Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 15 Issue 21
Volume 15, Issue 21 Atari Online News, Etc. May 31, 2013
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2013
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
To subscribe to A-ONE, change e-mail addresses, or unsubscribe,
log on to our website at: www.atarinews.org
and click on "Subscriptions".
OR subscribe to A-ONE by sending a message to: dpj@atarinews.org
and your address will be added to the distribution list.
To unsubscribe from A-ONE, send the following: Unsubscribe A-ONE
Please make sure that you include the same address that you used to
subscribe from.
To download A-ONE, set your browser bookmarks to one of the
following sites:
http://people.delphiforums.com/dpj/a-one.htm
Now available:
http://www.atarinews.org
Visit the Atari Advantage Forum on Delphi!
http://forums.delphiforums.com/atari/
=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1521 05/31/13
~ Cyber Threats Danger! ~ People Are Talking! ~ New Google Probe!
~ Ireland Rejects Claims! ~ USSR's Old Domain Name ~ Win 8.1 Features!
~ Linked In Passwod Train! ~ Hate Speech Crackdown! ~ Social Media Bill!
~ Sick of Password Typing? ~ Wearable Technology? ~ New Gmail Inbox!
-* 'Atari Dump' To Be Excavated! *-
-* Maine Teens Wary of Social Media Now *-
-* Pentagon Programs Target of Cyber Threat! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Memorial Day weekend has passed, marking the unofficial beginning of summer.
So, what could happen to "validate" this? How about a heat wave? Yep, the
forecast is for temperatures in the 90's over the next few days. If today
was any indication of what we'll be facing, we're in for some hot weather!
We hit at least 95 degrees here in northeast Massachusetts today; the AC is
running at full blast to take a bite out of this heat!
So, while I try to find a way to keep cool while putting this week's issue
to bed, you can sit back and relax, hopefully!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Publishers To Receive Cut of Xbox One Pre-owned Sales!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Developers Address Video Game Violence in New Film!
'Atari Dump' Will Be Excavated, After Nearly 30 Years!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Publishers To Receive Cut of Xbox One Pre-owned Sales at Retail
Retailers will be free to charge whatever they wish for pre-owned Xbox One
games, but both Microsoft and publishers will take a percentage cut of
every sale.
Retail sources have told MCV that Microsoft has this week briefed key
retail partners on how it intends to take ownership of the pre-owned
market.
This is how weve been told it will all work:
A gamer walks into a retailer and hands over the game they wish to sell.
This will only be possible at retailers who have agreed to Microsofts
T&Cs and more importantly integrated Microsofts cloud-based Azure
pre-owned system into its own.
The game is then registered as having been traded-in on Microsofts
system. The consumer who handed it over will subsequently see the game
wiped from their account hence the until now ambiguous claim from Phil
Harrison that the Xbox One would have to check in to Microsofts
servers every 24 hours.
The retailer can then sell the pre-owned game at whatever price they like,
although as part of the system the publisher of the title in question will
automatically receive a percentage cut of the sale. As will Microsoft. The
retailer will pocket the rest.
Unconfirmed reports on ConsoleDeals.co.uk suggest that retails slice will
be as little as ten per cent. Thats a significant cut from what it has
become accustomed to from pre-owned sales and more in line with what they
would receive from the sale of a new game hence, the value of the
pre-owned market to the retailer is effectively destroyed.
These same unconfirmed reports also suggest that the activation cost for
consumers buying or borrowing pre-owned software will be £35.
When contacted by MCV Microsoft responded with the following statement:
We know there is some confusion around used games on Xbox One and wanted
to provide a bit of clarification on exactly what weve confirmed.
"While there have been many potential scenarios discussed, we have only
confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in
and resell games at retail. Beyond that, we have not confirmed any
specific scenarios. Another piece of clarification around playing games
at a friends house should you choose to play your game at your friends
house, there is no fee to play that game while you are signed in to your
profile.
Many readers are asking whether the £35 will be additional cost on top of
the price of buying the game. No, we believe that the £35 figure which
is not our number, incidentally would cover the entire transaction. If
correct this would leave retail with a cut per sale of around £3.50.
Microsoft's Major Nelson has at last offered a direct (although not direct
to MCV, incidentally) reply to our story on his website. It reads:
Over the past few days, we have been reading comments and message boards
following the Xbox One announcement. There are a few questions regarding
used games. I wanted to clarify and provide this official statement:
The ability to trade in and resell games is important to gamers and to
Xbox. Xbox One is designed to support the trade in and resale of games.
Reports about our policies for trade in and resale are inaccurate and
incomplete. We will disclose more information in the near future.
Is this a dismissal of the rumours? That's up to interpretation. The
claims that Microsoft is changing the pre-owned games model at retail are
false or users will not have to pay a fee to play pre-owned games on
Xbox One or there will be no change to how retailers sell pre-owned
Xbox games in the future would have been a denial.
That the reports are inaccurate and incomplete is as frustratingly
vague as every comment on the subject from Microsoft has been so far. The
report could be inaccurate for an assortment of minor reasons, none of
which affect its central claims.
And more to the point, if the claims are inaccurate then why not tell us
when we shared them with you prior to publication?
Again we're left in the situation of craving nothing more than a concrete
response to what is fundamentally a very simple question: Under what
circumstances will users be charged for playing a game that has
previously been registered on another user's account?
It sounds like we want the same thing, Major some clarification. We
eagerly await.
Microsofts Xbox One Controller Will Last Longer Than The Console Itself
The controller for Microsofts upcoming Xbox One console can be mashed and
smashed by gamers for the next decade. Microsoft accessories and hardware
manager Bob Brown revealed in an interview with Pocket-Lint that there
have been numerous rigorous tests the company put the Xbox Ones
controller through during its development. Microsoft tested 20
controllers over the past six months, pressing their buttons repeatedly
between 4 to 5 times per second for a total of 2 million taps apiece. The
thumbsticks are also worked over and over again to ensure reliability and
the company even conducts a series of drop tests to ensure the
controllers remain intact. The executive noted that controllers should
last between seven and 10 years, or in some cases even longer. Given that
Microsoft usually updates its console every five to eight years, the Xbox
Ones controller should still be alive and well when the companys
next-generation system is released.
Developers Address Video Game Violence in New Film
Violence in video games is always a hot topic, but until now, the debate
has been largely one-sided. As part of the upcoming film Video Games: The
Movie, leading industry figures discuss the issue of violence in video
games and what effect it has on the children and adults consuming them.
In a brutal teardown of the mainstream media mindset toward the topic,
Mikey Neumann, creative designer at Gearbox Software, Cliff Bleszinski,
creator of Gears of War, and a handful of other important industry
figures tore into some of the common misconceptions and misdirected blame
that occurs during these discussions.
Neumann dug deep, calling attention to the fact that blame is often
diverted from parents themselves and onto video games, It's weird how
when you watch the people and they go to Congress and they're angry: 'Our
kids are being corrupted.' I'm like 'Yeah, exactly. Your kids., he
continued, They're your children. You should be not corrupting them. 'I
leave them alone ten hours a day, he's getting corrupted by this.' Well
no s***. It's like finding your dad's Playboys under the bed and then
blaming Playboy."
That's not how legitimate scientific research works.
Brian Fargo, founder of InXile Productions, used the industrys strict
rating system as an example of how games are meant to defend against
underage players, Were just like any other industry that we have these
rating systems in place and theres going to be something for everybody.
