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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 11 Issue 33
Volume 11, Issue 33 Atari Online News, Etc. August 15, 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 #1133 08/15/09
~ Andreessen and RockMelt ~ People Are Talking! ~ Opera 10 Beta!
~ IE 8 Enters Browser War ~ Microsoft Word Banned! ~ PayPal's New Fees!
~ Forza Motorsport 3 Revs ~ Password Management! ~ Madden NFL 10 Best!
~ ~ World of Warcraft Leak ~
-* Microsoft Should Follow Apple *-
-* E-mails from Public Overload House! *-
-* Public Spied on 1,500 Times A Day in U.K.! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Finally, a terrific week, weather-wise! Sure, it was hot for a couple of
days, but that's acceptable here in Mew England! At last, summer has
arrived! Sure, it's late in the season for it to happen, but it had to
appear sooner or later! It's nice to be able to get outside and watch the
dogs run around or bask in the sun. Heck, it's even nice to be able to
work out in the yard for a change too.
But, in order to enjoy the weather, one needs the time to do so. Not so
for me this week; I have/had one day off this week - Wednesday. Turned
out that was the day for me to run around to get things done, and then try
to enjoy what little time was left in the day - which I managed to do.
It's been a long week at work, again. Long days or nights - it's tough to
do now that I'm older. But, we have to do things these days that we might
not have done years ago, or when we were younger. With the economy the way
it is, every little bit helps. So, suck it up I must.
So, while I enjoy the last few hours of daylight on this nice Friday evening,
so I'll let you all move on to this week's issue! Now seems to be a great
time to take the dogs out for a last run!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. I want to talk a bit about the sorry state
of the NewsGroup, but there's something I want to mention first.
I want to give a big shout-out to President Obama, or whichever of his
aides that reads my column.
Last week, I mentioned (again) that we don't need healthcare reform, but
healthcare INSURANCE reform. The column appeared on Friday evening on the
Internet, and on the following Wednesday, at one of his 'town hall
meetings' President Obama decided to change the name of this huge
initiative of his. It's no longer "healthcare reform" as he had been
calling it. That Wednesday afternoon he began calling it... wait for
it... wait for it...
INSURANCE REFORM!
Hey, I know it's probably just a big coincidence, but let's face it; how
many times do people like you and me get to say that we've had an idea
that the President actually used... and be able to prove it? Well, this
is my moment in the sun. Let me enjoy it for a bit.
Well, another week has come and gone almost unnoticed in the NewsGroup,
and I'm really starting to despair. I mean, heck, it's been three weeks or
so since there were enough messages on the UseNet to put in the column.
This isn't a good sign. I fear that with AT&T's dropping its news server
and no new services on the horizon, it's only going to get harder and
harder for people like you and I to access the NewsGroups. Harder is NOT
better. That's what I've been railing against since the early days of
CompuServe. I can remember when things started out 'equal' in the computer
world. Remember when it didn't matter if you had an IBM PC, an Apple ][,
TI-99/4A, Commodore64, Atari 400 or a Coleco ADAM? We all had ways of
getting online and accessing Compuserve... and Delphi... and then GEnie
and then National VideoTex? It was all one big digital party and we were
all invited.
Then CompuServe decided they wanted to run their service not with a
mainframe or even a mini, but with a handful of desktop PCs with 90 MHz
Pentium Pro processors. Of course, this meant that they had to find a way
of getting OUR computers to do more of the work. That meant they had to
write special software for us to use, and THAT meant that if they were
going to support all of us, they would have to write a different version
for each operating system. Of course, they didn't want to do that. So
they settled, of course, on writing software for the PC... leaving the
rest of us twisting in the wind. We all disliked it, of course, but
CompuServe was adamant: If you wanted to use CompuServe, you had to go
out and buy an "IBM compatible" PC.
Well, I wouldn't do that, so I just used Delphi, GEnie and NVN...
Until NVN closed its doors, GEnie changed its format to something
unrecognizable, and Delphi went Web-portal.
Of course, this was just after that "world-wide web" thing picked up in
popularity, and it wasn't TOO long before someone had written a TCP/IP
stack for the Atari ST. So I took the plunge and used my former online
communities as connections to the internet.
Now, if you've been reading my columns for a while, you know that I'm not
a big fan of Bill Gates. But I often wonder just what the computing world
would look like if it hadn't been for his offerings. Oh, I think
computers would still be a huge part of our lives, but I don't know how
what we not think of as "the internet" would look, or if we'd have some
of the whiz-bang things we now enjoy.
