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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 11 Issue 39
Volume 11, Issue 39 Atari Online News, Etc. September 25, 2009
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2008
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1139 09/25/09
~ Yahoo Director To Leave ~ People Are Talking! ~ China Clamps Down!
~ Gmail Disrupted Again! ~ Laptops Come of Age! ~ Video Game Museum?
~ Want Windows 7 Cheap? ~ Fight Worms, Use Ants! ~ Wii $50 Price Cut!
-* 'Open Internet' Rules Vital! *-
-* Exec Blames E-mail for Staff Stress *-
-* A Primer on Bungie's Halo 3: ODST, Out Now *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
It's getting to the point that we may as well get rid of the four seasons;
we don't realize them anyway, so what's the point of having them? I'm still
waiting for spring to arrive, and it's already autumn! Where did the time
go? I only realized we arrived in fall because I hit another birthday! I
wouldn't really complain too much, but I really enjoy spring and summer!
Anyway, what's the deal with "social" sites, like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter
and the like? I must admit, I've not even had an inkling to check them out.
To me, all they seem to be are glorified chat rooms - something "we" had
years ago! Add instant messaging, or whatever, and you have these kinds of
web hangouts! Tweet me, Facebook me - what?!?! I just don't understand the
fascination. But then again, I haven't experienced that stuff. Maybe I'm
getting old, but it boggles the mind! Okay, my mind!
Otherwise, it's been a quiet week. Slow for news, slow for editorial ideas.
Even work has slowed down this week - hopefully not too slow, though. And,
I'm still tired at the end of day, and exhausted by the end of the week
(today!). But they say, and this too, will pass. So, let's move on, get to
this week's issue; and we'll start all over again next week!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. Another week has come and gone, and all my
crowing about our health care system has come home to roost.
On Monday, I woke up to find my right hand and forearm numb. It just hung
there like a dead tree branch, and I couldn't get it to do anything.
Thinking I'd just slept on it funny, I pressed on with my day: Feeding
the dogs (which was disastrous, since I dropped and broke a food bowl)
and trying to type on my laptop keyboard. I used to make jokes about guys
on porn sites typing one-handed, and now I was doing it just trying to
answer emails.
It took about three hours for the feeling to start coming back, and by
that time I was in the Emergency Room, with EKG electrodes on my chest
and a butterfly needle in my arm, getting ready to go 'downstairs' for a
CT scan.
Everything looked good... no problems with EKG, blood work or CT scan.
Both the ER doctor and my physician tell me that it was a TIA... a sort
of mini-stroke. I'm not sure they're right and think I may have just
slept in a bad position and pinched the heck out of the nerve. But until
the results from the MRI I had the other day and an ultrasound test on
the arteries in the neck are in, I'm heeding their advice to do as little
as possible until we know for sure.
So this is my column in its entirety this week. 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 - Nintendo Cuts Wii Price by $50!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" A Primer on Bungie's Halo 3: ODST!
Video Game Classics Need Museum?
And more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Nintendo Cutting Wii Price by $50 to $200
Nintendo on Sunday will cut the price of its popular Wii console by $50,
in a bid to broaden its appeal among potential new customers as it
prepares to release the Wii Fit-Plus and New Super Mario Bros. games.
The Wii, whose game control senses motions without having relying solely
on buttons and levers, is the top selling console worldwide. The new
$199.99 Wii will include the Wii Remote controller, Nunchuk controller
and Wii Sports software.
"Our research shows there are 50 million Americans thinking about
becoming gamers, and this more affordable price point and our vast array
of new software mean many of them can now make the leap and find
experiences that appeal to them," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of
America's executive vice president of sales & marketing, in a statement
late Wednesday.
Speculation about a price cut had grown after the other two console
makers, Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp., reduced prices on their systems
in August. And video game blog Kotaku has posted what it said were
images of flyers from major retailers advertising a coming price cut.
Console price cuts are customary for the video game industry after the
systems have celebrated a birthday or two, because they help lure in
mass audiences who don't want to spend large chunks of cash on them.