This echos Neumanns point that the parent is responsible for the
content that their child can acquire, not the industry.
Bleszinski spoke to the illegitimacy of the connection between video
games and violence, saying that, People like to make just kind of a
causal link and say well video games cause violence. It's like, let's
see, so, there's more crime in the summer and more ice cream is sold in
the summer, therefore ice cream causes crime. That's not how legitimate
scientific research works.
With the discussion on violence in video games popping up every time a
tragedy occurs, its reassuring to know that key members of the industry
are ready to stand up and fight against misconceptions. Video Games: The
Movie is expected to release in September 2013, and will continue to work
against these misconceptions aimed at the video game industry.
Can Video Games Make Dyslexic Children Read Better?
Or how Rayman Raving Rabbids can make you read faster.
While the contention that video games are bad for kids is slowly,
stubbornly slipping from the public conscious, it seems that study at the
other end of the spectrum how video games might be good for children
is still very much in its infancy, and often met with scepticism and
disdain.
A recent example of this is a paper published in Current Biology earlier
this year from The University of Padua, bearing the eye-catching title
Action Video Games Make Dyslexic Children Read Better. The title is
largely self-explanatory: the study claimed to show that young children
aged 7-13 with dyslexia, a mental condition that can greatly hinder
reading ability, could read faster after 80 minute play sessions of
select minigames from Rayman Raving Rabbids. In some cases the results
were equivalent to or even exceeded the effects of a whole year of
traditional therapy. Such bold conclusions quickly drew headlines which,
unsurprisingly, were followed by criticism from some in the field of
neuroscience. I decided to investigate further.
Welcome to the Academy.
At first glance it sounds like a crazy idea, admits Simone Gori ,who
wrote the paper along with Padua colleagues Andrea Facoetti and Sandro
Franceshini. But previous studies showed that action video games
improved attention, and we believed that this could translate directly
into better reading abilities. The outcome was a pleasant one.
Simone does his best to walk me through the complexity of his findings.
Our study is the first to show how action video game experiences could
potentially be useful in remediating a developmental disorder [like
dyslexia]. Our research proved that training attention, without any
reading or language training, directly translates into better reading
abilities.
Dyslexia is arguably the most prevalent neuro-developmental disorder,
affecting a large percentage of the population worldwide. Despite this,
there remains fierce debate in the scientific community about its exact
nature. The dominant view, despite lack of scientific evidence, is that
dyslexia is exclusively a language problem, insists Simone. In fact,
attentional deficits are proved to be a core deficit of dyslexia, while a
causal link between language problems and dyslexia has yet to be found.
So, if dyslexia does stem from an attention deficiency rather than a
language problem, video games, with their unrivalled (and oft-criticised)
ability to sustain a childs attention, could prove hugely beneficial in
treatment of the condition. Its with this in mind that the use of Rayman
Raving Rabbids in a major scientific study begins to seem less
ridiculous.
Simone ensures me that the game was ideal for his purposes, allowing the
division of minigames into action and non-action categories. The
distinction was based on criteria such as speed of transient events and
moving objects, unpredictability, and peripheral processing. This
allowed the study to closely differentiate which elements of the game
elicited positive results. Only when subjects played the games that
satisfied the action criteria was there improvement in their reading
ability.
Perhaps it was inevitable that such bold conclusions would attract
criticism. Most prominent is Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental
Neuropsychology at the Department of Experimental Psychology in Oxford,
who declined to be interviewed for this article. On her high profile
personal blog she criticised the extent of the testing, calling it
methodologically weak due to the small sample groups. She refers to the
seemingly significant results as false positives that wouldnt hold up
to further testing. She concludes, If playing active computer games
really does massively enhance childrens reading, we might have expected
to see a dramatic improvement in reading levels in the general population
in the years since such games became widely available.
Criticisms [about the small test groups] are absolutely appropriate, but
at the same time applied to most research at early stages, responds Dr.
Paula Tallal, Co-director of The Centre of Molecular and Behavioural
Neuroscience at Rutgers University. The vast majority of studies that
have ever been done were special populations done with small groups of
subjects. This is what science generally does: very small, controlled
group studies to work out if its even worthwhile to test any further.
The video games are increasing fluency and speed of processing. Theyre a
scaffold upon which you can build fluency with what you already know.
Simone Gori agrees, and believes that personal motivations are to blame for
his study being singled out for criticism. The reality is that people tend
to use supposed methodological problems only when they dont like the
results. He goes on to cite a long list of papers produced in the last 30
years of dyslexia study that also used a sample size of around 10 subjects.
What appears to have been lost in the criticism is how the study defines
better in the context of reading ability. When it comes to reading there
is a huge difference between fluency, the speed at which someone reads,
and accuracy, which is the literal comprehension of language. The article
didnt claim that they improved accuracy one bit, says Dr Tallal. It
just improved the number of words per minute these kids could read. Action
video games are not teaching children to read. These children already know
what they know. The video games are increasing fluency and speed of
processing. Theyre a scaffold upon which you can build fluency with what
you already know.
There has also been concern voiced, both by Dorothy Bishop and John Rack,
head of assessment services at the charity Dyslexia Action, that
misunderstanding the studys definition of better could lead to some
parents abandoning traditional dyslexia treatment and replacing it with
sessions in front of the Xbox. Simone Gori believes such fears are
unfounded. If you read all the media that we released after our study was
published, caution was the key word. We never suggested quitting training
to play video games instead. We wanted to open up future possibilities for
dyslexia remediation.
The idea of replacing conventional therapy with video games sounds, on the
surface, deeply irresponsible. Yet it isnt unprecedented. Penelope Trunk
is a mother in the US who decided to take her sons out of school so that
they could educate themselves. This involves copious amounts of gaming.
Her youngest son, aged seven, has dyslexia, and she claims that video
games have been hugely beneficial in overcoming his reading difficulties.
We had a private tutor for my son. It was not nearly as effective as
video games, Penelope tells me. The biggest problem with dyslexia is
that it makes reading so difficult that practicing isnt any fun. Video
games are short bits of reading, sometimes just one or two word commands.
And its fun. It incentivises him to work harder. Hed only read when the
tutor told him to read. With a video game he can practice reading all
day.
Although anecdotal, this certainly supports Simone Goris theory of
attentional deficit issues as a key component of dyslexia. A video game
may not have the same level of educational content as a book, but its
appeal to young people is likely to hold their attention for far longer,
subsequently improving their ability to concentrate on other tasks such
as reading. Dr Tallal elaborates on the broader potential of video games
in dyslexia treatment.
A video game may not have the same level of educational content as a
book, but its appeal to young people is likely to hold their attention for
far longer
I was the first to develop the idea that you can use video game
technologies to build specific neuroprocessing exercises that capitalise
on the brains remarkable ability to change with experience which is
called neuroplasticity. Weve been able to work out what variables drive
neuroplasticity most efficiently. They have to do with intensely focusing
on information that individually adapts to your own abilities, that gets
harder and harder, requires sustained attention, and offers timely
rewards and immediate feedback. Video games are the perfect vehicle.
So while the Italian study was limited in some respects, this shouldnt
diminish the impact of its findings. Simone and his colleagues plan to
test further, focusing on pre-reading age children to determine if age
appropriate games at this stage in life can reduce future dyslexia
incidence.
