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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 17 Issue 28
Volume 17, Issue 28 Atari Online News, Etc. July 31, 2015
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2015
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 #1728 07/31/15
~ Google Defies French! ~ People Are Talking! ~ "Angry Birds 2"!!
~ FBI Thwarts Tor Again! ~ NY: Facebook No to No! ~ Edge Better Than IE?
~ How To Uninstall Flash ~ Mozilla Slams Microsoft ~ Who Has No Web Access?
-* Windows 10 Entices Millions! *-
-* Hackers Used Twitter To Hack Systems *-
-* China Lifts Its Ban on Video Game Consoles *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, here we are in the last day of July! Again, I ask, where has this
year gone? The winter months sure stuck around for a long, long time - so
why can't we enjoy a "longer" summer? I guess there's no real answer to
that question!
Windows 10 is out - did you all rush out to buy or download it already?
I only have one Windows-based system running in my house these days; and
it's still running XP. While I really enjoy XP, I'm wondering whether or
not this old system could even be upgraded to Windows 10! Perhaps I should
do a little research to find out. I'm in no rush, however; I've learned
ver the years not to rush out and get the first "edition" of a new system
until a good majority of the bugs have been worked out. I've already heard
that there have been some issues with Windows 10, so I feel comfortable
sticking to my "philosophy!"
It's a quiet week, this week. Not a plethora of news, but what we've
reported this week is very interesting. So, we hope that you're sitting
back relaxed, and enjoying this week's issue!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Angry Birds 2: The Birds Are Back (Again)!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" China Lifts Ban on Video Game Consoles!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Angry Birds 2: The Birds Are Back (Again)
Mobile game maker Rovio just released Angry Birds 2. You are correct in
thinking that is a ridiculous name.
Rovio has released a dozen Angry Birds games, including the original in
2009. There was Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Space. Angry Birds
Star Wars and its sequel. We role-played in Angry Birds Epic, and we
transformed in Angry Birds Transformers. If you count spinoffs like Angry
Birds Stella and Angry Birds Pop!, were up to something like 15 Angry
Birds games in six years.
So it takes some serious chutzpah to release a game called Angry Birds 2
in 2015 and Rovio has never been short on chutzpah. Within seconds of
topping the App Store charts, Angry Birds was franchised into pop culture
ubiquity. I have an Angry Birds spoon somewhere, Im sure of it.
But, to Rovios credit, this new game actually has some new stuff in it.
Heres what to expect from the first 13th 16th-ish Angry Birds sequel.
Nothing screams 2015 like making your game free to play. Angry Birds 2
costs nothing to download, but, of course, thats how they get you.
Fail a level and you lose a heart; lose five hearts and youll need to
wait a half hour before you get more. You can use gems to purchase spells
thatll help you take down levels quickly and easily. Surprise, surprise:
You can buy those gems with real-world cash. If you fail a level but need
just one more fling, you can agree to watch short ads to gain an extra
bird. Ads, cash, or time: Nobody flies for free.
Angry Birds 2 is hands-down the best-looking game so far in the series.
Its colorful characters burst off the screen, the new backgrounds add a
sense of place and improved depth of field, and the quirky story bits are
woven neatly into the games flow. This new version hasnt just been
cobbled together from old ones.
Angry Birds 2 also introduces a few new features. For example, levels are
now broken up into two parts; waste too many birds on the first
structure, and you wont have enough firepower to take down the second
one.
Offsetting that is the new ability to choose which bird to fling, rather
than tossing them in a set order. Frequent boss fights liven up the
action, and the aforementioned spells offer a tempting way out if youre
really stuck on a level. Theres a new Silver bird, too, though it takes
a while before you get to fling her.
Despite such new bits, the basic idea hasnt changed: You still slingshot
birds to topple structures and take out piggies. You still aim for
explosive crates. You still use the yellow bird for wood and the blue
birds for glass and ice. Cut out the new resources, microtransactions,
and slick look, and this is still very much Angry Birds.