The recession, however, has made them even more important, especially as
game companies gear up for the holiday shopping season, when the video
game industry makes most of its money. Without the price cuts, it would
be difficult to entice budget-conscious shoppers to buy the machines.
Nintendo had been the only one of the three console makers to forgo a
price cut so far. But it also started off at a lower price point when it
launched in 2006. With a $50 price cut, the Wii will be tied with
Microsoft's low-end Xbox 360 Arcade as the cheapest. Following $100
price cuts in August, Microsoft's Xbox 360 Elite and Sony's basic
PlayStation 3 now cost about $300.
The price cut is coming just ahead of big game releases for the company -
Wii Fit-Plus on Oct. 4 and the multiplayer New Super Mario Bros-Wii on
Nov. 15. Nintendo also is kicking off a sampling tour next month to
introduce its games and hardware to new players. Reggie Fils-Aime,
president of Nintendo of America, told The Associated Press that the
sampling series is expected to give about one million game enthusiasts
the chance to try out any of Nintendo's titles.
Together, the new Wii price, game releases and sampling series are
designed to position Nintendo for a strong holiday season, Fils-Aime
said. He noted that 170 third-party titles will launch for Wii by the
end of the year, and 150 games for its handheld Nintendo Ds and Dsi
devices.
A Primer on Bungie's Halo 3: ODST, Available Now
Microsoft's Xbox 360 fall action headliner Halo 3: ODST arrives today with
all the gravitas of a question mark. A Halo without the series'
golden-visored, plasteel-clad paragon Master Chief? No gravity-defying
leaps or Usain Bolt-caliber sprinting? No damage-sapping personal
force-field? And Microsoft wants you to pay sixty bucks for what again
exactly?
Let's talk plot positioning. Halo 3: ODST technically counts as Halo
3-point-five, except that's not exactly right. Its story occurs before
the operatic gunplay of Halo 3 (PCW Score: 85%), so it's really more like
Halo 2-and-a-half. In Halo 2, the alien Covenant attack Earth and you
engage the early parts of that game repulsing them. In retreat, one of
their faster-than-light jump ships generates a disastrous shockwave above
a fictional African city. In ODST, you play a "rookie" United Nations
Space Command soldier trapped in the city after the calamity, scouring
the wreckage for your missing squad-mates.
The idea for ODST began as an expansion pack for Halo 3, just a couple
hours of first-person run-and-gunnery devoted to the unsung heroes of
the series, the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, aka the guys blown to
smithereens as you piloted Master Chief around the last three games like
a Jedi bulldozer. Somewhere along the way ODST became something more,
something ostensibly capacious enough to warrant hiking the price tag
from bargain expansion territory to full-blown $60 standalone game.
ODST's takeaway sounds simple enough: Think Call of Duty lite (or as
some have quipped, Halo of Duty) with a sci-fi slant and battles
channeled via flashbacks. As you pick through the rubble for signs of
your teammates, you'll find artifacts that trigger throwback
sequences--you play through these as each respective team member,
experiencing their "personal" stories firsthand.
Your ballistic pallet's limited to simpler weapons here, so pistols and
submachine guns instead of high flying stuff like Halo 3's energy swords
and gravity hammers. You'll take debilitating damage from single shots,
and without medical assistance, you can even bleed out. You'll also have
to scramble and skirmish between cover points instead of leaping over or
charging around them. On the flipside, you've got a new tracking
heads-up-display that pegs enemies with red outlines and notable items
with yellow ones.
All told, it's intended as a grittier, more human Halo. That the voice
acting's carried off by guys like Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, and Adam
Baldwin (also Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer) has led a few to
make Firefly comparisons. The design team's admitted they're fans of Joss
Whedon's critically acclaimed cowboy sci-fi TV series. Given the latter's
roughneck pedigree, it seems an apt enough comparison.
ODST also ships with a dedicated multiplayer disc, though it's primarily
loaded with old Halo 3 maps and only a smattering of new ODST ones.
"Firelight," the game's single new mode adds cooperative multiplayer for
up to four players. Like in Gears of War 2's "Horde" mode, you start off
shooting fish in a barrel and wind up fending off their angrier,
deadlier, steroid-popping betters.