Uncertainty remains over whether other commercial action games would show
the same benefits. Simone contends that All games that have the action
characteristics [found in Rayman Raving Rabbids] should provide the same
beneficial results. Dr Tallal is less certain. I dont know that you
can generalise. I think you would have to try other games. Action video
games is a general term; not all of them are going to have the same
secret sauce, as it were, of rapid processing.
It seems, then, that the only consensus opinion, one way or another, is
that further study is required to truly gauge the impact that video games
could have on dyslexia treatment. Certainly its too early for children
to be abandoning traditional therapy in favour of lengthy Minecraft
sessions. Yet it would also be a shame if the criticisms levelled at the
study, which, as Dr Tallal is keen to stress, generally originate from
personal blogs and not peer reviewed journals, were to hinder incredibly
promising findings. If links between attentional deficits and dyslexia
can be further established, it could position video games as a key
element of treatment alongside other techniques, and help put an end to
the lingering stigma attached to young people and their gaming habits.
If action video games help kids get better, then thats an advance,
concludes Dr Tallal. Theres more science to do, no doubt. But if the
games work, let the children play them.
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
'Atari Dump' Will Be Excavated, After Nearly 30 Years
The famed "Atari Dump" is about to excavated, as after nearly 30 years the
New Mexico landfill where the game console maker buried its mistakes the
biggest being the game E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial will be dug up by game
developer Fuel Industries, which hopes to make a documentary about the
project.
Also known as the Atari Graveyard or the E.T. Dump, the desert landfill is
the spot where Atari decided to permanently off-load tons of games that
were sitting unsold in a warehouse in El Paso, Texas, in 1983. So they
went to a dump in Alamogordo, N.M., where this week to allow Fuel to
excavate.
"That September, according to newspaper accounts, 14 trucks backed up to
the dump and dropped their loads," the blog reports. "Company spokespeople
told the local press that the waste was mostly broken and returned
merchandise consoles, boxes, and cartidges."
The move came as Atari shifted its manufacturing business overseas to
China. It also just had to find something to do with all those E.T. games.
"The rumor is that Atari decided to deal with its oversupply by simply
burying all of those extra cartridges in the Alamogordo landfill, crushing
them with bulldozers and covering them with cement," wrote in a caption
for a photo of the dump taken in 2010.
"Reportedly, other items were also dumped, including returned Pac-Man
cartridges, broken Atari computers, and perhaps even prototypes of
unreleased hardware," Schrantz writes, engendering hopes (in a few people,
anyway) that early versions of Atari's ill-fated might be among the finds.
As Western Digs reports, news of the excavation shows how the detritus of
our electronic culture can morph into artifacts.
That's not to say that all outdated technology is mere trash: Consider
that last weekend, a vintage Apple-1 computer, made in 1976, sold at
auction for $671,400, as.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Pentagon Programs Target of China Cyber Threat
New revelations that China used cyberattacks to access data from nearly
40 Pentagon weapons programs and almost 30 other defense technologies
have increased pressure on U.S. leaders to take more strident action
against Beijing to stem the persistent breaches.
The disclosure, which was included in a Defense Science Board report
released earlier this year, but is only now being discussed publicly,
comes as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel heads to Southeast Asia, where he
will discuss the escalating cyberthreat with counterparts from a number
of area nations.
While officials have been warning for years about China's cyber espionage
efforts aimed at U.S. military and high-tech programs, the breadth of the
list underscored how routine the attacks have become. And, as the U.S.
looks to grow its military presence in the Asia Pacific, it heightens
worries that China can use the information to blunt America's military
superiority and keep pace with emerging technologies.
"It introduces uncertainty on how well the weapons may work, and it means
we may have to redo weapons systems," said James Lewis, a cybersecurity
expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If they
know how it works precisely, they will be able to evade it and figure out
how to better beat our systems."
A chart included in the science board's report laid out what it called a
partial list of 37 breached programs, which included the Terminal High
Altitude Area Defense weapon a land-based missile defense system that
was recently deployed to Guam to help counter the North Korean threat.
Other programs include the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F-22 Raptor
fighter jet, and the hybrid MV-22 Osprey, which can take off and land
like a helicopter and fly like an airplane.
The report also listed another 29 broader defense technologies that have
been compromised, including drone video systems and high-tech avionics.
The information was gathered more than two years ago, so some of the
data is dated and a few of the breaches such as the F-35 had
actually already become public.
The details of the breaches were first reported by The Washington Post.
According to a defense official, the report is based on more than 50
briefings that members of the board's task force received from senior
leaders in the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence
community, national laboratories and business. The official was not
authorized to discuss the report publicly so spoke on condition of
anonymity.
U.S. officials have been far more open about discussing the China
cyberattacks over the past year or two, beginning with a November 2011
report by U.S. intelligence agencies that accused China of systematically
stealing American high-tech data for its own national economic gain. The
Pentagon, meanwhile, in its latest report on China's military power,
asserted publicly for the first time that Beijing's military was likely
behind computer-based attacks targeting federal agencies.
"In 2012, numerous computer systems around the world, including those
owned by the U.S. government, continued to be targeted for intrusions,
some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese
government and military," said the report, which was released earlier
this month.
In Beijing on Wednesday, Assistant Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang did not
directly address the allegations, but said that China opposes all hacking
and referred to an agreement with the U.S. to form a cybercrime working
group.
Cybersecurity experts have for some time been urging the U.S. government
to use sanctions or other punishments against China for the breaches.
The benefits to the cyber espionage are high and the costs are low, said
Shawn Henry, former cyber director at the FBI and now president of
CrowdStrike Services, a security technology company.
"There is no cost, there are no sanctions, no diplomatic actions, no
financial disincentives," said Henry, adding that the U.S. intellectual
property losses are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He said that
the U.S. needs to have a discussion with Chinese leaders about "what the
red lines are and what the repercussions will be for crossing those red
lines."
U.S. leaders, including President Barack Obama, however, have instead
been using the bully pulpit to increase pressure on the Chinese to
confront the problem. Obama is expected to raise the issue with China's
new leader Xi Jinping during a summit next month in Southern California.
Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said Tuesday that the Pentagon
maintains "full confidence in our weapons platforms," adding that the
department has taken a number of steps to strengthen its network defenses
and monitor for threats.
Defense contractors, meanwhile, declined to say whether their systems had
been breached. But recent filings to shareholders indicate these
companies see intrusions as a serious risk to their business,
particularly when they must rely on third-party suppliers.
In its most recent annual report, Lockheed Martin a primary contractor
on missile defense programs told shareholders that prior cyberattacks
"have not had a material impact on our financial results," and that it
believed its security efforts were adequate.
However, suppliers and subcontractors have "varying levels of
cybersecurity expertise and safeguards and their relationships with
government contractors, such as Lockheed Martin may increase the
likelihood that they are targeted by the same cyber threats we face,"
according to the 2012 report.
In a statement emailed to reporters on Tuesday, Lockheed Martin said it
has made "significant investments" in cybersecurity and that the company
was trying to secure its supply chain given that "program information
resides in a large cyber ecosystem."
Similar risk disclosures to shareholders have been made recently by
Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Raytheon. For example, Northrop Grumman wrote
in its 2012 annual report that cyber intrusions "could damage our
reputation and lead to financial losses from remedial actions, loss of
business or potential liability."
Company spokesman Randy Belote on Tuesday declined to say whether Northrop
Grumman's systems had been breached, citing company policy. But, he added,
"the number of attempts to breach our networks (is) increasing at an
alarming rate."