I still don't like the guy or his company, but I've got to give credit
where credit is due. He not only took advantage of the trends he saw
coming, he actually shaped those trends. How many people can you say THAT
about?
Well, that's it for this time around. Tune in again next week, same time,
same station, and be ready to listen to what they are saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - 'WoW' Expansion Leaked?
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Madden NFL 10 Best Yet!
Forza Motorsport 3!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
New World of Warcraft Races, 'Cataclysm' Expansion Leaked?
Werewolves and goblins and cats-out-of-the-bag oh my, a World of
Warcraft fansite is dishing rumors on Blizzard's next expansion to its
massively successful online roleplaying game.
Skeptical Raybans at the ready, WoW.com claims the new expansion will be
titled World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and that its two new playable races
will be Worgen (werewolves) and Goblins, stepping in for Alliance and
Horde factions respectively. Both races already factor in the game's
virtual-verse, but aren't playable.
Blizzcon 2009 is right around the corner, August 21-22, so it's about time
the tittle started tattling. But is Blizzard leaking false positives?
Could be. They've certainly done it before.
As for the hypothetical race picks, werewolves could be all kinds of
fun. But goblins? Really Blizzard?
'Madden NFL 10' Is Franchise's Best Yet
Football fans have grown accustomed to spending their Sundays in front
of gigantic high-def TVs, and they can't just drop their visual
expectations when the game goes virtual.
EA Sports exceeds those expectations with "Madden NFL 10" ($59.99; Xbox
360 and PlayStation 3; in stores Friday), and the 21-year-old franchise
has delivered its most striking, realistic-looking football video game yet.
Athlete and stadium models that looked great last year jump off the
screen with improved lighting effects and the addition of depth of
field, which blurs out the background to make the foreground appear more
vibrant.
Players can customize their team's game day look using pieces from home,
away, alternate and classic uniforms, and the game's TV-like production
is enhanced with varied camera angles between plays and on kickoffs.
Game play doesn't undergo a drastic overhaul from "09" - and that's a
good thing - as the developers at EA's Tiburon studio polished and
revamped a ton of on-field animations, especially with tackling.
Running backs fight to stay upright and keep their feet moving to fight
for a couple extra yards. Defenders dive low to trip up a receiver
trying to eke out extra yards on a cross route.
The game added gang tackles, and up to nine players can push a pile back
behind the scrimmage line or toward the first-down marker. Refs even
blow a play dead when an upright pile stops forward progress without
falling.
A new mini-game adds interactivity to fumbles, letting players mash
buttons to fight for the ball in a pileup. This could get annoying if it
happened on every loose ball, but it's used sparingly when appropriate.
Another new feature is the controller will rumble when a rusher nears
the quarterback, allowing those with pocket presence to scramble to keep
a play alive. And unlike previous "Madden" versions in which the passer
was either sacked or got the throw off, a clutched quarterback can
inadvertently slam a ball into the ground or toss a lob that's up for
grabs by lumbering linemen.
Reception animations look more realistic, even on replay, and I even
pulled off a David Tyree-style helmet catch in the end zone during a
brief Super Bowl moment.
EA Sports has long used the "It's in the game" tag line for its games,
and the phrase definitely applies here.
Zebras consult on whether a ball carrier crossed the goal line and will
call for the chain gang on questionable first-down conversions. Coaches
berate quarterbacks after a careless interception and shake hands and
chat with their rivals after the game.
You'll also hear considerably more player chatter, fan rants and crowd
chants.
The game's incredible online Franchise Mode is back, letting
Internet-connected players form leagues, conduct drafts and compete
while managing rosters and transactions through a Web browser. A new
two-player online co-op mode provides a way for friends to team up.
Frankly, it's a struggle to come up with criticisms for "Madden NFL 10,"
but even the 16-0 New England Patriots lost a Super Bowl - so here are a
few.
The computer always seems to be able to pull off a play that I can't do,
but maybe it's my lack of talent since I've been whining about that
since "Madden NFL 94." And there'll always be that occasional weird
animation, such as a 360-degree arm movement that surely should have
brought out the injury cart.
What else? Well, those sideline photographers wearing the red NFL vests
don't follow the ball carrier with their lenses.