Is it worth sixty bucks? The early critical reaction seems broadly
positive, though there's also broadening consensus that a six-hour
campaign and one new multiplayer mode don't justify the price tag. It
probably comes down to whether you're Halo-do-or-die or merely
Halo-for-the-heck-of-it.
Gran Turismo 5 Coming in March Next Year
The latest installation in the hit "Gran Turismo" driving simulation
series for the PlayStation 3 will be coming in the first quarter of next
year, Sony announced Thursday at the Tokyo Game Show.
The game had been rumored to hit store shelves this year but won't be
available until March 2010 in Japan, said Kazunori Yamauchi during a
news conference. Launch dates for other markets were not announced and
pricing was not discussed.
Despite giving fans a few more months to wait for the title, Yamauchi
provided more information about the game that might make it worth the
wait. The game will feature 950 cars including new hybrid and electric
models and 20 driving locations. Other improvements will include
simulated damage and movable objects on the race track.
Several different game-play modes will also be offered and it will be
possible to export videos from the game to YouTube or capture
8-megapixel quality resolution images. The game will also deliver an
online element including the Gran Turismo TV feature that was introduced
in the previous edition.
Video Game Classics Need Museum, Say "Retrogamers"
A group of self-styled French "Retrogamers" is calling for the creation
of a special museum for the classic video arcade games that bewitched
millions of teenagers in the 1980s.
"It's one thing to have a stock of old consoles, and of course we're
happy with that, but what you really want to do is play the games.
"A video game isn't there to be looked at like a painting or a
sculpture, you only really get a feel for it with the joystick in your
hand," said Guillaume Verdun, prime mover in the group, called MO5.com.
The "Retrogamers" are lobbying the authorities to set up a "National
Institute of Digital Sciences" that would include fully working versions
of classics like Super Mario - the animated adventures of a
moustachioed American plumber - or "Pong", the primitive
black-and-white ping-pong whose animated complexity ran to two movable
white lines between which players bounced a slowly moving white square.
Verdun says his organisation has already been in touch with the French
National Library and Paris' biggest science museum, the Cite des Sciences.
They have even contacted the office of Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the
French minister responsible for the digital economy.
He nevertheless recognises that his campaign to give his beloved arcade
games and consoles the recognition he feels they deserve is likely to
take some time.
"We're moving ahead bit by bit, but we know it is likely to be years
before things fully take shape," he said.
But visitors to a weekend video games festival in Paris got a taste of
what the hoped-for museum could be like.
The festival was essentially a trade fair for the multi-billion dollar
video games industry, which has fallen on hard times recently with sales
down 14 percent in the first five months or 2009.
But tucked away among fabulous displays of the latest 3D and "enhanced
reality" games were the retrogamers, where many a 40-something former
arcade ace could be found wistfully reliving his or her lost youth.
"I hadn't played the first Mario since I was a teenager. It's very
moving to find these video game monuments as this is an industry where
people are usually waiting for the next technological development," said
38-year-old Adrien.
The creators of the retrogaming space went to great lengths to re-create
the feel of the old arcade game and consoles, with all the games on
display connected to old-style cathode ray television monitors rather
than modern, flat liquid crystal screens.
The president of the video games festival, Jonathan Dumont, said he was
happy to welcome the retrogamers amid all of the latest high-tech
offerings.
He said he found the interest for the old games "encouraging", arguing
that the enthusiasm showed that video games were "beginning to acquire
the status of real works of art."
"Lots of people watch old films," he said, adding that the growing
enthusiasm for old video games was a logical evolution of this and proof
that video games had reached a certain maturity.
"People are no longer just looking at the technical aspects but also
their artistic qualities," he added.
The game-makers themselves seem more divided about the desirability of
preserving classic games.
According to Verdun, some companies like Nintendo and Sega are
"sensitive" to the need to preserve video game history, even going so
far as to supply MO5.com with spare parts for old consoles.
Other firms however seem totally focused on the next big thing and
"don't necessarily see the interest" in preserving these flashing,
beeping relics of our digital history.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
FCC Chairman Says 'Open Internet' Rules Are Vital
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission on Monday proposed
the most wide-ranging and specific rules so far for regulating how
Internet service providers and wireless carriers handle subscriber traffic.