China Doesn't Care if Its 'Digitalized' Military Cyberwar Drill Scares You
In the face of fears from President Obama to the Pentagon and across the
globe about the increasing military might behind Chinese hacking, China's
state news agency announced Wednesday that the nation's People's
Liberation Army "will conduct an exercise next month to test new types of
combat forces including units using digital technology amid efforts to
adjust to informationalized war." You know, right after Obama and Chinese
President Xi Jinping are meeting about the state of, among other things,
a cyberwar going on underneath their noses.
The new report from Xinhua news agency adds that the drill, taking place
on a large military training field and not some underground hack-a-thon
bunker, "will be the first time a PLA exercise has focused on combat
forces including digitalized units, special operations forces, army
aviation and electronic counter forces." The terms "digitalized unit"
and "electronic counter forces" don't make it at all clear what China's
military has planned, but then again, no country is ever going to reveal
its full cyberwarfare capabilities in detail and it's not like it's
the first time the Chinese have tested the military reaches of their
digital warfare capabilities. Indeed, the U.S. was game to play along on
more than one occasion. Last year it was reported that the U.S. and
China had secretly engaged in at least two cyber war games in 2011,
"designed to help prevent a sudden military escalation between the two
superpowers if either felt they were being targeted," as ZDNet's Emil
Potralinski reported. "In the first, both sides had to describe what
they would do if they were attacked by a sophisticated computer virus,
such as Stuxnet. In the second, they had to describe their reaction if
the attack was known to have been launched from the other side." The
first went better than the second, apparently, but neither appears to
have taken place on a training base in Mongolia, as this new test will
be when it's conducted by two army corps and eight military academies in
"late June." Obama and Xi are set to meet at an estate in California on
June 7-8. Cybersecurity is on the list of talking points, the White
House confirmed Tuesday as National Security Advisor Tom Donilon visited
Beijing ahead of the summit. Defense Secretary's Chuck Hagel is visiting
Southeast Asia this week, and it's on his agenda, too.
News of China's "digitalized" drill comes on the heels of Tuesday's big
Washington Post scoop that Chinese hackers had stolen designs for nearly
40 of the U.S.'s most valuable weapons programs and 30 defense
technologies a move that could "weaken the U.S. military advantage in a
future conflict." That article followed a Pentagon report earlier this
month claiming that the Chinese government was directly connected to
attacks on U.S. computer systems, which followed the cybersecurity firm
Mandiant's report in February alleging that the PLA was connected to a
number of cyberattacks on U.S. companies and infrastructure, and a 2012
assertion from national security veteran Richard Clarke that China has
hacked every major U.S. company. Now, it appears, the secret training is
out in the open.
Ireland Rejects U.S. Senator Claims as Tax Spat Rumbles On
Ireland has rejected claims by two U.S. senators that Ireland is a tax
haven and had handed Apple Inc a special tax deal, a charge the pair
stood by on Friday.
Ireland's ambassador to the United States Michael Collins has written to
the two senators, Carl Levin and John McCain, arguing Ireland's tax
system is transparent, according to the text released by the finance
ministry.
But Levin and former U.S. presidential candidate McCain said records
obtained by their committee showed Apple paid a nominal rate far below
Ireland's statutory rate of 12.5 percent.
"Testimony by key Apple executives, including CEO Tim Cook and Head of
Tax Operations Phillip Bullock, corroborates that Apple had a special
arrangement with the Irish government that, since 2003, resulted in an
effective tax rate of 2 percent or less," the senators said in a
statement.
"Most reasonable people would agree that negotiating special tax
arrangements that allow companies to pay little or no income tax meets a
common-sense definition of a tax haven."
Ireland has been forced to defend its low corporate tax rate after the
Senate heard last week that the iPhone and iPad maker paid little or no
tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits channeled through Irish
subsidiaries and had effectively negotiated a special rate of less than
2 percent.
"Ireland's tax system is set out in statute, so there is no possibility
of an individual special tax rate being negotiated for companies," Collins
wrote in the letter dated May 29 which was also sent to other members of
Levin's Senate subcommittee.
"The memorandum to the Permanent Subcommittee refers to Ireland as a 'tax
haven'. As you will be aware, the OECD has identified four key indicators
of a tax haven. None of these criteria applies to Ireland."
Dublin has begun a diplomatic offensive to repair the damage done to its
reputation from the allegations. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said last
week Ireland would not be the "whipping boy" for the U.S. Senate.
Ireland has said that if Apple paid tax at such low rates, it was down to
tax planning where it had found a gap to exploit between two different
tax jurisdictions. Dublin has called for international efforts to curb
such large scale tax avoidance.
Apple's Cook told a conference this week that the company did not have a
special deal with the Irish government giving it a 2 percent flat tax
rate.
Yet the Senate's investigation showed the iPhone maker had paid tax worth
just 2 percent of $74 billion in overseas income, largely helped by Irish
tax law, which allows companies to be incorporated in the country without
declaring taxes there.
The Senate subcommittee identified three Irish-registered Apple
subsidiaries that have no tax residency in Ireland. One of these, a
holding company that includes Apple's retail stores throughout Europe,
paid no tax at all in the last five years.
Cyber Threats Pose 'Stealthy, Insidious' Danger
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Friday that cyber threats posed a
"quiet, stealthy, insidious" danger to the United States and other
nations, and called for "rules of the road" to guide behavior and avoid
conflict on global computer networks.
Hagel said he would address cyber security in his speech on Saturday to
the Shangri-La Security Dialogue in Singapore and the issue was likely to
come up in a brief meeting with Chinese delegates on the margins of the
conference.
"Cyber threats are real, they're terribly dangerous," Hagel told reporters
on his plane en route to the gathering. "They're probably as insidious and
real a threat (as there is) to the United States, as well as China, by the
way, and every nation."
Cyber conflict could lead to "quiet, stealthy, insidious, dangerous
outcomes," from taking down power grids to destroying financial systems
or neutralizing defense networks, Hagel said.
"That's not a unique threat to the United States, (it affects) everybody,
so we've got to find ways here ... working with the Chinese, working with
everybody, (to develop) rules of the road, some international
understandings, some responsibility that governments have to take," he
said.
Hagel's remarks came two days after news reports said the Defense Science
Board - a committee of civilian experts who advise the Defense Department
- had concluded that Chinese hackers have gained access to the designs of
more than two dozen major U.S. weapons systems in recent years. The
Pentagon downplayed the report as outdated and overstated.
But the Defense Department underscored its concern about Chinese hacking
in a separate report to Congress earlier this month, accusing Beijing of
using cyber espionage to modernize its military.
The report said the U.S. government had been the target of hacking that
appeared to be "attributable directly to the Chinese government and
military."
Asked about Hagel's comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei
said China wanted to exchange views with U.S. officials on "relevant
issues" on the sidelines of the Singapore meeting.
"We believe that on this issue both sides should sit down and carry out an
even-tempered discussion," Hong told a daily briefing, referring to cyber
security.
"We should make the cyber security issue a highlight of bilateral
cooperation and make joint efforts to maintain an open, cooperative,
secure and transparent cyberspace," he said.
President Barack Obama has made cyber security a priority of the
administration and will discuss his concerns with Chinese President Xi
Jinping in a meeting in California next week, White House spokesman Jay
Carney said this week.