The attention to detail in "Madden NFL 10" is astounding, and it's
almost worth giving others the controls for a game or two and just sit
back and take in all the visuals.
Four stars.
While EA stepped up the realism for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
"Madden" versions, it further pushed its Wii version ($49.99) away from
a sim into a family friendly arcade game.
After going after the casual gaming crowd last year by adding an
optional simplified control scheme, EA further diverged here with a new
visual style that puts exaggerated weight-room-happy linemen alongside
tall lanky receivers and defensive backs.
As expected, the graphics come nowhere near its big brother, but the
game is fast and fun, and the Wii's motion controls make it more
interactive.
Three stars.
'Forza Motorsport 3' for Xbox 360 Is Revving Up
The next installment of Microsoft's flagship racing franchise won't
offer any clunkers.
When "Forza Motorsport 3" is released for the Xbox 360 in October, the
latest edition of the popular driving simulator will feature hundreds of
high-end cars. Since debuting on the original Xbox in 2005, the "Forza"
games have thrust players inside virtual vehicles meticulously modeled
after real rides, a painstaking process created by developer Turn 10
Studios.
"We put our hands on every car," said content director John Wendl.
The racing sequel will include over 400 automobiles, about 100 of which
have never been parked in a "Forza" game. Several sport utility vehicles
and classic muscle cars have been added, as well as 2010 models like the
Fiat 500 Abarth SS and Audi R8. Wendl said the game's customization
system would let players pimp out even the meekest of rides.
"You can do full engines swaps, along with suspension, brakes and all
these other things that make the car way more high performance," Wendl
said. "You can get a Honda Fit to a point where it's putting out close
to a 1,000 horsepower, generating downforce and it's got racing slicks
on it. It will beat up on a lot of cars in the game."
The third "Forza" game boasts over 100 tracks, from actual circuits such
as France's Le Mans and Spain's Catalunya to fantasy tracks carved into
the terrain of Italy's rugged Amalfi Coast and Spain's mountainous
Montserrat region. Wendl said the real-world locales are copied "inch
perfect" to their counterparts, but they're not as fun as the
make-believe courses.
"Real race tracks tend not to be as visually interesting to look at
because they're designed to be very safe," said Wendl. "They're designed
for spectators, but we're in a video game. We don't have to worry about
anybody getting hurt, so when we create fictional environments, we can
build them to be visually dramatic and really fun to drive."
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Public Spied on 1,500 Times A Day in UK, Study Finds
Police, councils and the intelligence services made more than 500,000
requests to access private emails and telephone records in the UK last
year, according to an annual surveillance report.
The figures, compiled by the Interception of Communications
Commissioner, Paul Kennedy, found that about 1,500 surveillance requests
were made every day in Britain.
That is the annual equivalent to one in every 78 people being targeted.
It included 1,500 approved applications from local councils.
Each request allows public bodies to access data - which includes
telephone records, email and text message traffic - but not the actual
content of conversations or messages.
"It doesn't allow you to see the content of the message or conversation.
It's about the who, where and when - the time element essentially in
directed surveillance," a Home Office spokesman said.
Although slightly down on last year, the total is up more than 40
percent on two years ago.
The Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne seized on the
figures, saying they "beggared belief," warning that the UK appeared to
have "sleepwalked into a surveillance state."
"Many of these operations carried out by the police and security
services are necessary, but the sheer numbers are daunting," he said.
"It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this
country that the state is spying on half a million people a year," Huhne
said.
"The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning and not
a blueprint," he said.
The Liberal Democrats say only a magistrate should be able to approve a
request for surveillance, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers
Act (RIPA).
The act was introduced in 2000, to take account of technological change.
It was extended in 2003 by the home secretary at the time, David
Blunkett, to tackle serious crimes including terrorism.
In his report, Kennedy also found 595 errors in interception requests
last year, including mistakes made by the domestic and foreign
intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6.
The vast majority of requests to snoop on people's records were made by
the police and security services.
But the report found that some were granted to council officials
investigating trivial offences like dog fouling, fuelling concern that
the act is being misused.
E-mails from Public Overload House Web Site
Amid a boisterous debate on health care reform, people flooded members
of Congress on Thursday with so many e-mails that they overloaded the
House's primary Web site.
Technical support issued a warning to congressional staff that the site,
http://www.house.gov, may be slow or unresponsive because of the large
volume of e-mail being sent to members.
Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House's chief administrative officer,
which maintains the Web site, said traffic data was not available and
could not be released without the lawmakers' consent.
"It is clearly health care reform," Ventura said. "There's no doubt
about it."
Lawmakers are in their home districts for the August recess, where a
populist backlash has emerged in some quarters against President Barack
Obama's plan to overhaul the nation's health care system.
A spokesman for Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, said e-mail traffic
related to health care has exploded in recent weeks.
Sean Brown said the office has received 2,761 e-mails on the subject
since the debate heated up five weeks ago. In the five weeks before
that, the office received 368 health care-related e-mails. He estimated
that 90 to 95 percent of the e-mails were opposed to Obama's plan.
Democrats are trying desperately to regain control of the debate, with
the White House posting a new Web site designed to dispel what it called
"the misinformation and baseless smears that are cropping up daily."
House Democratic aides have set up a health care war room out of
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office. It is designed to help lawmakers
answer questions about the legislation.
Ventura said the last time he saw such a significant slowdown in the
system was in January, shortly before the House passed an $819 billion
bill to stimulate the economy.
Ventura said new technology called "load balancing" is in place to try
to handle spikes in volume. So far, the House Web site remains available
to the public.
In particular, people are heavily using a link on the site called "Write
Your Representative," which helps a voter track down their
representative by plugging in their ZIP code.
Microsoft Should Follow Apple's Lead on Windows 7 Pricing
Apple's upcoming Snow Leopard upgrade currently occupies two of the three
top spots on Amazon's software top seller list. The pre-sale prices are
$29 for a single computer and $49 for a 5-user family pack.
Microsoft occupied the same two spots last month when it was pre-selling
the Windows 7 Home Premium edition upgrade for $50 and the Professional
edition for $100.
There's a profound difference between the $29 Apple is charging, and
Microsoft's $50 offer: Apple's price won't expire.
That same Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade will now set you back a solid
$120. While one might ask why Microsoft would need to lower its prices
when its current prices are more aggressive than what they asked for
Vista. I have the answer; Consumer's expectations have changed.
People now expect to be able to buy netbooks for $300, notebooks for
$500 and premium desktops for a few hundred more.
For the person running XP on a $300 netbook, spending an additional $120
for Windows 7 is exorbitant. Ditto for the person who bought a laptop
running Vista two years ago. Many people would rather put that money
toward their next computer purchase that will be much more powerful than
they already have.
A person could argue that regardless of whether people buy Windows 7
upgrade or just buy a new computer, Microsoft sells an OS. This is
technically true, but MS has to be much more aggressive with its pricing
for OEMs than consumers. It is much happier to sell you an upgrade to
your existing computer where they pocket more cash.
Microsoft is smart to sell a family pack for $150. This allows users to
update up to three computers to Windows 7 Home Premium. This makes sense
for households and small businesses that actually own three computers.
However, there is a huge market for people that only own a single
computer that is powerful enough to run Windows 7.
For the chunk of change that Microsoft is asking, these folks might just
continue using XP or Vista, which still work fine for the overwhelming
majority of computing tasks.
IE 8 Is Microsoft's Champion in Browser Wars
Microsoft is touting freshly-launched Internet Explorer 8 as its
champion in the competitive Web browser arena, urging holdouts to
upgrade from earlier versions of the software.
IE 8 has been catching on since its release five months ago, but
Microsoft is hoping to leave behind aging IE 6 as well as much-maligned
Vista after Windows 7 operating system launches in October.
Despite being released nine years ago, IE 6 still claims 27.2 percent of
the browser market, according to figures released in July by Net
Applications.
"The reason to still be on IE 6 at this point is lack of awareness, or
the 'good-enough' problem that people are satisfied with what they are
using," said Amy Barzdukas, general manager of IE and consumer security
at Microsoft.
"Particularly in this economy, it is difficult to be cavalier and just
say update to IE 8."
Schools, hospitals and other cash-strapped operations could be daunted
by the cost of upgrading computer systems to new software.
IE 6 also tends to be used with pirated versions of Windows XP operating
system because newer software is better designed to expose illegitimate
copies, according to Barzdukas.
Microsoft reports seeing more XP use in emerging economies such as
Brazil and India where piracy rates are higher than in the United States.
A drawback to people sticking with IE 6 is that Microsoft's image can be
maligned by software deficiencies that have been fixed in newer
versions," according to Barzdukas.