Ive played the game for a few hours now (counting heart-replenishing
wait times) and can safely report back that its good. Rovios wonderful
physics system never really gets the respect it deserves. A few smart
tweaks such as the ability to fast-forward through each shot rather
than sitting and waiting for each little chunk of wood to stop rattling
around keep the game moving along nicely. Its a legitimately fun
mobile game.
But at the same time, Angry Birds 2 cant quite get out of its own way.
Between the gems, the hearts, and the occasional ads, it feels cluttered:
There are too many resources, too many pop-up windows, too many confusing
rewards. Waiting for lives to replenish is a bummer.
To be honest, I would gladly pay a few bucks for the core game, rather
than having to wade through the annoying gates of an ostensibly free one.
I guess Rovio would prefer to take my money the slow, painful way or not
at all.
You can decide how much to give yourself by grabbing Angry Birds 2 for
iOS or Android devices.
China Lifts Its 15-Year Ban on Video Game Consoles
China is lifting its ban on the manufacturing and sale of video game
consoles in its country, which opens a large door of opportunity for the
likes of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. This expands Chinas previous
declarations of more openness for video game consoles, which were still
laden with restrictions.
The new rules will benefit foreign and domestic console makers, according
to The Wall Street Journal. Last year, China eased its ban on video game
consoles, but limited the list of welcome foreign console manufacturers
and required them to operate only in Shanghais free trade zone. This
pilot was successful, according to Chinas Ministry of Culture.
Chinese gamers have been limited to PC and mobile video games because of
the restrictions on video game consoles. But the statement from the
countrys Ministry of Culture lifting the ban, which has been in place
since 2000, will mean gamers in that huge market will have access to
Sonys PlayStation, Microsofts Xbox, and Nintendos Wii consoles. The
countrys strict review of video game content will likely remain in
place.
This is great news for us, a Sony Computer Entertainment spokeswoman
told The Wall Street Journal.
The gaming market in China is estimated to be worth $22.2 billion this
year, according to gaming research firm Newzoo BV. China is second only to
Japan when it comes to digital gaming in Asia, according to SuperData
Research.
The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are already available in China, though
sales have been rather unimpressive. Only about 550,000 of those two
consoles are expected to sell in the country this year.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Hackers Used Twitter To Target US Systems
Russian-based hackers are using malicious software concealed in Twitter
images to relay commands and steal data from US computer networks,
security researchers said this week.
A report by the security firm FireEye examined stealth techniques used by
hacker groups believed to be sponsored by the Russian government.
"Using a variety of techniques - from creating an algorithm that generates
daily Twitter handles to embedding pictures with commands - the
developers... have devised a particularly effective tool," FireEye said
in the report released Wednesday.
Security researchers previously linked Russian-based hacker groups to
efforts to penetrate computer networks at the White House and elsewhere.
FireEye said this group, dubbed APT29, is probably sponsored by the
Russian government. It has been active since at least late 2014,
according to the researchers.
The report said this particular attack tool, dubbed "Hammertoss,"
generates and looks for a different Twitter handle each day and seeks to
blend in with normal traffic on the messaging platform.
Inside images generated in tweets, the hackers insert malicious code that
enables them to steal data or gain access to computers that view the
images.
"While the image appears normal, it actually contains steganographic
data," or the practice of concealing a message, image or file within
another message, according to FireEye.
The technique "undermines network defenders' ability to identify Twitter
accounts used for (attacks), discern malicious network traffic from
legitimate activity and locate the malicious payloads downloaded by the
malware," the report said.
"This makes Hammertoss a powerful backdoor at the disposal of one of the
most capable threat groups we have observed."
Google Refuses French Order To Apply "Right To Be Forgotten" Globally
Google Inc is refusing to bow to an order from the French privacy watchdog
to scrub search results worldwide when users invoke their "right to be
forgotten" online, it said on Thursday, exposing itself to possible fines.
The French data protection authority, the CNIL, in June ordered the search
engine group to de-list on request search results appearing under a
person's name from all its websites, including Google.com.
That stemmed from a ruling in May last year by the European Court of
Justice that European residents can ask search engines, such as Google or
Microsoft Corp's Bing, to delete results that turn up under a search for
their name when they are out of date, irrelevant or inflammatory, the
so-called right to be forgotten.