Hagel told reporters on his plane to Singapore that he had invited Chinese
Defense Minister Chang Wanquan to visit the United States and a trip was
being organized for August.
Asked whether it was effective to deal with the issue by publicly naming
China, Hagel said he thought both public diplomacy and private engagement
were necessary. Public statements are necessary to let people know what
is going on, he said, but it doesn't solve problems.
"The United States knows ... where many of these incursions come from,"
Hagel said. "It's pretty hard to prove that they are directed by any
specific entity, but we can tell where they come from. And I think we've
got to be honest about that."
The problem will ultimately be solved by more private discussions, he
added. "But it has to be public as well and we'll deal with this. We must
deal with this. This is a very dangerous threat to all of us."
Hagel is due to spend two days at the Shangri-La dialogue, engaging in
bilateral and trilateral meetings with his Asian counterparts. He helped
gain support for the annual dialogue as a U.S. senator more than a decade
ago and was a leader of the first U.S. congressional delegation to the
event.
After Singapore, Hagel will travel to a NATO ministerial meeting in
Brussels that will hold its first review of cyber defense, a sign the
issue is climbing to the top of the alliance's agenda due to concerns its
infrastructure and secrets are vulnerable.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said NATO systems face
"regular" computer attacks. Of particular concern are the systems used to
coordinate military actions among the 28 allied nations.
Hagel said cyber security would be a centerpiece of the NATO defense
ministers meeting, adding "we all need to find ways, international
standards, agreements" to commit to responsible use of cyber and "deal
with these real threats."
Google Said To Face New Antitrust Probe Over Display Ads
Google Inc. is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online
display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar
with the matter said.
The fresh inquiry, which follows the FTCs decision to close a review of
Googles search business in January without taking action, is in the
preliminary stages and may not expand into a larger probe, said the
people, who asked not to be named because the matter hasnt been made
public.
FTC investigators are examining whether Google is using its position in
U.S. display ads - a $17.7 billion industry that includes the sale of
banner ads on websites - to push companies to use more of its other
services, a practice that can be illegal under antitrust laws, the people
said. Google has been drawing regulatory scrutiny around the world as it
bolsters its market share of digital advertising.
Canadas Competition Bureau is preparing to start a formal inquiry into
Googles search practices, the company disclosed last week. The European
Union is investigating Google for the way it operates the search business
and also has opened a probe into its handset unit, Motorola Mobility, over
the licensing of its patents to rival device makers. Antitrust agencies in
Argentina and South Korea are also scrutinizing the company.
Niki Fenwick, a spokeswoman for Google, and Peter Kaplan, a spokesman for
the FTC declined to comment on the probe.
Google, avoiding a potentially costly legal battle with U.S. regulators,
ended a 20-month probe in January of whether it unfairly skewed search
results by pledging to change some business practices and settling
allegations it misused patents to thwart competitors in smartphone
technology.
The company said it would voluntarily remove restrictions on the use of
its online search-advertising platform and offer companies the option of
keeping their content out of Googles search results.
The FTCs resolution of its search-practices probe came as a blow to
Googles competitors including Microsoft Corp., Yelp Inc. and Expedia
Inc. An alliance of such e-commerce and Web-search companies pressed the
agency to bring a lawsuit, claiming Googles dominance of Internet
search, combined with the company favoring its own services in answers to
queries, violates antitrust laws.
Microsoft isnt involved in the FTCs review of the display advertising
market, one of the people said.
The FTC secured clearance to move forward with the new investigation in
the display-advertising market from the antitrust division of the Justice
Department under a process that ensures the two agencies dont
investigate the same matters at the same time, one of the people said.
For the past two years, the antitrust division and the FTC have split
investigations of the Mountain View, California-based company, with the
FTC conducting a broad probe of whether Googles business practices hurt
competition and the antitrust division reviewing its acquisitions.
In the new probe, the FTC is exploring concerns about Googles growing
market share with some of its digital advertising tools and services,
including technology that places display ads on websites, the people
said.
The FTC is looking at whether Google is using its tools to force companies
to bypass competing products and use other Google properties, including a
marketplace for buying and selling Internet display ads, and features that
help companies maximize revenue, the people said. The agency is also
reviewing Googles potential to use its dominance in search advertising to
squeeze out competitors in the display advertising market, the people
said.
Some of the advertising tools came from Googles purchase of DoubleClick
Inc., which received antitrust approval at the end of 2007. The FTC, which
voted 4-1 to approve the merger, said competition among display-ad
networks was dynamic, according to a statement at the time.
We will closely watch these markets and, should Google engage in
unlawful tying or other anticompetitive conduct, the commission intends to
act quickly, the FTC said in the statement.
Googles share of the display ad market reached 24 percent during the
first quarter in the U.S. with its closest competitors, Yahoo! Inc. and
Facebook Inc., each holding less than 10 percent market share, according
to research firm IDC.
Facebook, the largest social-networking service, lost its lead to Google
last year and is expected to expand its market share at a slower pace.
Facebook will grab 16 percent in 2015, up from 15 percent last year and
less than 3 percent in 2008, EMarketer, another research firm, estimates.
Google took 47 percent of total U.S. digital ad spending in the first
quarter of this year, according to IDC.
The market positions of Google and DoubleClick suggest that the combined
firm could engage in a number of potential anticompetitive strategies to
further enhance its positions in the various markets at issue, the FTC
wrote in its DoubleClick statement.
The practice of tying, or bundling, products and services together may be
a violation of antitrust laws if the company in question has the market
power to force customers to acquire products or services together that
they might prefer to buy from different providers, said Spencer Waller,
an antitrust law professor at Loyola University Chicago.
One of the most high-profile tying cases was the lawsuit the U.S. brought
against Microsoft in 1998, when it claimed the company unlawfully
protected its Windows monopoly by keeping computer makers from promoting
Web browsers that competed with Microsofts Internet Explorer.
The government contended Microsoft hindered access to the Netscape
Navigator browser because its Java programming language let programmers
write applications that ran on any operating system, not just Windows. The
final judgment, a settlement in which Microsoft agreed to end the
anticompetitive conduct, put the company under court supervision until
2011.
Specialty producers may be very good at what they do, but if they cant
get access to their customers, thats a legitimate harm that antitrust has
addressed historically and should continue to address, Waller said.
Facebook Says Needs To Improve Response to Hate Speech
Facebook Inc admitted its systems to remove hate speech haven't worked as
well as the company had hoped, amid reports that advertisers were pulling
their brands off the social network in the face of a backlash from
women's groups.
In a blog post by its safety team late Tuesday, the company acknowledged
there had been problems with removing content that would be considered
examples of gender-based hate.
"We have been working over the past several months to improve our systems
to respond to reports of violations, but the guidelines used by these
systems have failed to capture all the content that violates our
standards. We need to do better - and we will," the company said in the
post.
The British edition of MediaWeek reported on Wednesday that at least 13
brands pulled ads from Facebook in the wake of the campaign. The New York
Times cited Japanese automaker Nissan as saying it had pulled all
advertising off the social network until it received assurances that its
ads would not appear alongside offensive content.
On Wednesday, Nissan spokesman David Reuter clarified that the company had
asked Facebook to remove its ads from offensive pages that were visited by
targeted users, and only from the British version of the social network.
He said the automaker was not changing its advertising strategy with
Facebook, with which it maintained a good relationship.
