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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 12 Issue 44
Volume 12, Issue 44 Atari Online News, Etc. October 29, 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 #1244 10/29/10
~ FTC Regs Scold Google! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Windows 8 in 2012?
~ Catch Crooks on Twitter ~ New MySpace Launched! ~ PSP Go Price Drop!
~ Facebook Sues Faceporn! ~ PayPal Suffers Outage! ~ Office 11 for Mac!
~ FCC Takes On Bullying! ~ Google Bug Hits Users! ~ GeoCities Archives!
-* Virus Breach: How To Recover! *-
-* Apple Joins Google in Countersuit! *-
-* Google Tightens Employee Privacy Leashes! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, it's that time of the year again. The weather has started to cool
down, after a week of really nice weather. Okay, so it rained a little,
but the temperatures have been really warm - an unofficial Indian Summer
in my area. But, it's been windy. So, it's the end of October, so what
does rain and wind, and cooler temperatures equate to? Plenty of leaves
falling from the trees! One day my lawn had a sparse covering of leaves,
and now it's blanketed with them! I guess I know what I'll be starting
to do this weekend!
And, Halloween is approaching, and falls during this weekend. Being out
in the suburbs, I really enjoy this holiday because there are a lot of
kids that go out dressed in holiday attire. While I'm usually the one the
past few years that watches the dogs so they don't "escape" outside while
the trick-or-treaters come by, I do look out the window from time to time
to get a glimpse of the scary goings-on in the neighborhood. It's a lot
of fun! Just remember one important thing: drive safely because many of
the kids out there going dorr-to-door might not be able to see you.
The other "scary" part during the Halloween "season" is that election day
is two days later! And we thought that Halloween was full of scary
monsters! This election is not going to be a fun time for politicians!
The voters are truly fed up with a lot of what is going on in this
country these days. And the economy has to be right up there near the top
of the list of major issues. Incumbents are worried. Democrats are
worried. The people are worried. Can't blame any of them for being
concerned!
However, as a registered voter (you did register to vote, right?!), you/we
have to power to enable change if we're not happy with those currently in
office and seeking re-election. But to be able to help enable change, you
have to vote! Make sure that you get out there next week (that's Tuesday!)
and vote. Vote for who you want to be in office, or against those that you
don't want to be in office - but vote! Your candidate may not win, or
ballot questions or amendments (or whatever) may not pass, but at least you
can say that you voted for who and what you supported. I think that this
election has all of the markings for a wake-up call for politicians!
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 we're
only a matter of days from elections.
Yeah, you just knew I was going to talk about it, didn't you? Well, I
won't disappoint you. [grin]
It's going to be an interesting election for a couple of reasons. First,
this is the first election since the Democrats took control of both houses
of Congress and the White House. The economic situation isn't any better
than it was two years ago and is in fact worse in many respects; the
effects of the policies of the previous eight years, if you want my
opinion.
Regardless of why, people are up in arms about things. Liberals are up in
arms because, although catastrophe in both the auto and finance industries
was avoided, the economy is in pretty bad shape. Unemployment is still
high. Everyone wants to talk about jobs; whether the government should try
pumping more money into the economy in the form of stimuli, or whether
they should slash taxes. There are, of course (at least) two sides to the
argument.
Liberals want to use tax money to fund public projects and incentives.
Conservatives say no, we should cut taxes more and keep the tax cuts that
were put in place years ago.
Okay. They both sound good, right? Well, let's think about that for a bit.
First of all, since I have a definite liberal bias, let's take a look at
the conservative idea. Cut taxes. Just cut 'em down. It's always easier to
spend money that's not been taken away from you in the first place, right?
And the administration costs... you cut those right out by not taking the
money in the first place. You don't need office space or computers or
phones or mail-in forms to give money back, because you never took it away
from the public in the first place. Yeah, that's the ticket. Just don't
take the money in the first place. Simple. People have more money, so they
spend more money. The economy starts rolling without government
intervention and everybody is happier. The government bailouts only caused
more red tape and didn't create jobs. The stimulus that they tried just
sent money to China, since that's where so many things are made these
days.
Okay, now it's the liberals' turn. Cutting taxes and keeping the current
tax cuts in place benefits the rich, because the existing tax cuts slashed
their taxes. In addition, and this is something I don't hear politicians
mentioning a lot and I've always wondered why, rich people don't spend any
more simply because they HAVE more... that's kind of the definition of
being rich... that you can afford to go out and buy whatever you want to.
In other words, someone making half a million dollars a year can already
buy just about anything they want. Having 5% of their tax bill lopped off
isn't going to go out and buy a new Chevy. It might allow them to go out
and buy a new BMW a few months earlier though.
Now, in a lot of reports, small businesses are included in the same group
as wealthy individuals. And those statistics are often used to show that
those self-same tax cuts benefit small businesses. If you take less money
from a small business, they'll have more resources to hire new employees,
right?
Well, the problem with that is sort of a 'Catch-22'. No matter how little
a small business pays in taxes, they're not going to hire new people
unless they need them. They don't need them unless they've got business
coming in. They won't have business coming in unless the economy turns
around.