Google complied with the ruling and has since received more than a quarter
of a million removal requests, according to its transparency report. It
has accepted about 41 percent of them.
However, it has limited removals to its European websites, such as
Google.de in Germany or Google.fr in France, arguing that over 95 percent
of searches made from Europe are done through local versions of Google.
In a blog post on Thursday, the U.S. company said it believed no one
country should have the authority to control what content someone in a
second country can access.
"We've worked hard to implement the right to be forgotten ruling
thoughtfully and comprehensively in Europe, and well continue to do so,"
wrote Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel. "But as a matter
of principle, therefore, we respectfully disagree with the CNILs
assertion of global authority on this issue and we have asked the CNIL
to withdraw its formal notice."
The CNIL said it would look into Google's appeal and decide whether to
accept it in two months.
In case of a rejection Google may face fines, albeit small compared with
the company's turnover.
"We have taken note of Google's arguments which are partly of a political
nature. The CNIL, on the other hand, has relied on a strictly legal
reasoning," said a spokeswoman.
Google warned that applying the right to be forgotten globally would
trigger a "race to the bottom" where "the Internet would only be as free
as the world's least free place".
Its stance was upheld in February by a group of experts appointed by the
company to guide it on how to apply the landmark ruling.
"Global de-listing remains too controversial without an international
agreement," said Luciano Floridi, a professor at Oxford University who
was on the panel advising Google.
However, European regulators and some legal experts think Google ought to
apply the ruling globally as it is too easy to circumvent it by switching
from one version of Google to another.
FBI Again Thwarts Tor To Unmask Visitors to A Dark Web Child Sex Abuse Site
The FBI has once again launched its harpoons into the Deep Web, piercing
the anonymizing layers of Tor to drag out the identities of two New York
men who were indicted earlier this month on charges of possessing child
abuse images.
The FBI doesn't reveal how it bypasses Tor to track down the true IP
addresses it's designed to obscure.
(One exception was when the US government found itself defending the
methods with which agents, without a warrant, managed to pull back the
curtain and reveal the location of the hidden website for Silk Road.)
Some observers have suggested that court documents hint at the possibility
of the FBI having planted a drive-by installation of some kind of malware
to unmask the two men who allegedly possessed child porn.
As Motherboard reports, Stanford computer science and law expert Jonathan
Mayer spotted a passage that journalist Nate Raymond had uncovered in the
filings and which Mayer says confirms that the FBI deployed malware -
what's called a "Network Investigative Technique" in the court filing -
to obtain the men's real IP addresses.
Foiling Tor to pull out the true identities behind the terrorists,
paedophiles, gun-runners, drug dealers, sex traffickers and other serious
criminals on the Deep Web has picked up steam in the past few years, as
has interest in the FBI's techniques to do it.
But while the FBI used some sort of IP-revealing trick, that doesn't
necessarily mean there's zombie malware running riot through the world,
downloading onto innocent people's computers.
As Naked Security's Paul Ducklin points out, the FBI doesn't necessarily
need to install malware to have a good chance of figuring out who or where
you really are.
It doesn't require a drive-by download or a true drive-by-install onto the
computers of all visitors to the Dark Web site.
The FBI appears to have enough tools in its kit that agents don't need to
permanently plant something onto your computer.
Rather, a transient, one-shot shellcode payload is sufficient - no
persistence needed (that's a fancy word for software that unexpectedly
keeps on running after you reboot, or log out and back in, or even just
after you close your browser).
Just a link that ties some anonymous traffic to a specific computer during
one specific time slot, paired with whatever other evidence the
prosecution presents, would surely be enough to press charges.
While there's been a lot written about how difficult it is for law
enforcement agencies such as the FBI to deal with the Dark Web, the
reality is that in the past few years, we've seen:
The Dark Web isn't necessarily all that tough to map. One researcher, for
example, has been making a map, pulled from the places on the normal,
indexed internet where users talk about the Dark Web and direct each other
to specific hidden sites. Granted, while many parts aren't all that hard
to find or visualise, mapping this land still entails tracking a
fast-moving target: some 10% of sites posted on Pastebin are deleted
within 48 hours, given that most are set up temporarily by criminals to
point to illegal services before quickly being deleted.