"People can get frustrated with that experience and say Microsoft
stinks, or IE stinks, and base that perception on technology released
ten years ago," Barzdukas told AFP during a visit this week to San
Francisco.
"We want them to experience the latest."
Microsoft on Thursday released NSS Labs research indicating that IE 8
excels at blocking phishing and malware attacks.
In Microsoft-sponsored testing at a Texas lab, NSS found that IE 8 and
an open-source Firefox browser from Mozilla tied for first place when it
came to catching "social-engineering" phishing attacks.
"Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 were the most consistent in the high
level of protection they offered," the NSS study said.
When it came to blocking malicious software, malware, IE 8 caught 81
percent of the "live threats" as compared with the 54-percent finish by
the second-place Firefox browser.
"I think our biggest area of concern in terms of competition is getting
people onto a modern browser and protecting people from the bad guys,"
Barzdukas said.
"We don't spend a lot of time worrying about what the other browsers of
doing."
Google leapt into the browser wars last year with Chrome software that
industry insiders suspect will mesh with a new operating system the
California Internet powerhouse plans to launch in 2010.
Apple has long challenged Microsoft with operating systems and other
software customized for Macintosh computers. Mozilla's free Firefox web
browsers based on open-source software have been gaining fans.
Barzdukas said her team is "juiced" by competition in the browser market.
"I think we have a great opportunity for the industry to evolve what the
browser is able to do," Barzdukas said.
"IE is still the most broadly used browser in the world; we will
continue to evolve. We are focused and here to play."
Microsoft this month abandoned a plan to strip IE 8 from versions of
Windows 7 shipped to the European Union.
Microsoft said it will instead present customers with a "ballot" option,
allowing them to choose whether to install IE or another browser.
Microsoft said the option had been tentatively welcomed by the European
Commission, and received positive feedback from computer makers.
The Brussels-based EU executive, which wields broad anti-trust powers,
had called on Microsoft to open Windows to different Internet browsers
in order to fend off litigation.
Opera 10 Beta 3 Now Available
Before Firefox, before Internet Explorer, there was Opera. Okay, it's
not the /oldest/ graphical web client (Mosiac was before it), but it's
the oldest one that's still around. It's also one of the most prolific,
with browsers on the Wii and Nintendo DS along with excellent versions
for mobile phones. Now up to version 9.64, the Norwegians at Opera
Software have been hard at work on Opera 10.
Now you can download and try out Opera 10 beta 3. According to the Opera
site, there have been several major improvements in beta 3:
*Tab tweaks* Multiple Opera users who tested the previous betas shared
their preferences for more visual tab options. Opera has responded in
beta 3 by offering options for tab placement. Now users can view their
visual thumbnail tabs on the right or left side of the screen, in
addition to placement options on the top or bottom. Visual Tabs are
resizable and the thumbnail view is optional.
*Eyes on the UI* Designer Jon Hicks continues his renovation of the user
interface (UI) by implementing several new tweaks designed to make using
Opera even more efficient.
*Multilingual* With a whopping total of 38 languages, Opera's beta 3
aims to make it easier for users around the world to feel more at home
while online.
*Crash prevention* Opera's integrated crash logger has made beta 3 a
rock-solid ride.
*Even more Turbo* Opera Turbo has been further refined for increased
speed when browsing over slow network connections.
You can download Opera 10 beta 3 from http://www.opera.com/browser/next/.
This browser is often overlooked in favor of Firefox or Chrome, but it
really is quite good and worth checking out.
Marc Andreessen Backs RockMelt Browser Venture
Marc Andreessen is throwing down the browser gauntlet once again.
Fifteen years after he launched what was then the dominant Web browser,
the venture capitalist is investing in what could be the next browser to
make a buzz on the World Wide Web.
The inventor of the Netscape Internet browser is investing in a startup
called RockMelt. The company is building a new Internet browser to join
a market where Microsoft Internet Explorer reigns supreme, Firefox is
gaining ground, and new players like Google Chrome are looking for an
opportunity.
"Does the world really need another browser?" asked Michael Gartenberg,
a vice president at Interpret. "It's starting to feel like 1999 all over
again with browser wars and new versions of browsers."
According to a report in The New York Times, Andreessen thinks RockMelt
could come up with a new browser that is different from what's available
today. "There are all kinds of things that you would do differently if
you are building a browser from scratch," Andreessen told the Times.
Nothing more is known. RockMelt's Web site merely invites people to sign
up for updates.