So where do we start? I like the idea of the government actually doing
something... Eisenhower spent a lot of our money developing our current
infrastructure. Most of the interstate highways we take for granted today
are there because Ike decided we needed it. Roosevelt did it before him,
with a slew of government programs all aimed at not only getting people
money to live on, but on the country getting something out of it too. We
got all kinds of public works projects out of the deal... public roads and
buildings, educational aid, schools, parks and bridges all over the
country. So not only did we get something for our money, we got.. our
money. People went to work, even if it wasn't a high-paying job. It was
work. It was something to get through the tough times.
That makes a little more sense to me than cutting taxes in the hope that
some rich guy buys an American luxury car instead of a foreign one.
Now, I've just shown you how easy it is to have two sides to every option.
You would think that there would be enough "meat" to just about every
subject that you could imagine for people to argue whichever side they
want, right?
Well, evidently that's not the case. Look at the current election
campaigns. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a negative ad.
Personally, I think negative ads should be outlawed. It should be illegal
to refer to your opponent in any way in a campaign ad. And that goes for
ANY political ad, not just those from candidates.
I've seen negative "attack" ads from both sides this election... we all
have. Whether its Alaska, Delaware or Florida, California, Michigan or
Connecticut, the negative ads are out there. Sure, I want to know if
someone I might consider voting for has been convicted of a felony or if
they screwed their business partner out of his life's savings, but that
info should come from someone other than his/her opponent. Even my
congressman, someone I like and respect, has taken to using negative ads.
This kind of bothered me... until I remembered the ads his opponent put up
first. Inaccuracies, half-truths and downright fabrications ran throughout
the ads. I don't feel any better that the ads that my candidate ran were
"less negative". Of course, I have to wonder if they really are less
negative, or if they just seem so to me because he's the one I support.
We've seen negative ads in politics for a long, long time, but it seems
that all we see this time around is negative ads. Poll after poll tells
politicians that the public hates negative ads. There's nothing that turns
people off more than a negative ad. So why do they use them? Simple.
Because: Because they work. Studies have shown that the negative content of
an ad tends to stay with us even though we detest the ads themselves.
Unfortunately, politicians know that they work and how, and know just how
to place them. Maybe we SHOULD just ban them altogether and see what
politicians have to talk about then. Nahhhhh... most of 'em would be mute.
Well, that's it for this week, friends and neighbors. Tune in again next
week, same time, same station, and be ready to listen to what they are
saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Sony PSP Go Price Drops!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 'Lights Out' Street Fighter!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Sony PSP Go Price Drops to $199
Sony has dropped the price of its PSP go mobile gaming device from $249
to $199, just in time for the holiday rush.
The device is already listed at $199 for various online retailers like
Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy.
The move comes about a month after Sony released its PlayStation Move
motion controller system. The company said last week that it has since
sold more than one million Move units in North and Latin America.
"Retail demand is incredibly strong and we're working hard to keep the
product in stock," Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer
Entertainment America, said at the time. Tretton later told MSNBC that Sony
has increased production of the Move twice already to meet demand.
The PSP go made its debut in October 2009 for $249. It's a shrunken-down
version of the PSP that eschews the UMD optical drive and game cartridges
for 16GB of internal storage, download-only titles, and a new slider
design. The PSP go also includes access to Sony's online download store.
PCMag's review of the device found that the PSP go is really only for
gamers who are new to the PSP platform, not the faithful who have stuck
with Sony for a half-decade. If you fit into the latter group, you're
better off sticking with your original, albeit chunkier, PSP-1000, or
buying the slightly smaller PSP-3000 ($169.99) if you want to get in on
multiplayer games.
The price drop could help Sony get ahead of rival Nintendo this holiday
season, which announced last month that its new Nintendo 3DS won't launch
in Japan until Feb. 26 or in the U.S. until March.
"Lights Out" Videogame Puts Players in Street Fighting Scene
Virtual fighters engaged in a bare-knuckle brawl as Sony introduced a world
of street fighting played out with Move motion-sensing controls for
PlayStation 3 videogame consoles.
Players bobbed, jabbed, punched and head-butted under the daunting gaze of
action film tough guy Danny Trejo, whose animated character is a coach in
"The Fight: Lights Out" title set for release on November 9.
"I love that this gets you up off the couch and into action," said Trejo,
whose easy smile and friendly manner were in sharp contrast to the hard
guy roles he has acted out on screen in films like freshly released
"Machete."
"You just play for a short bit and you can really feel it," Trejo told AFP
at the Sony event, held in a San Francisco bar.
Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) said last week that it has a
hit on its hands with its new Move motion-sensing controllers.
Sony reported that it sold more than a million Move devices in North
America and Latin America in the 30 days after releasing them on the
market in September.
"Retail demand is incredibly strong and we're working hard to keep the
product in stock," said SCEA chief executive Jack Tretton.
Two dozen videogames tailored to Move play are available, with titles,
including shooters such as "Killzone" and "Resident Evil," as well as
sports games like "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11."
An additional 15 Move games planned for release in the coming year range
from sports and shooter titles to puzzle and "family-friendly" fare
aimed at capitalizing on the appeal of motion-sensing controllers to
casual players.
Move controllers, which are reminiscent of small black flashlights topped
with brightly colored orbs, allow gamers to control PS3 play with swings,
jabs and other natural movements instead of the toggle-and-button commands
that have been trademarks of play on PS3 and rival Xbox 360 consoles by
Microsoft.
At the Mighty nightclub in San Francisco late Wednesday, players used Move
controllers to act out street brawler moves instantly copied by their
in-game champions.