In its blog post on Tuesday, Facebook said it would update the guidelines
used to evaluate hate speech, and would encourage existing online
anti-hate groups to add representatives of women's organizations as well.
Last week, a group called Women, Action & the Media released an open
letter to Facebook, urging the company to improve its response to content
that "trivializes or glorifies violence against girls or women."
They also called for Facebook members to contact advertisers whose ads
appeared next to such content.
Facebook Cracks Down on Hate Speech Against Women
If Facebook were a city, these would be its seedy back alleys
user-generated groups filled with jokes about rape and domestic violence,
captioned over gruesome images of assaulted women.
But after protesters sent some 60,000 tweets to advertisers making note
such posts, Facebook this week announced that it is stepping up efforts
to eliminate such gender-based hate speech from the site, apologizing
that it had failed to capture all the content that violates our
standards.
The announcement came on the heels of a week-long social media campaign
by women's rights activists, organized around the hashtag #FBRape, which
brought down a barrage of thousands of angry tweets and letters on
Facebook and, especially, its advertisers.
Facebook is locked in near-constant fights over its content, ranging from
users rallying against changes to the sites layout to those demanding
increased privacy settings and more protection of their data.
But what helped lift the #FBRape campaign above the fray of the standard
social networking chatter, experts say, may have been the demographic that
launched it: women.
Women are the muscle of the social media world, making up the majority of
users on sites like Facebook, spending more time and creating more
content than their male counterparts, according to Lee Rainie, director
of the Pew Research Centers Internet Project.
Want your top political issues explained? Get customized DC Decoder
updates.
Were not a marginalized group on these sites, says Soraya Chemaly, a
writer and activist who was among the leading organizers of the campaign.
This isnt some pet project special interest theyre supporting its
more than half their users.
So far anyway, Facebook seems to have gotten the message. In a blog post
Tuesday evening, the company announced that it would update its
guidelines around hate speech, ensure its employees were accurately
identifying prohibited content on the site, and take steps to prevent
users from posting such content anonymously.
When people have to use their real names, it enforces social norms,
says Gerald Kane, an associate professor of information systems at Boston
College and an expert on social media. Youre not going to misbehave as
much if your friends are watching you.
Organized by activist groups Women, Action, and the Media (WAM) and the
Everyday Sexism Project, along with Ms. Chemaly, the #FBRape campaign
began last week with a call for Facebook users to contact companies whose
ads were appearing on pages beside the violent and misogynist content and
call for them to withdraw their advertising from the site.
At issue were not just the violent images themselves, but also the fact
that Facebook was failing to delete them when users flagged the photos as
hate speech. In one screenshot posted to the WAM site, a user had
reported an image of a woman shot in the head with the caption, I like
her for her brains. Below it, an automated response from the site read,
We reviewed the photo you reported, but found it doesnt violate
Facebooks Community Standard.
Over the next week, activists sent out more than 5,000 e-mails and more
than 60,000 tweets to advertisers, according to WAM, prompting more than
a dozen companies including Nissan to pull ads from Facebook.
Facebook, meanwhile, responded almost immediately to the campaign, says
Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of WAM. She says the protest's
organizers were in touch with the company by Thursday of last week, and
had begun discussing how the company could improve its policies.
Facebook, after all, has a reason to be responsive in this case, Ms.
Friedman says. Were the reason these sites exist, the people on whose
data these companies make money. And women increasingly arent accepting
their treatment in these spaces.
A study released in April by the Pew Internet Project found that, of all
Internet users, 71 percent of women used social networking sites,
compared with just 62 percent of men. Female social media users in North
America spend an average of 12 hours on social media each week, according
to a separate study by the global communications firm Weber Shandwick.
So theres good reason to take their interests under account, Mr. Kane
says. At the same time, Facebook doesnt want to police the boundaries of
good taste, and anyway, a site with a user base of 1 billion can do only
so much to ward off bad apples.
They dont want to be purveyors of hate, he says, but a certain segment
of the population will probably always be ugly.
Maine Teens Wary of Social Media After Homicide
The death of a 15-year-old Maine girl allegedly killed in a bizarre
kidnapping plot involving a fake Facebook profile has prompted some of her
classmates to scale back their social media use or ditch it altogether.
Nichole Cable was allegedly killed by an acquaintance who used a fake
profile to lure her from her home, then kidnap her in hopes of becoming a
hero when he miraculously "found" her, according to state police.
Meanwhile, rumor and speculation ran rampant on social media following
Cable's disappearance and the charging of a 20-year-old who knew her.
Ashley Pattershall said Thursday some of her classmates at Old Town High
School have opted to deactivate their Facebook accounts.
"A couple of my friends have deleted their Facebook, and some of my
friends don't have Facebook anymore," said the 16-year-old Pattershall,
who was a close friend of Cable.
Kyle Dube, 20, of Orono, used a phony Facebook account created in the name
of a student from another school to lure Cable outside her Glenburn home,
where he abducted and killed her on May 12, authorities said. Her body was
found more than a week later in a wooded area of Old Town, north of
Bangor.
Dube told others he wore a disguise to kidnap Cable and intended to return
later and find her safe and sound, police said. Instead, he discovered she
was dead when he went to check on his duct-taped victim in the back of his
father's pickup.
Authorities said Dube told his girlfriend and brother that he dumped
Cable's body and covered it with sticks. He was formally charged Wednesday
with murder and kidnapping.
Dube's attorney, Stephen Smith, did not immediately return a phone call
left at his Bangor office on Thursday.
Cable's mother, Kristin Wiley, said Thursday that she wants to brainstorm
with school principals about how to help teens be safe online. A police
officer also talked to her about doing seminars on teen safety, she said.
"We need to get awareness out. Even the Bible says, 'Do not stand idle
by.' I'm not going to stand idle. For my daughter, I will not stand idle.
I will do whatever I can," she said from her Glenburn home.
According to state police, detectives interviewed a young man named Bryan
Butterfield a day after Cable was reported missing. Butterfield told
police that someone had created a phony Facebook account in his name, and
police traced it to Dube's parents' house in Orono.
Cable was frequently contacted by the fake Butterfield and agreed to meet
with him at the end of her road to get some marijuana the night she went
missing, according to the state police affidavit.
Social media's role in Nichole's disappearance and death was a wakeup
call for students, many of whom have become paranoid about online
contacts, said Pattershall, Cable's friend.
Pattershall, who said the fake Butterfield account had contacted her and
others, said she cleaned out her Facebook "friend" lists, making sure
only confirmed friends and family members can communicate with her.
Wiley choked up as she talked about how her neighbors looked out for each
other on the dirt road with a handful of houses in Glenburn.
She still has difficulty fathoming the state police account of Dube
jumping out to grab her daughter at the end of the road.
"It's very important that we prevent this from happening again, not just
in our community but any community, Wiley said.
Wiley said her daughter would want her to act.
"She would not want anyone else to go through this."
USSR's Old Domain Name Attracts Cybercriminals
The Soviet Union disappeared from the map more than two decades ago. But
online an 'e-vil empire' is thriving.
Security experts say the .su Internet suffix assigned to the USSR in 1990
has turned into a haven for hackers who've flocked to the defunct
superpower's domain space to send spam and steal money.
Capitalist concerns, rather than Communist nostalgia, explain the move.
"I don't think that this is really a political thing," Oren David, a
manager at security firm RSA's anti-fraud unit, said in a recent
telephone interview. David noted that other obscure areas of the
Internet, such as the .tk domain associated with the South Pacific
territory of Tokelau, have been used by opportunistic hackers.