While the FCC has intervened a few times to discipline home broadband
providers for blocking or hampering certain types of traffic, the
proposal by Chairman Julius Genachowski could result in the first solid
rules. It is also aimed at regulating, for the first time, how wireless
companies carry Internet traffic to cell phones.
Telecommunications executives warned that the proposal looks like a
solution in search of a problem. They said that unless the regulations
are carefully implemented, the rules could stifle investment in Internet
access.
Reactions to the ideas from Genachowski, who was appointed by President
Barack Obama, broke down along partisan lines. Republican senators said
there was no need for an unprecedented expansion of Internet regulation.
Obama said that on the contrary, well-crafted regulation of the Internet
would encourage investment and innovation.
Internet service providers, both wired and wireless, are struggling with
the question of how to distribute network capacity among their
subscribers. Heavy users can overwhelm cellular towers and neighborhood
cable circuits, slowing traffic for everyone.
At the same time, consumer advocates and Web companies like Google Inc.
want to safeguard what has been an underlying "Net neutrality"
assumption of the Internet: that all types of data are treated equally.
If the carriers can degrade or block traffic, they become the
gatekeepers of the Internet, able to shut out innovative services, these
critics say.
Last year, the FCC sanctioned Comcast Corp. for secretly hampering
file-sharing traffic by its cable-modem subscribers. In that ruling, the
agency relied on broad "principles" of open Internet access that hadn't
previously been put to the test. Comcast sued the FCC, saying the agency
didn't have the authority to tell the company how to run its network.
The case is still in federal appeals court.
Genachowski is now proposing to make it a formal rule that Internet
carriers cannot discriminate against certain types of traffic by
degrading service. That expands on the principle that they cannot
"block" traffic, as articulated in a 2005 policy statement.
Genachowski also made clear in his webcast speech Monday at the
Brookings Institute in Washington that wireless carriers should be
subject to the same principles. That may mean that a carrier couldn't,
for example, ban the use of file-sharing services on its wireless
network, which AT&T Inc. does now.
The government also has been investigating Apple Inc.'s process for
approving programs for its iPhones, but Genachowski isn't directly
addressing manufacturers' right to determine which applications run on
their devices.
Still, it's unclear how the principles would apply in practice. The
proposal is the starting point for a process to hammer out detailed
rules in the coming months. Genachowski also left the door open to
treating wireless networks differently than wired networks in the final
regulations.
Comcast has already changed its system to one that does not look at what
types of traffic subscribers are using. Instead, it throttles back the
speed of heavy users if there is congestion on the network. However,
there are other companies that might run up against the rules outlined
by Genachowski. Cox Communications, another cable company, has been
testing a system that slows traffic that it deems less time-sensitive,
like file downloads and software updates, to keep Web pages, streaming
video and online games working faster.
Cox declined to comment. But other Internet service providers said they
worried the government would reach too far into the way they do business.
Jim Cicconi, AT&T's top executive in Washington, said the company would
be "very disappointed" if the FCC has already concluded that it needs to
"regulate wireless services despite the absence of any compelling
evidence of problems or abuse."
Similarly, David Cohen, executive vice president at Comcast, said he
welcomed the "dialogue" suggested by the FCC chairman, but also said it
would be important to first figure out if there are "actual and
substantial problems that may require rules."
David Young, vice president of federal regulatory affairs at Verizon
Communications Inc., said he was pleased that Genachowski said he
favored a light touch in setting up the new regulatory framework. If
Internet carriers aren't free to experiment with different ways of
treating traffic, "it will stifle innovation, investment and growth," he
said.
"To dramatically change the 15-year policy of the United States
government to not regulate the Internet is a pretty radical thing and
should be driven by a very real and present need to do so," Young said.
Genachowski's two fellow Democrats on the five-seat FCC said Monday they
supported the proposal, which will give Genachowski a majority to push
it through. The two Republican commissioners, Robert McDowell and
Meredith Baker, urged caution, suggesting that new regulations not be
based on a need to "alleviate the political pressures of the day."