PlayStation Eye cameras mounted on flat-screen televisions tracked
movements of players that battled in a multi-mode that pitted combatants
at different consoles against each other in one-on-one matches.
On-screen graphics let players see how much of a beating they were
taking or giving, and dirty moves could be executed with proper
combinations of buttons, triggers and wand waves.
A single player mode of the game launched a campaign in which a fighter
battled increasingly dangerous animated adversaries, training in a
virtual gym and unlocking new moves along the gritty journey.
"The Fight: Lights Out" will be priced at 39.99 dollars.
Move wands are sold for 49.99 dollars. A smaller "sub controller" wand
for use navigating characters in shooter games is priced at 29.99 dollars.
Sony combines Move controllers with Eye cameras and a videogame in
bundles sold for 99.99 dollars. Adding a PS3 console to that bundle
raises the price to 399.99 dollars.
PlayStation Eye cameras, needed to track movements of controller wands,
sell separately for 39.99 dollars.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
US Regulators Scold Google for Taking E-mails
The Federal Trade Commission is scolding Google Inc. without punishing the
Internet search leader for collecting e-mails, passwords and other personal
information transmitted over unsecured wireless networks.
In a two-page letter released Wednesday, the regulatory agency expressed
its displeasure with Google for allowing potentially sensitive information
to be scooped up for several years before management realized it. It took
an inquiry from German regulators earlier this year for Google to realize
it had been inadvertently pulling and storing information from wireless
networks as its cars took photos of neighborhoods around the world for its
"Street View" mapping service.
The activity outraged some privacy watchdogs who believed Google's activity
may have violated laws against unauthorized wiretapping. It also triggered
the attention of legal authorities in several of the more than 30 countries
where Google's cars were snooping through Wi-Fi networks.
Although Google apologized for intruding, it has steadfastly insisted that
it didn't break any laws because it got the data from Wi-Fi systems that
should have been protected with passwords. That lack of security left the
networks open to anyone passing by with the right equipment. Google's
Street View cars no longer are equipped to detect Wi-Fi networks.
The FTC said it closed its investigation without any further action against
Google because it's satisfied with a series of measures that the company
announced last week in an effort to improve its internal privacy controls.
Consumer Watchdog, a group that has been among the most strident critics
of Google's so-called "Wi-Spy" incident, called FTC's resolution
"premature and wrong." It also suggested that Google's lobbyists may have
swayed the outcome of the inquiry. The company has spent $3.9 million on
lobbying activities so far this year and has met with the FTC on variety of
topics, according to company disclosures.
"At a minimum, the public deserved a full report about Google's abuses from
the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection," said John Simpson, who oversees a
Consumer Watchdog project monitoring Google.
In a statement, Google said it welcomed the FTC's findings.
The company's collection of Wi-Fi information remains under investigation
in the U.S. by a coalition of state attorneys general. Italy on Wednesday
became the latest of several countries outside the U.S. to open
investigations into whether Google's surveillance of Wi-Fi systems broke
their laws.
Google says it gathered about 600 gigabytes of data - enough to fill about
six floors of an academic library - and wants to delete all the information
as soon it's cleared in all the affected countries. So far, it has only
purged the information it picked up in Ireland, Denmark, Austria and Hong
Kong.
Google Tightening Privacy Leash on Its Employees
Google Inc. is tightening its privacy leash on employees in an effort to
ensure they don't intrude on people while the Internet search leader
collects and stores information about its users.
Besides promoting longtime employee Alma Whitten to be its director of
privacy, Google said Friday that it will require all 23,000 of its
employees to undergo privacy training. The company also is introducing
more checks aimed at making sure workers are obeying the rules.
Google's tougher privacy measures appear to be a response to recent
breaches that have raised questions about the company's internal controls
and policies.
In the most glaring example that indicated the company didn't have a good
grasp on what its workers were doing, Google acknowledged in May that one
of its engineers had created a program that vacuumed up potentially
sensitive personal information, including e-mails and passwords, from
unsecured wireless networks while Google cars cruised neighborhoods
around the world. The vehicles were dispatched primarily to take photos
for Google's online mapping service, but they also carried equipment to
log the location of Wi-Fi networks.
The incident, which some critics have derisively labeled as "Wi-Spy," was
caused by "an engineer's careless error as well as a lack of controls to
ensure that necessary procedures to protect privacy were followed,"
Canada Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart concluded in a report this
week.
Several other countries have skewered Google for scooping up 600 gigabytes
of data - equivalent to about six floors of an academic library - from
Wi-Fi systems for more than two years before detecting a problem five
months ago in response from to an inquiry from regulators in Germany.
Google initially said it had only captured fragments of people's online
activities, but Canada's investigation determined that entire e-mails,
passwords and website addresses had been obtained and stored. In
confirming Canada's findings Friday, Google said it wants to delete all
the Wi-Fi data remaining on its computers as quickly as possible, but must
hold on to most of the information while authorities in different
countries conduct their own investigations.
So far, Google has purged the Wi-Fi data it got in Ireland, Austria,
Denmark and Hong Kong after gaining clearance from regulators in those
countries. It still has the data from more than 20 other countries,
including the United States, where a coalition of state attorneys generals
has been looking into the breach.
While some countries have asserted Google's Wi-Fi snooping was illegal,
the company has maintained it didn't break any laws even as management
apologized for its bad behavior.