"It's all about business," he said.
David and others say scammers began to move to .su after the
administrators of Russia's .ru space toughened their rules back in late
2011.
Group-IB, which runs one of Russia's two official Internet watchdogs,
says that the number of malicious websites hosted across the Soviet
Union's old domain doubled in 2011 and doubled again in 2012, surpassing
even the vast number of renegade sites on .ru and its newer
Cyrillic-language counterpart.
The Soviet domain has "lots of problems," Group-IB's Andrei Komarov said
in a phone interview. "In my opinion more than half of cybercriminals in
Russia and former USSR use it."
The most notorious site was Exposed.su, which purportedly published credit
records belonging to President Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, Republican
presidential challengers Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, and celebrities
including Britney Spears, Jay Z, Beyonce and Tiger Woods. The site is now
defunct.
Other Soviet sites are used to control botnets the name given to the
networks of hijacked computers used by criminals to empty bank accounts,
crank out spam, or launch attacks against rival websites.
Internet hosting companies generally eliminate such sites as soon as
they're identified. But Swiss security researcher Roman Huessy, whose
abuse.ch blog tracks botnet control sites, said hackers based in Soviet
cyberspace can operate with impunity for months at a time.
Asked for examples, he rattled off a series of sites actively involved in
ransacking bank accounts or holding hard drives hostage in return for
ransom brazenly working in the online equivalent of broad daylight.
"I can continue posting this list for ages," he said via Skype.
The history of .su goes back to the early days of the Internet, when its
architects were creating the universe of country code suffixes meant to
mark out a website's nationality. Each code like .fr for France or .ca
for Canada was meant to correspond to a country.
Some Cold War-era domain names such as .yu for Yugoslavia or .dd for
East Germany evaporated after the countries behind them disappeared. But
the .su domain survived the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and
the creation of a .ru domain in 1994, resisting repeated attempts to wipe
it from the Web because, unlike other defunct domains, those behind .su
refused to pull the plug on both commercial and patriotic grounds.
With more than 120,000 domains currently registered, mothballing .su now
would be a messy operation.
"It's like blocking .com or .org," said Komarov. "Lots of legitimate
domains are registered there."
Among them are stalin.su, which eulogizes the Soviet dictator and the
English-language chronicle.su, an absurdist parody site.
But experts say many are fraudulent, and even the organization behind .su
accepts it has a problem on its hands.
"We realize it's a threat for our image," said Sergei Ovcharenko, whose
Moscow-based nonprofit Foundation for Internet Development took
responsibility for .su in 2007.
Ovcharenko insisted that only a small number of .su sites are malicious,
although he acknowledged that criminal sites can stay online for extremely
long periods of time. He said his hands were tied by weak Russian
legislation and outdated terms of service. But he promised that stricter
rules are on their way after months of legal leg work.
"We are almost there," he said. "This summer, we'll be rolling out our new
policy."
Meanwhile .su has become an increasingly notorious corner of the Internet,
an online echo of the evil empire moniker assigned to the Soviet Union by
U.S. President Ronald Reagan 30 years ago.
David, the RSA manager, said the emergence of a Communist relic as a 21st
century security threat was a bizarre blast from the past.
"I thought that the Berlin Wall and my grandma's borscht are the only
remnants of
the Soviet Union," he said. "I was wrong."
Linked In Jumps on the 2-Step Password Train Because It Looks Good
A little less than a year after six million passwords got hacked from the
site, LinkedIn has added the more secure two-step verification, probably
to look just as responsible as all the other tech sites adding a step
these days. LinkedIn hasn't had a breach since the high-profile hack last
June, but after Google, Facebook, and most recently Twitter fending off
phishing the second step involves texting a passcode to your cellphone,
although Twitter makes you enter it with every login the social network
for business people needed to look more professional than ever and has
added the functionality, the company announced in a blog post Friday.
Some might call it overkill to so thoroughly protect a site that doesn't
really have that much personal information. (Though, LinkedIn members do
provide credit card details to pay for premium subscriptions.) But it's
good to get in the habit of doing a lot more leg-work to make sure, you
know, someone doesn't sabotage your rsumé. The future is in doubly sure
password protection. Plus, as far as hackers are concerned, one site is
just the gateway to another before you know it, they're inside your
email and running rampant.
Sick of Typing Passwords? Get an Electronic Tattoo or Ingest a Pill
The average person inputs a password 39 times a day, with power users
typing that string of letters and numbers up to 100 times a day, Motorola's
head of Advanced Technology & Projects Regina Dugan revealed at the All
Things D conference this week.
But even then that password, as a series of recent hacks have shown,
isn't always secure.
Sure, there are ways of authenticating beyond passwords, including
two-factor authentication which requires a user to input a password and a
code that is sent to their phone, but Motorola's dreaming up a way of
keeping our passwords even closer to ourselves - literally.
At the conference Dugan showed off two ways of turning your body into a
password. With an electronic tattoo, she said, people would be able to
just wear their password on their skin.
"We are thinking of a variety of options for how you could do better at
authentication. You can start with near term things like tokens or fobs,
but you can also think of a means of authentication that you could wear
on your skin for a week at a time," she said. "We are talking about an
electronic tattoo."
Motorola is working with a company called MC10, which makes a tattoo with
embedded sensors and an antenna. "What we plan to do is work with them to
advance a tattoo for authentication. Ten- to 20-year-olds might not want
to wear a watch on their wrists, but you can bet they will wear a tattoo
- if only to piss off their parents," she said.
MC10 has shown off this technology before but in a medical sense. The
tattoos could replace pacemakers, MC10's CEO said at TedMed back in 2012.
But Dugan is thinking beyond the outside of our bodies with authentication:
"I take a vitamin every morning. What if I could take vitamin
authentication?"
Dugan showed off a small pill. Inside that pill wasn't medication but a
tiny computer chip. "It also has what amounts to an inside-out potato
battery. The acids in your stomach serve as an electrolyte and power it
up," she explained.
That creates a signal in your body and your body becomes the password. You
can touch your phone, car or door and be "authenticated in." Sounds crazy,
yes, but this is not just "science fiction" Dugan said. Made by Proteus
Digital Health, the pill was approved by the FDA in August 2012. Its
version of the digital pill sends information to your doctor from inside
your body. It is currently being tested with placebo pills.
So when is all of this coming? Not as soon as Motorola's made-in-America
Moto X phone. Motorola's CEO Dennis Woodside said, "This isn't stuff that
is going to ship anytime soon, but having the boldness to think
differently about problems everyone has everyday is really important for
Motorola now."
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Features Detailed:
Start Button Revival and App Improvements Coming
The Start button is getting a fresh start.
Microsoft has revealed some of the changes coming to Windows 8.1 and, as
expected, it has resurrected the Start button in the left-hand corner of
the operating system to make it easier for users who choose to use a mouse
and keyboard.
The button was removed in Windows 8, the touchscreen-centric software that
was released on laptops, desktops and tablets in October.
But that's just one of many new additions Microsoft plans to add to
Windows 8.1, which will be out later this year as a free upgrade for
Windows 8 users.
The operating system is still centered around the Start Screen, which is
full of tiles or apps. In Windows 8.1, however, there are new tile sizes
and it is easier to move around the blocks. You press and hold the tiles
now, similar to how you can rearrange apps in Android.