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas sought to stop
the proposal outright, introducing an amendment to an appropriations
bill that would deny the FCC the funding to explore and develop new
regulatory mandates. It was co-sponsored by five Republicans.
"The case has simply not been made for what amounts to a significant
regulatory intervention into a vibrant marketplace," Hutchison said in a
statement.
Ben Scott, policy director at advocacy group Free Press, which
complained to the FCC about Comcast's old network management practices
in 2007, said the Internet is now of such importance that government
will have to take a role in making sure it works optimally.
"It is inevitably going to have a regulatory structure around it," Scott
said. "... What we're deciding is: What is it going to look like?"
Yahoo Director To Step Down at End of Year
Yahoo director Maggie Wilderotter plans to step down from the slumping
Internet company's board at the end of this year. The resignation will
leave Yahoo with 11 directors.
The Sunnyvale-based company said Friday that Wilderotter is leaving to
devote more time to her other responsibilities. Wilderotter is CEO of
Frontier Communications Corp., which sells telephone, television and
Internet services.
Wilderotter joined Yahoo's board in 2004. She has been overseeing the
company's audit committee.
Like other Yahoo directors, Wilderotter came under fire last year for
the handling of a takeover bid from Microsoft. The software maker
withdrew a $47.5 billion offer in May 2008 after Yahoo's board
authorized co-founder Jerry Yang to demand more money.
China Clamps Down on Internet Ahead of 60th Anniversary
Security forces with black masks and machine guns on the streets of
China's capital are just the more visible side of a security clampdown
in the country this month: there is also its secretive battle to control
the Internet.
The heightened security comes ahead of a massive military parade Beijing
will hold in the heart of the city next week to celebrate China's 60th
anniversary of communist rule, an event the government hopes will
showcase the country's development and go untarnished by security
threats or shows of dissent. China's newest nuclear missiles will be
included in the arsenal of weapons and equipment shown off in the
parade, according to state-run media.
Security measures have included a crackdown this month on online tools
that help users circumvent the "Great Firewall," the set of technical
measures China uses to filter the Internet, according to providers of
the tools.
"They put more resources into the blocking," said Bill Xia, president of
Dynamic Internet Technology, which makes a widely used anti-censorship
program called Freegate.
"It has been getting worse and worse this month," he said.
Many expatriates and savvy locals in China rely on Freegate as well as
proxy servers and virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass blocks that
China places on Web sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. But
accessing some of those tools has become more difficult in recent weeks.
China has always blocked IP (Internet Protocol) addresses it believes
are used by Freegate, which routes users' communication through foreign
IP addresses to grant access to Web sites blocked in China. But this
month it became more aggressive and began blocking a wider range of IP
addresses, risking taking down unrelated targets in order to hit more
Freegate users, Xia said. The moves have left most users unable to use
the program, prompting Xia's company to ready an updated version of
Freegate that will be available in a few days.
China also cranked up its efforts to stifle Freegate ahead of another
sensitive date this year: the 20th anniversary of its bloody crackdown on
student democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
Measures China uses to limit access to certain Web sites include
altering entries in the DNS (domain name system), which translates URLs
like www.google.com into the numeric IP addresses used to relay information
online, and resetting a computer's connection when it tries to visit a
banned site. The country's police force also patrols the Internet for
sensitive or
pornographic content.
Authorities appear to have stepped up efforts to block other circumvention
tools as well. China-based users of Hotspot Shield, another popular
program that encrypts and reroutes online activity, have had problems
accessing the program's Web site since last month, a representative of
developer AnchorFree said in an e-mail.
China last month also started blocking the Web site of Blacklogic, a VPN
provider, a company representative said, though the Web site can
currently be accessed from China. The company had to switch to a new
tunneling protocol when some users recently became unable to connect to
any servers, the representative said.
"I'm unable to tell you with a 100 percent guarantee what [technical]
measures are taken in China to interfere with our service, but these
measures are being taken," the representative said.
Not all VPN providers appear to have been affected. China has mainly
blocked free VPNs and proxies while allowing similar paid services, a
representative of VPN provider 12vpn said in an e-mail.