"We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to
our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal
privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users," Alan
Eustace, Google's head of engineering, wrote in a Friday blog post.
Google's privacy safeguards appeared to be suspect once again after the
Gawker blog reported that an engineer in its Kirkland, Wash. office had
been using the privileges of his job to spy on the online accounts of
four minors. Prompted by that report, Google last month acknowledged
that it had fired the engineer for violating its privacy policies.
Maintaining the public's trust is critical to Google because the success
of its search engine and part of its long-term business plans hinge in
part on its ability to build databases about its users' preferences.
Among other things, Google believes the information helps it deliver
better search results than its rivals and sell more of the ads that
generate virtually all the company's revenue.
Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., hopes to become an even bigger
part of people's online lives by introducing more social networking
features on its website so it can better compete with Facebook in the
increasingly lucrative field of connecting friends and family members
online. When Google introduced a social networking option into its free
e-mail service in February, many users protested because the feature
exposed their contact lists without prior permission.
Apple Joins Google in Counterattack Against Paul Allen Lawsuit
Apple last week joined forces with Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others in
an effort to dismiss patent infringement charges brought by billionaire
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
In a federal lawsuit filed last August, an Allen-owned firm claimed that
11 companies, including Apple, Google, YouTube, Facebook, AOL and Yahoo,
infringed four patents awarded more than a decade ago.
Among the patents was one that described a "news browser," while another
referred to technology for alerting users of Web content related to what
they were currently viewing.
Apple was one of four companies - the others were AOL, Google and Yahoo -
charged with violating all four patents.
The patents were issued between 2000 and 2004 to Internal Research, an
Allen-funded Silicon Valley research lab that shut its doors in 2000.
The patents were later transferred to Interval Licensing, which Allen
also controls.
Google launched the counterattack against Allen on Oct. 18 when it filed
a motion to dismiss the claims. The motion asserted that Interval had
failed to show how Google had infringed the patents, and that it had not
named the technologies used by or the services offered by Google that
allegedly violated those patents.
"Interval is not entitled to waste Court and party resources with a
scattershot Complaint against multiple Defendants that fails to give any
indication as to which products or services Interval contends are
infringing and the factual basis for such a claim," Google asserted.
"Interval's Complaint is so devoid of any facts to support its
infringement contentions that it is impossible for Google to reasonably
prepare a defense," Google continued.
In an Oct. 19 follow-up motion submitted to Seattle-based U.S. District
Court Judge Marsha Pechman, Google said Interval had tossed all 11
defendants into the same litigation basket without showing "any
coordinated action" among the bunch.
The TechFlash blog first reported on Google's motion to dismiss in a story
published Sunday.
Apple joined Google's motion on Oct. 21 with a filing of its own.
"Interval has sued eleven major corporations and made the same bald
assertions that each defendant infringes 197 claims in four patents,"
Apple stated. "As the U.S. Supreme Court noted in /Twombly/, it is in
this type of situation in which courts should use their 'power to insist
upon some specificity in pleading before allowing a potentially massive
factual controversy to proceed.'"
The other defendants have submitted their own similar motions to Judge
Pechman.
Allen's suit seeks unspecified damages, as well as injunctions that
would block the accused companies from continuing to use the patented
technologies.
Regulator Taking on Cyberbullying in Schools
Schools receiving subsidies for Internet service will have to teach
students about cyberbullying and the responsible use of social networking
sites, the U.S. telecommunications regulator said on Friday.
Cyberbullying happens when teens use the Internet, mobile phones, or
other devices to send or post text or images intended to hurt or
embarrass another person, and it is a problem for nearly half of all
U.S. teens, according to the National Crime Prevention Council.
It is increasingly being cited as a predecessor to suicide attempts, the
third leading cause of death among 10- to 24-year-olds in the United
States.
Last month, 18-year-old Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi took
his life after fellow students posted video of him engaged in sexual
activity online. In 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide
after a classmate and friend's mother bullied her through a fake MySpace
account.
"It is growing by the day as kids younger and younger are using
interactive technology," Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy and security
lawyer, said of cyberbullying.
"They're now carrying around more power in their backpacks, pockets and
purses than most corporations had 10 years ago," said Aftab, who is also
the founder and executive director of Wired Safety, which runs the
stopcyberbullying.org website.
The Federal Communications Commission said it will issue an order to
schools receiving funds from the E-rate program, which subsidizes school
Internet access, to address cyberbullying and improper use of sites like
Facebook and MySpace.
The FCC said the order would put its regulations in line with the
Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act.
The agency voted in September to ease rules mandating how schools and
libraries can use $2.25 billion in federal subsidies to get Internet
access, allowing them to take advantage of unused fiber optic cables in
localities and high-speed access from state and local networks.
E-rate funded schools, which the FCC said represent the "vast majority
of schools," must have Internet safety policies and filters to prevent
access to inappropriate content. The new order will ensure that these
policies also include online safety education, FCC said.
Aftab said her organization will release its Stop Cyberbullying Toolkit
for Schools on November 22. The toolkit will offer $850,000 worth of
resources and materials for free downloads by schools to create programs
to curb cyberbullying.
The FCC also announced plans to open the application process for a pilot
program that would fund wireless Internet access and mobile learning
devices, which could become increasingly important as students use new
devices like tablet PCs and smartphones to get access to their schoolwork.