We might be overestimating how many sites are out there. It's been
estimated that the Dark Web only has about 7000 active sites at any one
time. How much of those are devoted to images of child abuse? There's an
interesting, though unverified, post on Reddit from an admitted pedophile
who says there are very few, in spite of what the media describes as a
Deep Web awash in child porn:?Of the hundred or so advertised onion
[child porn] sites, only about 5 are imageboards or communities actively
trading [child porn]. The rest of the sites are stories, links, and other
non [child porn] material. Lack of new material and few onion [child
porn] sites the past years made users open to trying the honeypot site to
see if a server with new material was made.
NASAs mission to explore the universe now includes the Deep Web. It
recently joined up with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) on its Memex program, which is working to access and catalog
this mysterious online world. Memex tools were actually used by law
enforcement to track down sex traffickers for about a year before Memex
was revealed.
A number of investigations have used undercover policy, malware and/or
clever technology. One example is Silk Road, once one of the top markets
for illicit drugs and other contraband and services. The FBI didn't foil
Tor to get at Silk Road just once, mind you: it took it down multiple
times. The site's reboot, Silk Road 2.0, was taken down after a
successful, 6-month attack on Tor.
It matters whether the recent bust involved a so-called watering hole
attack, which would have downloaded malware onto the computer of every one
of the unnamed site's 200,000+ visitors, many of whom well may have been
innocent when it comes to possessing child porn.
If that's what the FBI did in fact use, it was not only an impressive feat
- given that it was done with only one search warrant - but also a
worrisome one from a legal standpoint, given that such a so-called
"general warrant" is extraordinarily broad.
But the fact is, we don't really know how the FBI got the true IP
addresses of the men it indicted.
All we know is that it's got far more than just one way to peel an onion.
Facebook Can't Say 'No' to New York, Says New York
Here's the story so far.
Back in 2013, New York (the state, not just the city) decided to take on
a bunch of public servants it said were fraudsters.
The state alleged that close to 400 employees, including police officers,
were benefits cheats, claiming illnesses and disabilities they didn't
have.
By all accounts, this wasn't just a case of a few staff throwing a few
sickies.
Reuters reports that the state has already recovered nearly $25,000,000 in
paid-out benefits, an average of more than $60,000 each for everyone
fingered in the investigation.
Some of those under investigation even allegedly used the 9/11 terrorist
attacks as a bogus reason why they were unable to function normally.
Unsurprisingly, part of the evidence an important part, one imagines
involved information published on social media.
(Simply put, if you're incapacitated enough that you can't get out of bed,
you're not supposed to be snapped on the beach playing volleyball with
your buddies.)
As Reuters wryly put it:
Prosecutors said Facebook pages showed public employees who claimed to be
disabled riding jet skis, playing golf and participating in martial arts
events.
As you can imagine, that meant a raft of "please hand over user data"
warrants served on Facebook.
In 2014, Facebook complied with the warrants, but only under protest.
The social networking giant then mounted a legal appeal, effectively on
behalf of all its users, to argue that this sort of broad-brush warrant
should not be allowed because it amounts to "unreasonable search."
That sort of thing is explicitly prohibited by the US Bill of Rights
(specifically, by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution).
In the end, apparently only 62 of the 381 people in the investigation were
actually charged, giving some credibility to Facebook's position.
But a New York Appeals Court has found against Facebook.
Interestingly, the Appeals Court doesn't appear to have given an explicit
green light to the warrants themselves, but rather to have concluded that
the admissibility of the evidence was not for Facebook to challenge.
In other words, Facebook was duty-bound to hand over the data, and it was
up to each defendant to argue, in each individual case, whether the data
gleaned from Facebook could be used or not.
Facebook, reasoned the court, couldn't play the inadmissibility card on
behalf of all, or indeed any, of its users.
What next?
Apparently, Facebook is planning to appeal the outcome of the appeal, so
you can expect this saga to continue for as long as each side's lawyers
have the will (and the funding) to continue.
Where do you stand on this?
Should Facebook and others be sticking up for everyone, implicitly
including the crooks amongst us, in order to keep investigators tightly
focused?