Accessing blocked Web sites is fairly easy in China and many users do so
through free Web-based proxies. Most VPN users in China are expatriates,
but more local Chinese may be signing up as well. 12vpn and other tool
providers said their number of China-based users rose after early July,
when China blocked Facebook and Twitter.
Some VPN providers declined to comment for a news story for fear of
drawing China's attention and potential restrictions on VPNs.
At least one Chinese city has adopted a further measure to monitor
Internet traffic. The southern city of Guangzhou this month ordered
Internet service providers to install "security monitoring" software on
all servers and threatened punishment for failure to do so, according to
government notices posted on the blog of one data center management
company. Two such software programs, called Blue Shield and Huadun, were
recommended in one of the government notices. Huadun's Web site says the
program helps server owners remove illegal and pornographic content from
their systems.
The software is meant to "create a favorable online environment" for
China's National Day celebration next week, the government orders said.
A representative of the data center company reached by phone said it put
the orders on the blog for reference by clients and that the order
applied only to Guangzhou.
Some of China's new security measures could remain in place long after
the 60th anniversary celebrations, but others are likely to be lifted.
China has long gone through cycles of blocking and allowing access to
Web sites such as YouTube and Wikipedia, and updates to Freegate have
repeatedly allowed the tool to bypass evolving government security
measures against it.
Still, Chinese users have posted skeptical notes on Twitter about
China's newest Internet controls. When asked if Twitter and Facebook
would be unblocked after the National Day celebration next week, one
user said they would not.
"Last year we had the Olympics, this year is National Day (which
actually happens every year), and next year is the World Expo," the user
wrote. "Actually, every year and every month and every day are
sensitive."
With A Fresh Focus on Design, Laptops Come of Age
Say goodbye to the "black brick" laptop. The era of the plain, dowdy PC
is officially over.
As computer makers roll out their new notebooks and netbooks ahead of
the end-year holiday shopping season, razor-thin, sleek and colorful are
most definitely in, as are arresting designs in an ever-expanding array
of choices.
Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc are now more likely to point to subtle
etchings in the exterior shell, or a famous artist behind a new design,
than to the "speeds and feeds" that PC makers used to tout when they
wrestled for technological superiority.
It was only a few years ago that most laptops were some variation of a
dull box that came in gray or black, with the exception of Apple Inc,
which was making distinctive laptops back in the 1990s.
Now, design is permeating the PC market like never before as the
increasing commoditization of machines leaves few major differentiators
on performance, so a stylish case is one of the last remaining areas of
competition.
Ed Boyd, vice president of design for consumer products at Dell, the
world's No. 2 PC maker, arrived at the company nearly two years ago from
Nike Inc. He said the PC market is transforming in the way that athletic
shoes did.
Nike "took a commoditized product - sneakers - and made it hip and
cool and relevant," he said. "What you're witnessing is the same
transformation in the PC business ... this phenomenon is crossing both
the enterprise and the consumer space"
As PCs have become ever more light and portable, consumers and
businesses are placing a premium on the look of machines that are now
more likely to travel out of the home or office.
And PC makers are using design to target different demographics, such as
HP's collaboration with fashion designer Vivienne Tam on netbooks aimed
at fashion-forward women.
Stacy Wolff, director of notebook product design at HP, said the world's
largest maker of PCs took a "big gamble" when it began to focus on
design in 2005 - one that he said has paid off. Prior to that, HP
notebooks were essentially "technology in kind of a nondescript
container," he said.
Wolff said HP's new focus was immediately evident in its income
statement: "Once we made it a strategic element of any development, our
financials have just skyrocketed."
At the dawn of personal computing in the early 1980s, the first mobile
PCs began to emerge from companies like Tandy, Osborne, NEC, Epson and
others. Many of the early models resembled slabs of beige plastic,
bulkier than desktops today.
The early 1990s saw the launch of Apple's PowerBook line, which helped
set the standard for design, along with IBM's ThinkPad. Sony's sleek
Vaio notebooks followed later in the decade, along with Apple's colorful
iBook line.