The agency said schools and libraries can apply for the program in the
coming days, with applications due by mid-December.
To further its education agenda, the FCC will also host a forum on kids'
use of mobile technology on December 1.
Facebook Sues Faceporn, Cites Copyright Infringement
Facebook has filed another lawsuit, this time against Faceporn.com, an
x-rated social-networking site. Facebook filed suit on Oct. 15 in the
U.S. District Court in Northern California, claiming that Faceporn
copied Facebook to build its site and is in violation of copyright.
Faceporn calls itself "the number one socializing porn and sex network,"
but its site has been down since Wednesday according a Tweet.
"Forced to close down for a while, due to unforeseen circumstances.
We'll be back though. Better than ever," said the @faceporn handle.
Faceporn does not specify when it will be back online. A note on the
site said it is "down until further notice."
It's not the first time Facebook has prevented a social networking site
from using a related name. Facebook sued Teachbook in August, saying
that the site's use of the word "book" was in violation of its
Trademark. Facebook considers uses of the words "book" and "face" its
property. Facebook said Faceporn's concept is too similar as well.
Facebook said that Faceporn " blatantly copied the Facebook logo, site,
and Wall trademark," said court documents. In screen shots included with
the court filings, Faceporn does have elements that are similar to
Facebook such as a Wall and a blue and white design. Although users
can't poke one another, they can "send a flirt."
Facebook has requested that Faceporn creator Thomas Pederson surrender
the domain name and all revenue from it to Facebook.
Faceporn has not commented on the issue. Both parties are expected to
meet in court in January.
Windows 8 Coming in 2012?
Just as you were getting comfortable with Windows 7, it looks like
Windows 8 is coming in the next two years. In a post celebrating the
one-year anniversary of Windows 7 - the fastest selling OS in history -
Microsoft's Dutch Web site
briefly mentioned the construction and release of its successor:
"Microsoft is on course for the next version of Windows. But it will take
about two years before 'Windows 8' on the market." Winrumors.com grabbed
and translated the post, and CNET took a screenshot of the text, which
unsurprisingly disappeared shortly after the news stole headlines. Now
Microsoft is back to being tight-lipped about Windows 8 and its expected
release.
Reports from last year suggested Microsoft was building a 128-bit version
of its OS, which could very likely be Windows 8. More recently,
NetworkWorld acquired more than 15 confidential slide decks detailing
possible additions, including body-sensing features similar to the Xbox
Kinect, a desktop app store like Apple's forthcoming Mac App Store,
near-instant CPU booting, and a focus on powering tablets.
But most importantly, by the time Windows 8 supposedly drops, Microsoft
is going to have Apple's latest OS to contend with. Apple just gave a
sneak peek of Mac OS X Lion - called a marriage of OS X and Apple's mobile
iOS - that includes some drool-inducing features like a desktop app store,
advanced multitouch gestures, and more.
If Microsoft acts wisely, it stands a chance to emulate - and perhaps
one-up - all of OS X Lion's key features ... or it could rush and produce
another Vista.
Microsoft Releases Office 11 for Mac with Outlook
On Tuesday, Microsoft released Office 11 for the Mac. The newest version
of the most popular productivity suite includes a Mac version of
Outlook, online collaboration, the reappearance of Visual Basic for
creating macros, and other new features.
Built from the ground up, Office 2011 includes the standard-bearers
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and, for the first time, Outlook. It is designed
to work with an on-site Exchange server and with Microsoft's newly
announced cloud service for Office, Office 365.
It has been slightly more than a quarter century since Microsoft first
released Mac versions of Word and Excel, and there has been a dedicated
team since 1997. This is the first major revision of the Mac Office
suite since early 2008.
Eric Wilfrid, general manager of Microsoft's Office for Mac team, said
about 75 percent of all Mac users have Office installed. "Mac users," he
said, "need Office because it helps them work with the Windows world."
Wilfrid added that the new release brings cloud-based benefits to Mac
users that Windows customers saw when Office 2010 for Windows was
released.
Office Web Apps, for instance, allows a user to edit documents right in
the browser. Coauthoring tools enable simultaneous editing with others
of a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation, whether the other
collaborators are on Mac or Windows machines.
Microsoft Mac Senior Evangelist Kurt Schmucker said users of Office 2011
will "notice right away" the increased launch speed of each app, as well
as performance improvements in specific features, such as charting. He
said one tester described the new Word and Excel as "light because they
are so much faster."
Viewing options to increase ease of use have been implemented throughout
Office 2011. Full screen in Word, for example, offers two views -- one
designed for writing and one for reading. When in the full-screen view
for writing, the user interface disappears and a formatting toolbar
appears when the mouse is moved to the top of the screen. A Dynamic
Reorder feature allows layers in a document or a presentation to be
moved around. In Outlook, there's a view to enable easier management of
multiple e-mail accounts.
The new release is offered in three editions - Home & Student, Home &
Business, and Academic. Outlook is part of Home & Business, while Home &
Student has Word, Excel and PowerPoint, plus licenses for up to three
computers. The discounted Academic version has all four programs.
Pricing ranges from $99 for a single license of the Academic version to
a two-install pack of Home & Business for $279.
In general, upgrades will not be allowed, just as they are not for
Windows Office 2011. However, purchasers of the current Office 2008 can
get a free upgrade to 2011, an offer which began in August and will
continue to Nov. 30.