"Mark Andreessen is a person with a pretty deep history of browsing
experience," Gartenberg said. "If RockMelt has piqued his interest,
perhaps there's some sort of story to be told here that hasn't been told
before. But at this point the idea of yet another browser coming into
the market is going to be challenging."
Challenging because the browser industry has already made the shift from
focusing on features to focusing on speed. Gartenberg isn't sure what
twist RockMelt might introduce that would shift browsers forward, since
consumers seem satisfied with the speed of today's browsers.
"With all the new browsers we've seen, the browser is not the
bottleneck. If you have to start measuring things with a stopwatch, then
you are not gaining all that much more benefit from a speed
perspective," Gartenberg said. "It's definitely hard to imagine
consumers looking for another browsing experience. It would have to be
something very, very different in order for it to have an impact."
Andreessen teamed with Ben Horowitz, his Netscape colleague, to form
Andreessen Horowitz in July. The firm's first fund totals $300 million.
It isn't clear how much of that was invested in RockMelt, but the firm
was founded to make investments ranging from $50,000 to $50 million.
Andreessen Horowitz described a "new philosophical approach" to
venture-capital investing: Rather than being bound by tight restrictions
on investment size or stage focus, the firm is open to committing any
amount, up to $50 million, at various stages of a company's life.
The firm focuses on investing in startups in the technology sector,
including consumer Internet companies, cloud computing, networking,
enterprise applications, and social-media businesses. Andreessen and
Horowitz may take board seats in their portfolio companies.
Andreessen and Horowitz are no strangers to investing in startups. Since
2004, they have acted as angel investors for more than 45 companies,
including Aliph (Jawbone), ExtraHop, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Paypal 'Clarifies' New Fees
Hearing the anger over new fees introduced months ago with minimal
notification, Paypal is now looking to set the record straight.
In an official blog post, director of product marketing Heinz Waelchli
explains the reasoning behind what anyone who happened upon Paypal's terms
of service since mid -June has known: If you have a Personal account,
you'll pay a fee of 2.9 percent, plus 30 cents, to get transfers from
other Paypal accounts filed as "Goods" or "Services."
Money transfers to friends and family are free, even for people with
Premium accounts. This is what Paypal focused on when announcing the
changes to its service, staying relatively quiet on the new fees for
Personal account holders.
The issue isn't so much the added cost, but the lack of notice. After
speaking to other Paypal users, I know I'm not the only one who didn't
spot the changes until I saw the money coming out of my incoming funds.
Waelchli said an e-mail went out "to all customers who asked to receive
this information," so I guess I must have clicked a box that said
"Please don't tell me when you intend to charge me more money, but
definitely tell me about all the great new services you're offering."
What really seemed to rile people up after the original story was a
quote from Paypal PR Manager Charlotte Hill: "We didn't want to make a
huge formal communication out of this pricing change, because we weren't
really adding any fees, and we were hoping it would be a more useful
experience for people," she said.
I think what Hill meant was because Paypal had eliminated friends and
family transfer fees for Premium accounts, but added goods and services
fees for Personal accounts, the sum total was nothing additional (never
mind that Paypal made a big to-do about one of those changes, but not
the other).
Whether Hill's logic is flawed or just straight-up PR spin, the point
remains that every Paypal customer, or at least every Personal account
holder, should have been clearly notified of the changes, without the
marketing hype. I hope for Paypal that it's a lesson learned.
Microsoft To Appeal Word Patent Ruling
Microsoft said Wednesday it plans to appeal a ruling by a Texas judge
that would ban the US software giant from selling its popular Word
program in the United States.
US District Court judge Leonard Davis ruled on Tuesday that Word
violates an XML patent held by a Canadian company, Toronto-based i4i,
and ordered Microsoft to pay more than 290 million dollars in damages
and interest.
He also issued an injunction, which takes effect in 60 days, that would
bar Microsoft from selling Word products that include the patented
technology.
A Microsoft spokesperson, Kevin Kutz, said the Redmond, Washington-based
company planned to appeal.
"We are disappointed by the court?s ruling," Kutz said in a statement.
"We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe
and that the i4i patent is invalid.
"We will appeal the verdict."
Microsoft was accused by i4i of infringing on a 1998 XML patent in its
Word 2003 and Word 2007 programs.
Word uses the XML language to open .XML, .DOCX, and .DOCM files.