Or is 62 out of 381 (with $25,000,000 allegedly recovered into the public
purse, don't forget) a suitable sort of prosecution-to-search ratio?
How To Uninstall Flash on Your Computer and Make The Internet A Better Place
Ugh. Flash. The technology that just about everyone hates and that still
just wont die. While Flash is in its last throes out now that YouTube,
Twitch and Mozillas Firefox browser have moved away from it, plenty of
other websites still use it to deliver both video and games, among other
things. Now a new movement called Occupy Flash has started up to get web
users to give Flash one final big push over the cliff by uninstalling it
on their computer or disabling it in their browsers.
To help people get rid of Flash on their devices, Occupy Flash has
helpfully posted links to instructions for removing Flash from different
platforms. Below weve written up a quick summary.
Uninstall Flash on Windows:
Download and install the Windows Flash uninstaller from Adobe here.
Close down all browsers and any other programs that use Flash.
Open up the uninstaller program and just click Uninstall and it should
do all the work for you.
To check if the uninstall was success, click on the Start menu and click
Run. Then paste C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash into the query box. If
the installation was successful, there will be no folders found. If there
are still folders lurking about, you can delete them manually.
Uninstall Flash on Mac:
If youre running OS X 10.6 or later, youll want to use this uninstaller.
If youre running OS X 10.4 or 10.5, youll want to use this uninstaller.
For OS 10.3 and earlier, use this uninstaller.
In the Safari browser, select Window > Downloads. Open the uninstaller by
double clicking it.
Close all your browsers and then click Uninstall to remove Flash.
You may also want to delete the following directories after uninstalling
Flash: /Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player and
/Library/Caches/Adobe/Flash\ Player
Disabling Flash from Google Chrome browser:
In your browsers address bar, type in chrome:plugins.
Locate Flash and click disable.
And thats it! Flash will hopefully be gone from your computer and
websites that are still using it (were looking at you, Google Analytics!)
will hopefully get the hint that its time to move on to a new technology.
Windows 10 Entices Millions in First Day
Some 14 million people installed the Windows 10 operating system in the
first 24 hours following its release, Microsoft said, calling the response
"overwhelmingly positive."
The company said its new operating system aimed at computers, mobile
devices and other gadgets got off to a strong start toward its goal of
reaching one billion devices.
"We're humbled and grateful to see the response to Windows 10," corporate
vice president Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post late Thursday.
"We have seen unprecedented demand for Windows 10, with reviews and
customer feedback overwhelmingly positive around the globe."
The stakes are high for Microsoft as it pushes out the new operating
system for both traditional computers and mobile devices such as tablets
and smartphones.
The company is hoping the new system can help it gain traction in mobile,
where it lags behind Google Android and Apple iOS, and in emerging
technologies for computing.
Windows 10 - Microsoft skipped directly from Windows 8, which got a
lackluster response - is being offered as a free upgrade for most devices,
making it possible to be available quickly on billions of devices.
It will allow for voice, pen and gesture input, and in some cases
biometric identification for improved security.
Mehdi said the company is rolling out the software in phases to make the
transition easier.
"Our top priority has been ensuring that everyone has a great upgrade
experience, so, we are carefully rolling out Windows 10 in phases,
delivering Windows 10 first to our Windows Insiders," he said.
"While we now have more than 14 million devices running Windows 10, we
still have many more upgrades to go before we catch up to each of you that
reserved your upgrade."
In one sour note, the chief executive of Mozilla, which makes the Firefox
Web browser, complained that Windows 10 imposes the new Edge browser as
the default option, overriding choices made by users.
"The update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the
choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want,
and replace it with the Internet experience Microsoft wants them to
have," Mozilla CEO Chris Beard said in an open letter to his Microsoft
counterpart Satya Nadella.
Beard said the new operating system makes it more complicated to choose a
competing browser such as Firefox.
"It now takes more than twice the number of mouse clicks, scrolling
through content and some technical sophistication for people to reassert
the choices they had previously made in earlier versions of Windows,"
Beard said.
"It's confusing, hard to navigate and easy to get lost."