MySpace Launching New Version of Website
MySpace launched a new version of its website centered around music and
entertainment, as the social networking company attempts to regain its
former appeal in a market it helped create.
MySpace Chief Executive Mike Jones said that News Corp-owned MySpace is no
longer seeking to compete head-on with social networking company Facebook,
and is recasting itself as a complimentary service that he hopes the
35-year-old-and-under crowd will flock to stay abreast of the hottest music
and videos.
With traffic to MySpace declining and the company rocked by succession of
management changes and layoffs during the past two years, the re-launch of
the website represents a critical step in efforts to rejuvenate an asset
once considered central to News Corp's online business.
"Most investors have written off MySpace now," said Richard Greenfield, an
analyst at BTIG said on Tuesday. Whether MySpace can rebuild its buzz in
the highly competitive and fast-changing Web market is an open question,
he said.
News Corp bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million, at a time when the
social networking service was at the height of its popularity.
But MySpace, which says it has between 125 million and 130 million active
monthly users, has been eclipsed by Facebook, which has more than 500
million users. News Corp does not disclose financial information about
MySpace.
There have been media reports that News Corp is interested in selling
MySpace, though executives at News Corp have repeatedly maintained that
that is not the case.
MySpace's new incarnation leans heavily on the company's strong heritage
in music - the company already has partnerships with the four major record
labels - and seeks to supplement it with content about movies, television
and video games. Visitors to the site can subscribe to news feeds about
favorite bands and actors, as well as follow other MySpace users that the
service recommends as authorities about particular types of music or other
topics.
MySpace also has changed the look of its site: Users will still be able to
customize their personal pages, but to a lesser extent. Personal pages
will have a consistent placement of on-screen navigation buttons, for
example. Critics said the old site was difficult to navigate because of
the inconsistent appearance of the members' pages. CEO Jones told Reuters
on Monday this has hurt "user engagement."
A beta, or test version of the new site will be available to some users
on Wednesday, with the site due to be available to all users by the end
of November.
MySpace began the redesign of the site eight months ago, at a time when
Jones and Jason Hirschhorn had taken over as co-Presidents, following
the departure of Chief Executive Owen Van Natta. In June, Hirschhorn
left the company to "pursue other opportunities," according to a MySpace
spokesperson.
A 2006 search advertising deal with Google Inc that guarantees MySpace
$300 million a year in revenue expired in August, and was extended for
one month, according to a person familiar with the talks. A MySpace
spokesperson said on Tuesday that the company had no update to provide
on the deal.
While social networking services like Twitter and Facebook are growing
bigger every month, MySpace has seen its number of worldwide unique
visitors decline every month since March, according to web analytics
firm comScore.
MySpace said it expects the new version of the site to boost the total
number of users that visit the site and the time they spend on the site.
Jones said that he believed the majority, or "close to the majority" of
MySpace's current audience belongs to the so-called Generation Y, the
35-year-old and under demographic that MySpace will focus on. But it's
unclear how many of MySpace's older users will stick around after the
site changes.
Jones acknowledged that there could be some "noise in our usage
patterns" after the switch, as users adjusted to the new site, though he
was unsure whether the company might see a near-term increase or
decrease in its audience size or usage.
Wedbush Securities analyst Lou Kerner, speaking generally about
MySpace's previously discussed plan to recast the company around music
and entertainment, said that focusing on a narrow segment of the market
could allow the company to find a new life in shadow of Facebook.
"There are other social networking companies that are still doing well,
that have found niches. The most obvious is LinkedIn, which continues to
grow rapidly," Kerner said, referring to the social network devoted to
online professionals.
New IE9 Test Build Links PC and Web-Site Features
Microsoft has released a new preview of Internet Explorer 9 featuring
performance improvements and increased standards support. The latest IE9
test build will give web-site designers and software developers an
opportunity to play with new capabilities such as CSS3 2-D features that
let site visitors rotate photos, graphics and text segments.
Smart devices of all types have become "powerful platforms that present
new opportunities to do exciting applications with user interfaces that
are more approachable than ever before," said Microsoft CEO Steve
Ballmer. At the heart of Microsoft's next-generation browser is HTML5
technology that will provide the next "wave of innovation between the
back end and the front end," he added.
"It's the lingua franca for talking to all of these smart devices across
the planet," Ballmer said during his keynote address at the company's
Professional Developers Conference on Thursday.
The empowerment that HTML5 gives web designers and app developers is the
major reason why the previous IE9 test build that Microsoft launched
last month has become the fastest-adopted IE beta release in Microsoft's
history, said Microsoft Vice President Dean Hachamovitch.
"In the six weeks since we released Internet Explorer 9, we've seen 10
million downloads, and that means a lot of enthusiasm from developers,"
Hachamovitch explained to PDC 10 attendees. "And that popularity
reflects the significant improvements in browsing that IE9 brings to the
web."
Despite all the fanfare around smartphones and web tablets, Ballmer noted
that the PC remains the number-one smart device on the planet, and
Microsoft has sold more than 240 million Windows 7 licenses in the past
12 months - equivalent to 88 percent of the entire PC market. For this
reason, he said, web designers and app developers need to ensure that they
are taking advantage of all of Windows 7's new capabilities, from
touchscreen support to "ink" - the ability to use a stylus, mouse or a
finger to write or draw directly on the PC screen.