But PCs 10 years ago were still largely seen as vessels for technology,
rather than design or fashion statements.
Jeff Barney, general manager of Toshiba America's digital products
division, said the company introduced color in PCs earlier this decade,
but they failed to catch on. "The consumer wasn't ready for it," he
said. "We were just ahead of the trend."
As components became cheaper and lighter, PC vendors found more room to
explore their creative side, bringing in new materials and finishes, and
paying closer attention to design details to catch the eye of buyers.
"We think that design is one of the key buying criteria in retail for
laptops," said Barney.
Thin and slick is one of the hottest trends, and the category is growing
ever more competitive with Apple's MacBook Air, Dell's Adamo and HP's
new Envy line.
A PC buyer today can choose from a dizzying array of colors, textures
and designs. "Personalization" is the order of the day. For example,
Dell offers more than 200 exterior designs.
IDC analyst Richard Shim said the market began to shift around 2005 with
lower PC prices. "Consumers started to become the overriding voice in
the PC industry and what they were saying is: 'Look there's enough
performance here for me to do what I need to do ... but what I want is a
PC that doesn't look like everyone else's,'" he said.
PC makers are first and foremost technology companies, he said, but they
have realized that many buyers are more interested in what a notebook
looks like than what's inside.
Want Windows 7 for 50 Percent Off? Order an OEM Copy
Missed out on the early preorder discounts? Popular retailer Newegg.com
has listed the OEM prices for Windows 7, which will be offered at less than
half what Microsoft will charge for a retail copy.
Newegg hasn't listed any prerequisites for buying the OEM version, such
as the purchase of any additional hardware. Past OEM copies have
prevented users from taking advantage of Microsoft's support options,
however, and the packaging and instructions are usually minimal.
For those willing to forgo the additional perks, however, the price may
be worth it. Microsoft pursued a similar strategy with Windows Vista,
charging "system builders," or anyone building a PC, about half of what
it asked retail buyers to pay. Of course, that's nothing compared to the
huge preorder discounts that Microsoft offered in September, when it
offered a preordered copy for as little as $29.99.
According to a Newegg product page, a full 32-bit or 64-bit version of
Windows 7 Home Premium will cost $109.99; with a $10 preorder discount
that expires Oct. 20, Newegg will lower the price to $99.99. Normally,
the upgrade price of Windows 7 Home Premium would be $119.99, and the
full retail cost is $199.99.
The 64-bit version of Windows 7 Professional OEM will be priced at
$139.99; for this version, Newegg will only offer a $5 discount,
bringing the price down to $134.99. At retail, the upgrade and full
versions of Windows 7 Professional would normally cost $199.99 and
$299.99, respectively.
The OEM, 64-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate, meanwhile, will be priced
at $174.99. Newegg again will offer a discount of $15, good through Oct.
20, and bringing the price down to $174.99. Normally, the upgrade and
full versions would cost $219.99 and $319.99 at retail.
A three-pack of Windows 7 Home Premium OEM will cost $309.99, while a
three-pack of Windows 7 Ultimate OEM will cost $549.99. Newegg did not
advertise a price for the three-pack version of Windows 7 Professional
OEM.
Windows 7 ships to retailers on Oct. 22. While reports have circulated
that Windows 7 may chip early, Microsoft said that users will probably
receive Windows 7 when retailers do.
Google Suffers Second Email Disruption in a Month
Google Inc's Web-based email service on Thursday suffered its second
technical problem in a month as users reported difficulty accessing
their contacts.
The disruption, which took 2-1/2 hours to resolve, followed a two-hour
outage of Google's news website this week. Earlier this month, a
majority of its email users were unable to access the service for more
than an hour after routers got overloaded during a routine server upgrade.
The series of disruptions comes as Google tries to compete with
Microsoft Corp and International Business Machines Corp by extending its
services to business users - who are likely to be less tolerant of long
outages.
Reports of the latest glitch flooded the Twitter microblogging site,
with users posting comments highlighting and griping about the situation.
"A problem with Google Contacts caused many Gmail users to experience
slowness and degraded service for about an hour today," Google said in a
statement.
