upward during the same period (3.27 percent vs. 3.1
percent).
The global market share held by Apple's Safari browser amounted to 2.94
percent last month - down from 3.1 percent in July 2008. The good news
for Apple is that its new Safari 4 release was downloaded more than 11
million times in the first three days following its introduction last
month.
The flurry of interest in Apple's new browser included more than six
million downloads of Safari for Windows-based PCs. The key for Apple
will be to convert PC users trying out its new browser into committed
Safari users.
Google's Chrome browser, which was launched last September, is currently
in fourth place with a 2.83 percent global market share, according to
StatCounter. But Google can take heart in noting that Chrome's share of
the global market has nearly doubled since the end of February.
TinyURL Spam Growing, But It Can Be Beat
Spammers are always looking for new ways to infiltrate your e-mail
inbox, and it appears that many are now seizing on tiny URLs, or shorter
versions of long Web site addresses, according to a report from
MessageLabs.
How do you know if the URL in your e-mail is from a legitimate source or
a spammer hoping to dupe you into buying a product or revealing your
personal information? Proceed with caution, according to Matt Sergeant,
a senior anti-spam technologist at MessageLabs.
Tiny URLs were originally developed as a utility for Twitter, which
enforces a 140-character limit. The shortened URLs allow for fewer
characters to be used for the URLs themselves, with more allocated for
the user's message. Without clicking on the tiny URLs, however, it's
almost impossible to tell where the link will connect to: a legitimate
URL, a spam site, or worse.
*Almost impossible, but not quite: here are two URL "lengthening"
services that can tell you where the shortened URLs actually go, without
taking you there.
(http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2009/07/stay_safe_by_lengthening_your.php)
* An e-mail message with a bogus tiny URL will likely be quite short,
with a variety of words and phrases in the e-mails, Sergeant said.
"Some of them, because of the bad grammar used, may hint at
pharmaceuticals but it's not as blatant as spam from earlier days," he
said.
MessageLabs has been monitoring tiny URL spam for the past few months,
but the organization saw an unexpected spike in the middle of last week -
jumping from zero to 2 percent of total spam in a matter of days. The
trend is so new that MessageLabs did not have a chance to include it in
its monthly intelligence report.
The Donbot botnet, which is responsible for about five billion spam
messages per day, is one of the mail culprits when it comes to tiny URL
spam, MessageLabs found.
"Spammers are always looking for some way to put their own URLs in
e-mails - the basic idea is that they want to get around systems that
block specific URLs," Sergeant said.
MessageLabs has yet to do any research specifically related to Twitter,
but "these URL shortening services are getting more common due to sites
like these and spammers are exploiting the level of trust people are
putting into this type of tools," Sergeant said.
What happens if you click on a spam tiny URL? Will your computer be
automatically infected? There is a chance that some links contain
"drive-by attacks with malicious content and executables," Sergeant
said, but most spammers are focusing on typical weight-loss or male
enhancement-centric product pitches.
"We've seen the spammers use redirection links before, so this is one
more step in that game to get you to their sites where they sell these
products," he said.
There are legitimate uses for tiny URLs, so users should not abandon the
service altogether, but Sergeant urged people to "be very careful about
the trust model."
"Look at the content of the e-mail for clues, and if you can, verify
that this person actually did mean to send you something," Sergeant
said. "Services like Twitter have made the use of these URL shortening
services the norm, which makes people trust links like these. Spammers
are exploiting the level of trust people are putting into the continued
use of short URLs."
Glitch in Antivirus Software Troubles PC Users
Antivirus software cuts two ways. It's great at blocking known viruses,
but it can sometimes misfire, mistakenly flagging clean files as
malicious. That sends a computer into a tailspin trying to clean up
stuff that's supposed to be on there.
The problem can crash a computer, and fixing it can be a bear.
An example emerged this week when users of antivirus software made by
Islandia, N.Y.-based CA Inc. watched as their machines warned of an
infection and started quarantining files that turned out to be legitimate.
Lee Jay Mandell, a 60-year-old retired computer consultant and patent
attorney from the Los Angeles area, said the problem popped up on his
computer Wednesday night. He knew something was wrong because he
recognized the types of files that were being quarantined were parts of
Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.
He drew on his technical experience to restore the machine, but says
less adept users might stumble.
"I'm back, but it took me about six hours to get back," he said Friday.
Every antivirus company deals with false positives, and it's an
embarrassment for companies whose job is to protect people's machines
from sabotage. It happens because legitimate files sometimes have
programming code or behaviors that are identical to those of viruses.
The antivirus software spots files it believes are malicious and starts
plucking them out.
The results can range from annoyance to outright meltdown of the machine
if critical files are targeted. Last week some people using McAfee
Inc.'s antivirus software said their computers crashed because of a
false positive.
McAfee said the false positive only happened on older versions of its
software that are no longer supported by the company. Newer versions
won't have the problem.
CA apologized for the problem Mandell and others encountered and said
its last major false positive was three years ago.
"Minor false positives happen periodically, but CA has historically
maintained an industry low rate of false positives," the company said in
a statement.
Cleaning up a false positive detection isn't always easy. The program
might do it for you. But sometimes a user might need to go into the list
of quarantined files and manually rename them, or call the company to
request software to do the task automatically.
CA emphasized that the files that its software wrongly spotted as
viruses this week were quarantined or renamed, not deleted, and "are
recoverable."
The lesson: Pay close attention to your computer if it's telling you
it's found a virus and is cleaning it up. You might need to call your
antivirus vendor's customer support to help you make sure your machine
is totally clean - or to help you recover files if the cleanup was a
false alarm.
World's Oldest Surviving Bible Published Online
About 800 pages of the world's oldest surviving Bible have been pieced
together and published on the Internet for the first time, experts in
Britain said Monday.
The Codex Sinaiticus, written in Greek on parchment leaves in the fourth
century, is available online in a project involving institutions in
Britain, Germany, Egypt and Russia which held different parts of the
ancient book.
As part of the four-year joint project, digital photographs have been
taken of the reunited manuscript, allowing scholars worldwide to
research in-depth the Greek text, the British Library in London said.
The library, which holds a large chunk of the Bible, also opened an
exhibit Monday that includes artefacts linked to the manuscript to
coincide with its online launch.
"The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures,"
said Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library.
"This 1600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of
early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the Bible
was transmitted from generation to generation," he said.
Originally 1,460 pages long and measuring 16 inches (40 centimetres) by
14 inches, the manuscript was handwritten by a number of scribes around
the time of Constantine the Great who died in 337, experts said.
The manuscript, which was revised and corrected over the centuries, lay
undisturbed in a monastery in Sinai in Egypt until it was found by a
German professor in the mid-1800s and handed to Russia's Tsar Alexander
II.
Britain later bought most of the book from the Soviet Union in the
1930s, while Egypt kept still more pages found in the monastery in 1975.
Professor David Parker, whose team made the electronic transcription of
the manuscript, said the Internet project proved challenging with some
of the pages in poor condition.
"The process of deciphering and transcribing the fragile pages of an
ancient text containing over 650,000 words is a huge challenge, which
has taken nearly four years," said Parker from the University of
Birmingham.
"The digital images of the virtual manuscript show the beauty of the
original and readers are even able to see the difference in handwriting
between the different scribes who copied the text," he said.
The manuscript is available at http://www.codexsinaiticus.org.
=~=~=~=
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