"With the work on Internet Explorer, we are trying to make that a whole
lot simpler for you" by keeping the focus on "doing HTML5 really well,"
Ballmer said. "We also asked ourselves, how can we improve on the user
experience for HTML5 applications, based on the fact that IE9 runs on
Windows."
The goal is to "unlock the full power of the web and the full power of
the PC in one seamless exercise" by making "the web feel more like
native applications," Ballmer observed. "We've also worked hard on
interoperability," so that web-site developers can concentrate more on
innovation "and less on just rewriting sites."
More than 70 Microsoft partners who handle more than two-thirds of active
web traffic are already building on the capabilities in Internet Explorer 9
and HTML5, including Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. Their web designers
have been able to take advantage of the fact that IE9 beta enables users
to pin sites directly to the Windows taskbar.
This means web designers can start to program jumplists as well as offer
notifications - just as Windows applications do, Hachamovitch observed.
"Your web site participates with Windows applications on the desktop,"
he said. "They are more available and interactive than regular sites in
old browsers."
Geocities Archive To Be Released Via BitTorrent
It was about a year ago that Yahoo!-hosted Geocities sites started going
offline. For the majority of Internet users, this event was met with little
fanfare; Geocities had long gone out of fashion as a free web host and
been replaced by sites like Myspace, Facebook, WordPress, and more
recently, Tumblr.
Yahoo! had given little notice that it would be shutting down Geocities
hosting, which made the prospect of creating an archive difficult. Web
historians and archivists at Textfiles.com believed the potential loss to
be considerable and mounted a concerted effort to make a complete backup
of all public Geocities sites. To quote Textfiles:
"What we were facing, you see, was the wholesale destruction of the
still-rare combination of words digital heritage, the erasing and
silencing of hundreds of thousands of voices, voices that representing the
dawn of what one might call 'regular people' joining the World Wide Web. A
unique moment in human history, preserved for many years and spontaneously
combusting due to a few marks in a ledger, the decision of who-knows for
who-knows-what."
By using a bit of creative hacking used to forge a 'user agent' - the bit
of data that tells a server the method (e.g. Web browser, search engine
bot, RSS reader) by which pages are accessed - textfiles.com volunteers
made it appear if Geocities was being indexed by Google. Rather than
simply indexing, the volunteers were scraping and storing all the data
available on the Geocities servers to create a single, massive archive.
With the backup effort underway, the question remained: What should be
done with data? The first task was to create a single archive, which
would then be be compressed and released to the web via BitTorrent! Yes,
that means you too can own a (rather large) piece of Web history, if
you've got the storage space to spare. Compress, the entire archive will
likely clock in at over 900-gigabytes. The archive is currently being
compressed; the BitTorrent release should be available within a few
days. Check out ascii.textfiles.com for details about the release!
Google Bug Maroons Users
Travellers are furious they can't access their Google Docs due to a major
bug in Google's systems.
Google has acknowledged that the bug is their #1 top priority to fix at
present, though it has been listed in the Google Docs known issues page
for almost a week.
The problem occurs if a user has both a personal Google account (such as
Gmail) and a company Google Apps account, for their documents and work
email. Google recently introduced a feature to enable easier switching
between accounts, and if it detects a user has multiple accounts, gives
them a screen at login time allowing them to "Select an account to use with
Google Docs".
However, Google Apps customers have been finding that after logging in to
their account, they either can't access their account at all, or they can't
open any documents in their Google Docs library.
The error presents itself as "This webpage has a redirect loop" in Chrome,
"Too many redirects occurred trying to open http://xyz. This might occur
if you open a page that is redirected to open another page which then is
redirected to open the original page," in Safari and "Too many redirects"
in Firefox.
The problem is particularly inconvenient for Google's primary target
audience for its Google Apps service - businesspeople who want to work
from multiple locations and collaborate with their colleagues.
Storing documents online can be a godsend for travellers - until the online
service stops working. Google's key competitor, Microsoft, says it has
designed its Microsoft Office 365 online service so that all documents that
a user works on are also stored locally on their computer, and although
Microsoft has been actively developing its own internet services strategy,
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer hasn't held back in his criticism of Google
Docs, being quoted in articles like "Google Apps blow, no one actually
uses them".
Google, meanwhile, is contrite about the problem, but has not been able to
fix it in the past week. "It has been marked as the highest priority bug
and we're actively working on it. We'll get it out as soon as it is fixed.
Again, we really apologize for the inconvenience," said a Google employee,
writing in the company's "Known issues" page.
A workaround recommended by Google is to sign out of all Google accounts,
clearing the browser cache and cookies, and then only using one Google
account per browser. Simply clearing cache and cookies is not enough -
users must also sign out of their accounts.
Critics of internet-based applications have long warned that trusting a
large company with your data could result in unforeseen consequences. One
user posting on the Google Known Issues page commented, "I concur with
comments made above about the lesson Google has given all of us on Cloud
computing." Another user commented, "PLEASE - this is unacceptable for a
business product. Back to Word...sigh"
Google Australia said users should follow the workaround described in the
known problems page and only use one login per browser. Although many users
report they cannot access their documents, even after following Google's
workaround, Google Australia's Courtney Hohne said the bug was "not an
outage" and would therefore not qualify under Google Apps Premier's 99.9%
service level uptime agreement.