Password Management Eases With Net Storage
Do you use your kids' names? Your pet's? Your favorite color? We all use
some dumb passwords that are too easy to guess.
Worse, we use the same ones for lots of Web sites. So if one site gets
compromised, or an employee there is dishonest, someone could start
trying out that password on other sites where you have accounts, like
Amazon or PayPal, and you've got trouble.
Browsers help out a bit by offering to remember your passwords, but that
does little good if you are on a different computer or want to try a
different browser.
The rescue comes from password-management programs. A couple of them
have recently taken a big step forward in ease of use, by storing your
login information online so that you can access them from multiple
computers. Online storage does raise some questions about security, but
it also makes these little-known programs worth another look.
I've used one called Roboform for more than four years. Like a browser,
it stores passwords on your computer, encrypting them so that they're
revealed only when you type in a master password. It fills out the login
forms on a Web page automatically. It also stores your address, credit
card number and other personal data, so you don't have to type them in
when you shop online. Because it's independent of the browser, you can
access the same passwords as you switch between Firefox and Internet
Explorer.
With Roboform, I have been able to take those passwords to another
computer, but it's been a bit of a hassle. If I signed up for a new Web
site on one computer, I had to manually copy the Roboform file that
contained the username and password to the other two computers I use
regularly.
A free update to Roboform, released last week, takes care of this
problem by storing the passwords not only on the computer, but also in
an online locker provided by the publisher, Siber Systems Inc. Every
time you create a new password, Roboform stores it, in encrypted form,
in your online locker. When you log in to another computer, the password
is automatically copied over from the locker.
The system is still cumbersome. You have to install an extra piece of
software called GoodSync on each computer you need to synchronize. If
too many passwords have changed since the last synchronization, GoodSync
pops up and asks you to manually approve the changes. The choices are
difficult to understand.
In providing an online storage option, Roboform is catching up to a new
password management program, LastPass, that's designed from the ground
up to store passwords online. Trying that, I found it slightly easier to
use - at least, it didn't confront me with cryptic dialog boxes. It also
has the virtue of being free, while Roboform costs $30.
Both programs work in Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows-based
computers, but if you go beyond that, LastPass has the edge in
compatibility.
Roboform doesn't work on Macs at all, though Siber says it is working on
a plug-in for the Safari browser on the Mac. You can access your
Roboform Online locker as a Web site on a Mac with any browser, but it
won't help you create new passwords or fill existing ones into Web
pages. This is at best a stopgap measure for occasional Mac use.
LastPass works with Firefox on the Mac, and the company says it is
working on a Safari plug-in. LastPass also has a more effective stopgap
measure for other browsers, both on Windows and Macs, in the shape of
"bookmarklets" that will fill in passwords even if there's no compatible
plug-in.
One thing worried me about LastPass: It's designed to store your
passwords online. While I'm reasonably comfortable that they're safe
from theft there, what if LastPass' Web site goes down because of a
hacker attack, or worse, because the company goes out of business? Do
you lose the keys to your online life?
No, it turns out that LastPass also stores the passwords on your
computer, where they're accessible through the browser. You won't be
able to change or update them if LastPass' servers are down, but at
least they're there.
Neither Roboform nor LastPass is a complete answer to online security,
of course. You could still be duped into entering a password on a fake
"phishing" site set up to look like your bank's. And if someone gets
hold of your master password, that person can get all your passwords in
one swoop from your online locker. In that sense, online storage of the
passwords is riskier than having them on your computer.
But even if there are risks to using these programs, they're better than
using the same password for all sites. It's probably also safer than
writing down all your passwords on paper and carrying them around with you.
If we accept online password storage as safe and reliable, then these
password managers are probably just a stepping stone to a more
comprehensive, Internet-wide identity management system. The
long-frustrated idea there is that one "ID card" that you store online
would be legible by all Web sites, and your password tells a site that
that ID card belongs to you.
Microsoft Corp. has tried to get sites on board with this model for more
than a decade and has accumulated criticism for security flaws along the
way. Now, however, there's some momentum behind a system called OpenID
that just might make programs like LastPass and Roboform unnecessary.
Most of the big Web companies, including Microsoft and Google Inc.,
support OpenID.
I wouldn't hold my breath, though. In the meantime, Roboform Online and
LastPass both do a good job. Since LastPass is free and has the edge on
browser and Mac compatibility, it should probably be your first pick.
=~=~=~=
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