Beard urged Microsoft to "respect people's right to choice and control of
their online experience by making it easier, more obvious and intuitive
for people to maintain the choices they have already made through the
upgrade experience."
Mozilla Boss Slams Microsoft for Lack of Browser Choice in Windows 10
Mozilla chief executive Chris Beard has written an open letter to
Microsoft's Satya Nadella, criticising the company's decision to make Edge
the default browser in Windows 10, even if the user is updating from a
system that previously used Chrome or Firefox as the default.
Mr Beard said he was "deeply disappointed" with the decision, accusing
Mr. Nadella of throwing away the choice his customers have made about the
internet experience they want, and replacing it with the internet
experience Microsoft wants them to have.
He said that, while it is still technically possible to preserve peoples
previous settings and defaults, it now takes "more than twice the number
of mouse clicks, scrolling through content and some technical
sophistication" for people to reassert their choices.
"These changes arent unsettling to us because were the organisation that
makes Firefox. They are unsettling because there are millions of users who
love Windows and who are having their choices ignored, and because of the
increased complexity put into everyones way," he said.
"We strongly urge you to reconsider your business tactic here and again
respect peoples right to choice and control of their online experience."
Microsoft said that its priority with Windows 10 was to make the upgrade
experience as simple as possible, and that it aimed to provide a "cohesive
experience" following the upgrade.
"During the upgrade, consumers have the choice to set defaults, including
for web browsing. Following the upgrade, they can easily choose the
default browser of their choice," a spokesperson said.
"As with all aspects of the product, we have designed Windows 10 as a
service; if we learn from user experience that there are ways to make
improvements, we will do so.
This is not the fist time Microsoft has faced controversy over its
decision to install a default browser on Windows. In 2009, Microsoft was
accused by the European Union of abusing its dominance to stifle
competitors to its Internet Explorer web browser.
As a remedy, in 2010, Microsoft agreed to offer Windows buyers a choice of
alternatives such as Googles Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari
when they first booted up their new operating system.
In 2013, the EU fined Microsoft £485 million, after the company omitted
the ballot from Windows 7 Service Pack 1 for 14 months, from May 2011
until July 2012. Microsoft claimed it was a "technical error" and an
oversight, but the Competition Commission levied a fine nonetheless.
However, the obligations imposed by that decision expired in 2014, and
Microsoft now no longer browser choice screen when users first install
Windows.
6 Reasons Microsoft Edge Is A Better Browser Than Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer is the oldest browser on the market, with a lineage
dating back to 1995. And in that 20-year-old browser theres a lot of
20-year-old code, supporting a lot of standards that are no longer in
use. At the same time, new technologies and standards evolved for
browsers, and IE has proved to be a laggard.
So it was high time for a clean-sheet redesign a whole new browser from
the bottom up. And with Windows 10, we get it, in the form of Microsoft
Edge. (Yes, Microsoft wants us to keep that Microsoft in there, just as
Google does with Google Chrome.) Heres what we think youll find most
exciting in Microsofts brand new browser.
First, heres whats not in Microsoft Edge: a slew of old technologies
that are no longer common on the Web. They include:
ActiveX: HTML 5 replaces ActiveX controls. However, Microsoft Edge will
still support Adobe Flash which may or may not be good news.
Browser Helper Objects (BHOs): HTML and JavaScript replace BHOs, which
date back to the COM object days of the 1990s.
VBScript: JavaScript replaces old Visual Basic code.
Vector Markup Language: Microsofts old XML language for 2D graphics has
been replaced by Scalable Vector Graphics.
Whats all that mean to you? Faster load times (since the browser isnt
uselessly checking for instances of standards that arent there anymore).
If for some reason you do need to load a page that uses any of these old
technologies, you can still use IE; it will still be there on your
Windows 10 system.
Microsoft Edge will come with a new rendering engine (Microsoft EdgeHTML)
to replace the Trident engine that powered Internet Explorer for decades.
The result should be that webpages appear on the screen a lot faster.
Microsoft Edge does a bunch of little, behind-the-scenes things to make
browsing the Web safer. For example, it renders each individual page
inside a sandbox so if there happens to be malicious software on a
page, it wont be able to break out of that pages browser process to do
anything like access your hard drive.