However, this provides no comfort to travellers stuck overseas who have
not seen the "known issues" page, and are not aware of Google's proposed
workaround.
Kelly Innis, Product Manager for Online Services, Microsoft Australia,
said Microsoft's upcoming online Office 365 suite was designed to provide
users with significant protection against online service downtime.
"We feel that a key differentiator for Microsoft is that our SLAs are
financially backed on a 99.9% uptime, amortised across the month. So, if
Microsoft is down for more than 45 minutes in any one month, that means we
haven't met our SLAs, and the whole month's fee is given back to our
customers."
"Also, if the user has Office 2010 on their PC, then all of the documents
they work on in Office 365 are also cached locally, which means if the web
service does go down, their most recently used documents are cached on
their PC and are accessible and safe."
PayPal Suffers Widespread Outage
PayPal is experiencing an outage that is affecting most of its members,
preventing them from using the online payment service to conduct
transactions.
The problem began at around 11 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time and is ongoing,
according to a company blog post.
"Almost all our members are having difficulty logging into their accounts
and sending or receiving money from PayPal," the post reads.
PayPal didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
There are more than 87 million active PayPal accounts in 190 markets and
24 currencies worldwide.
A massive system outage at PayPal is the last thing parent company eBay
needs. In the third quarter, PayPal, increasingly important to eBay's
financial health, grew its revenue 22 percent to US$838 million
year-on-year, while the eBay online marketplace registered revenue growth
of only 3 percent.
Revenue for all of eBay inched up 1 percent, eBay said last week. PayPal
accounted for 37 percent of eBay's overall revenue, up from 31 percent in
2009's third quarter.
Fake Defragmenter Holds PCs for Ransom
Rogue antivirus products have been afflicting unsuspecting users for
years now. Some actively plant malware while pretending to remove it.
Others run a quick fake scan on the system and report dozens of spurious
threats, threats that can only be removed if you pay the product's
significant registration fee. But the latest, a nasty fake defragmenter
discovered by researchers at CyberDefender Research Labs, is even worse.
The rogue software gets onto your system through a malicious web site
introduced into search results using a technique called SEO (Search
Engine Optimization) poisoning. In this particular case the researchers
encountered the problem site searching on the phrase "Election Day
Printable Worksheets". If your system isn't protected, just clicking the
poisoned link is enough to get the malicious software installed.
According to CyberDefender's research team, "System Defragmenter
pretends to be an optimization program that will scan the hard drive to
fix any memory problems and hard disk errors the machine may have."
After it runs, trying to launch any program or shortcut on the desktop
will just trigger the error message "Scan Hard Drive". The hard drive
scan finishes with a warning that the drive has errors that can only be
fixed if the user purchases the full program. And, according to
CyberDefender, the payment page isn't actually secure but includes a
fake "verified" green address bar.
I assume that once you pay off this protection racket the fake software
fixes the fake problems it created. Even then, all is not well, as the
bad guys now have your credit card detailse.
Once the ransom-ware gets on your system you probably can't run an
antivirus scan, though a Rescue CD might save the day. Truly, your best
protection is to install a high-quality antivirus or security suite and
keep it totally up to date. You really, really don't want to encounter
this pernicious ransom-ware.
UK Police Learn How To Follow Crooks - on Twitter
Trailing suspects is a staple of police work. Aspiring British detectives
will soon be learning how to do it online.
Updated training for Britain's annual crop of 3,500 trainee detectives will
include pointers on how to track criminals on micro-blogging site Twitter
and mine Facebook pages for witnesses, a spokesman for the National
Policing Improvement Agency said Friday.
"It's a way of tracking down criminals," the spokesman said. "Finding the
sort of people they've contacted and the sort of groups they're a member
of."
He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with official policy.
Facebook and Twitter are both enormously popular in Britain and online
indiscretions regularly feature in accounts of how police and
prosecutors secure convictions.
The new training, which will be available starting in January of next
year, will also include information on how to gather clues from
computers, cell phones and other electronic devices.
Virus Breach: How to Recover
A PCMag reader contacted me with a fairly serious problem. He found a
gibberish-named item launched at startup from a gibberish folder that,
according to Windows Explorer, held zero bytes. If he unchecked the file
to keep it from launching at startup, it mysteriously re-checked itself.
Clearly he had acquired some sort of polymorphic malware. I asked what
sort of security protection was present.
The reader had McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2011 installed, but the malware
breached its protection. That's not as uncommon as you might think. I
recently ran into a threat called Tidserv that managed to install despite
protection by Norton AntiVirus 2011. The victim of this latest attack felt
his only recourse might be restoring the system back to its out-of-box
state. That sort of full system restore can wipe out month or years of
data and program installations; it's not to be undertaken lightly.
In this particular case I suggested the reader turn first to McAfee's
Stinger, a focused tool specifically designed to remove tough threats.
For a Norton user I would have started with Norton Power Eraser. Trend
Micro's HouseCall is another possibility. All of these tools are freely
available for download.
When tech support agents for some security vendors run into a problem their
own product can't handle, they sometimes turn to Malwarebytes'
Anti-Malware 1.46 for help with cleanup. If the real problem is that the
malware fights back against removal, try a free Rescue CD that boots into a
non-Windows operating system and thereby prevents the malware from running.
There are many, many tools to try before you resort to wiping your PC back
to its out-of-box state.
=~=~=~=
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