"Mail was back to full speed for everyone around 8 am Pacific and the
issue affecting Contacts was resolved shortly after. We're sorry for the
inconvenience."
Gmail already competes with Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo Inc's
Web-based e-mail. Google offers its email service for free but also
sells a version to businesses with extra features and technical support
for $50 per user per year.
Fear of outages, in addition to security concerns, has been a reason
many businesses are wary of adopting "cloud computing" technologies
offered by Google as well as Salesforce.com and Amazon.com, which help
deliver data and services over the Internet.
To Fight Worms, Use Ants
To combat worms, Trojans and other malware, a team of security researchers
wants to use ants.
Not the actual live insects, of course, but computer programs modeled to
act like ants in the way they roam a network and search for anomalies.
"Ants aren't intelligent," says Glenn Fink, a senior research scientist
at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who came up with the idea
for the project, "but as a colony ants exert some very intelligent
behavior."
According to Fink and one of his project partners, associate professor
Errin Fulp of Wake Forest University, their in-the-works project uses
distributed data-collecting sensors that are modeled after the six-legged
natural creatures. But where ants may leave scent trails to guide other
ants to a discovered threat or food source, Fink's sensors pass along
collected data to other sensors in an attempt to identify anomalous
behavior that may signal a malware infection in a large-scale network.
As information is collected, different varieties of ants may be
activated to collect different types of data, Fink says. One might look
for a higher-than-normal cpu usage, while another may check out network
traffic.
And as with actual ant colonies, the system uses a hierarchy of
programs. The sensor ants report to host-based sentinels that sit still
and collect data from the ants, and the sentinels in turn are below
sergeants, which are tasked with presenting data to humans and passing
down their orders to the digital colony.
While early-stage tests of the system have successfully identified
computer worms, "a lot of the higher-level reasoning has yet to be
done," Fulp says. It's one thing to collect data from the
insect-simulating sensors, and another to accurately interpret and
process it.
The challenge, as Fink puts it, is, "How do you talk to an ant?"
French Exec Blames Email for Staff Stress
A top executive at France's biggest telecommunications company, which is
dealing with a spate of suicides, warned that the barrage of emails from
smartphones and personal computers was stressing out employees.
While France Telecom Chief Financial Officer Gervais Pellissier did not
directly blame suicides on around-the-clock email, he said workers in
all big companies are under more pressure in the age of the BlackBerry.
"Today for people working in business, whatever the level, whether they
are CEO or even first- or second-rank level employees, they are always
connected," he told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.
France Telecom, which operates under the Orange brand, has come under
public scrutiny after 22 workers committed suicide and another 13
attempted to kill themselves since the start of 2008.
Pellissier said some employees were clearly feeling a lot of pressure
due to the privatization of France Telecom, but he added that this was
compounded by new technologies that cause work to encroach increasingly
on personal lives.
"When you were an average employee in a big corporation 15 years ago,
you had no mobile phone or no PC at home. When you were back home, work
was out," he said.
Research in Motion's popular BlackBerry has been dubbed CrackBerry in
the United States, where some users say they are addicted to checking
emails.
Pellissier said such practices may be taking a bigger toll on workers
than has been acknowledged by his company or others.
As a result a fragile employee with difficulties would probably have
more confusion with "more mixture between personal life and professional
life than in the past."
"That is probably something we've not undertaken, not only at France
Telecom but, it's more a global society issue, the impact of the new
ways of working on personal behavior," Pellissier said.
He did not say how the balance could be addressed but noted that his
company was taking the suicides very seriously.
France Telecom Chief Executive Didier Lombard said earlier this month
the company was adding surveillance and counseling services as the pace
of suicides among employees had picked up. One man had stabbed himself
in the stomach during a staff meeting while a woman threw herself out a
window.
Pellissier talked about stress caused by workers changing jobs, skills
and locations as France Telecom recreates itself as a private company
from a government agency. More than 15,000 of its roughly 102,000
workers had big job changes in the last five years as a result of the
privatization, he said.
He said the company would have to do a lot in the coming weeks to help
resolve the suicide problem.
"It's a serious issue. We have to deal with it," he said.
=~=~=~=
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