Microsoft Edge also implements some new Internet security standards,
including HTTP Strict Transport Security (to make Web connections more
secure) and HTML 5 Content Security Policy (to protect against cross-site
scripting attacks).
Not surprisingly, Microsoft Edge is tightly integrated with Microsofts
Bing search service and with Cortana, Windows 10s new virtual assistant.
That combination should make finding the information you need a lot
faster and easier.
So, just as the URL bar in Googles Chrome browser quickly connects you to
Googles search tools, so is Microsoft Edge optimized for finding online
stuff with Bing. Itll also improve search results by inferring what you
may want or need based on previous searches and on your browsing history.
And thanks to Cortanas support for natural-language queries, youll be
able to type questions into Microsoft Edges address bar and get answers
immediately, without having to perform a full Web search.
Internet Explorer supported browser extensions, but Microsoft Edge
improves that support. Thats because the new browsers extensions can be
built on the same JavaScript and HTML code that developers already use for
extensions that work with Google Chrome and Firefox. Microsoft claims that
extensions for those other browsers will be convertible to Microsoft Edge
with only a few tweaks.
That should mean more/better extensions and add-ons for you.
The only bad news: Microsoft Edge wont have this revamped extension
support when Windows 10 initially launches. It will come via an update at
a later point.
Everybody shares links, but Microsoft Edge adds the ability to mark up
those shared webpages with the electronic equivalent of sticky notes and
highlights.
Tap the Make a Web Note button on the Microsoft Edge toolbar, and you can
leave notes on a page for others. The Save button will allow you to save
the note to Microsoft OneNote, your bookmarks, or your reading list; you
can also use the Share button to share your marked-up note.
Who Are The Americans Without Internet Access?
In 2000, only half of American adults used the Internet. Now, 85 percent
are connected, and many cannot imagine living any other way. But what
about the unconnected 15 percent?
People over the age of 50 or who live in rural areas, have less
education, make less money, or are Black or Hispanic are less likely to
be plugged in, according to recent data from the Pew Research Center
though these factors have different levels of influence.
After the dramatic growth in the number of Internet users between 2000
and 2015, stats have leveled off in recent years. The percentage of
adults without Internet access was the same in 2013 as it is now,
reports Pew.
A lot of the easy adopters have already been converted, Aaron Smith,
associate director at the Pew Research Center, told the New York Times.
Age remains the best predictor of who is not plugged in, the data shows.
After age 50, a persons likelihood of not connecting jumps from
6 percent to 19 percent, and after 65 it surges to 39 percent.
Elderly people face the dual barrier of unfamiliarity with
Internet-capable devices and having less money to spend on them, the
Times reported.
Income is another, weaker predictor for Internet access, finds Pew.
People making less than $30,000 a year were about 10 percent less likely
to have Internet access than those in the next highest income bracket,
according to the new data, but in 2013 only one in five of those who did
not use the Internet cited cost as a reason.
Most surprisingly for the plugged-in generation, most Internet non-users
are content to remain so. Only 8 percent of non-users wished to start
using the Internet in 2013. Even so, efforts to bring Internet to
low-income households are on the rise. President Barack Obama is
piloting ConnectHome, an initiative to bring free or discounted
broadband Internet to communities assisted by the Department of Housing
and Urban Development.
Last week, the Federal Communications Commission approved Internet
provider AT&Ts takeover of DirecTV, on the condition that AT&T expand
broadband service to 12.5 million locations, including schools and
libraries.
Families without Internet access in their homes or in local schools or
libraries face a disadvantage that perpetuates a cycle of poverty,
proponents of these programs say adults cut off from the Internet miss
out on job opportunities and resources, while kids have a harder time
completing their homework, hampering success in school and beyond. In a
January speech, Mr. Obama called broadband Internet a necessity, not
a luxury.
This is about helping local businesses grow and prosper and compete in
a global economy, he said. Its about giving the entrepreneur, the
small businessperson on Main Street a chance to compete with the folks
out in Silicon Valley, or across the globe. Its about helping a student
access the online courses and employment opportunities that can help her
pursue her dreams.
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