There are other small changes, too. For instance, when you download a new
app, it won't automatically be added to your Start Screen now, it will be
put in a new app view.
Microsoft has also improved its own apps. The new global search function
will now search Bing and the Music and Photos apps have been redesigned.
It's also easier to use two apps at once now. You can still put two apps
side by side with Snap, but you can change the sizes of the windows and
now you can run three apps side by side.
The biggest app improvement though might be Internet Explorer 11. The new
browser has speed and touchscreen improvements. Additionally, instead of
having to swipe down from the top of the screen to make the address bar
or tabs appear, you can set them to be always-visble. Those tabs will
also sync across Windows 8.1 computers and tablets.
While Microsoft has heard the call for some simpler navigation around the
operating system, it also added some fun features. In Windows 8.1, you
will be able to add a slideshow of photos to the lock screen. There are
also more colors and backgrounds for the Start Screen, including animated
graphics.
Microsoft CFO and CMO of Windows Tami Reller told ABC News last month that
one of the major pieces of feedback about Windows 8 had to do with
non-touchscreen computers.
"We've focused on a number of improvements to ensure easier navigation for
people using a mouse and keyboard," Antoine Leblond, corporate vice
president of Windows Program Management, said in a blog post. "We've
improved the way you navigate to Start with the mouse by changing the
Start 'tip' to be the familiar Windows logo."
Clicking on the Start tip in the lower left-hand corner will bring you
back to the Start Screen. No, you won't get the traditional Start menu.
Microsoft will announce other Windows 8.1 features in the next few
months, Leblond said in the post. The company has acknowledged that while
100 million Windows 8 licenses have been sold since the release in late
October, users have complained about the big changes.
"We've learned a lot from customers in how they are using the product and
have received a lot of feedback," Leblond said. "We've been watching,
we've been listening.
"Windows 8.1 will continue to build on what you love bringing the latest
advancements in hardware, apps, cloud services and the OS to enable a
unique experience in everything you do."
NH Senate Postpones Action on Social Media Bill
People interested in whether New Hampshire will join about a dozen other
states in prohibiting bosses from requiring employees or job applicants to
disclose a user name or password to personal social media or email
accounts will have to wait another week.
The Senate put off a vote planned on the bill Thursday. The bill would not
prohibit an employer from obtaining information about an employee or job
applicant that is in the public domain, or prevent the employer from
investigating whether the employee is complying with securities or
financial laws based on the person's personal website used for business
purposes.
The ban would only apply to the worker's personal accounts unrelated to
the employer's business, and would not prevent employers from enforcing
workplace policies about company equipment.
New Gmail Inbox Will Auto-Organize Incoming Mail
Google is about to make some big changes to its popular Gmail that will
make it easier to sort email. Today the search giant announced a new
style and some additional features, which are set to roll out soon.
Android, iOS, and desktop users will be treated to a new inbox feature
that offers automatic organization of incoming mail into groups.
The "Primary" category will contain messages from friends and family, as
well as any other messages that don't appear in other tabs. Another tab
called "Social" will automatically contain notifications and messages
from social networks sites, like your Facebook notifications or Twitter
follower alerts. The "Promotions" group will capture deals, offers and
promotions from places like shopping or coupon websites.
Bills, receipts, and confirmation emails will be organized into the
"Updates" group, and messages from online groups, discussion boards and
mailing lists will appear in the "Forums" group.
The inbox organization groups are optional, and a user can choose which
of the five categories, if any, they want to use.
But Google isn't the first to have automatic sorting features. Microsoft
and other e-mail add-ons have offered similar features. Microsoft's
Outlook.com has a feature called Sweep, which sweeps messages based on
their categories into their own folders. Other e-mail apps like Sanebox
and Unroll.me have similar sorting features.
Google, however, is bringing its features not just to the web. Users of
the Gmail Android or iOS apps will see their Primary inbox tab upon
opening the app, but Google has made accessing the other inbox groups
easier with swipe gestures and large labels.
The new inbox features will roll out over the next few weeks, but if you
can't wait, Google says be on the lookout for it in the Gmail settings
menu. You will be able to enable it yourself.
Wearable Technology Emerging as Major Technology Cycle
Wearable computing is emerging as the type of significant technology shift
that will drive innovation in the way personal computing did in the 1980s
or mobile computing and tablets are doing currently, said Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker at the All Things D conference on
Wednesday.
While technology cycles generally last 10 years, she said wearables were
coming on stronger and faster than is typical. The change is noteworthy
because major technology cycles often support tenfold growth in users and
devices, she said in her annual report on the state of the Internet.
Many of the 150 times or so per day that users interact with their phones
- to look for messages, make calls, check the time, and the like - could
be hands-free with wearable technology, she said.
"Some people laugh at wearables..." read one slide featuring an image from
the TV show "Saturday Night Live" that mocked Google glass, a wearable
technology. As the audience chuckled, she brought up the next slide,
reading "Some people laughed at PC & Internet." The slide showed a 1999
Barron's cover trumpeting the headline "Amazon.Bomb."
Later in the morning, Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo picked up the
theme, telling conference goers that it was clear wearable technology
would play a large role in the future, even if what is perhaps the
most-discussed example - Google glass - doesn't emerge as the first
mainstream hit.
Speaking last night at the conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook stopped short of
clarifying if Apple was working on wearable products amid speculation that
it is developing a smart watch, saying only that wearable computers had to
be compelling.
He added that Google's Glass is likely to have only limited appeal.
Meeker also reviewed themes she has highlighted in the past, including the
remarkable growth of mobile technology and the Chinese economy, and the
ceding of power from traditional personal computing companies to phone and
tablet makers.
7 Tips For Checking Facebook at Work
You may be a social media junkie, hopping from one site to another. But if
your employer suspects you check your friend's Facebook wall more than
your work emails, he may be entitled to make you hand over your passwords.
Lawmakers across the country have begun weighing social media privacy
laws that bar employers from hiring or firing employees for not
surrendering an account username or password. Social media privacy laws
have been introduced or are pending in 35 states, according to the
National Conference of State Legislators, an organization that tracks
legislation at the state level. Since the beginning of this year, five
states - including Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Washington -
have enacted legislation that prohibits employers from accessing social
media passwords of employees.
But even as attempts to shield employees from intrusive employers grow,
some laws feature exceptions that allow companies to snoop. The recently
passed Utah law permits employers to request passwords for social media
accounts such as Facebook or Twitter when a device is supplied or paid
for in whole or in part by the company. An employer can also gain access
to company-sponsored accounts managed by employees.
If your state has yet to address the issue, you could fall under an
employer policy that grants wide authority in acquiring social media
information. About 24 percent of businesses monitor social media
information, according to a 2012 survey of 1,105 employees by the
Chicago-based talent management software company SilkRoad. A 2011 survey
by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics revealed that
42 percent of companies punish employees for behavior on social media
websites, up from 24 percent in 2009. The survey received responses from
485 public and private companies as well as nonprofits.
If you're worried your tweets or Facebook posts may jeopardize your job,
follow these steps:
1. Learn your company's policies. If your state lacks a social media
privacy law, your employer may have one. The policy may not ban usage all
together, but it may lay out explicit guidelines. Learn what you can and
can't do, says Tyson Snow, an employment attorney at Pia Anderson Dorius
Reynard & Moss, LLC in Salt Lake City. "With that knowledge you can
tailor your actions accordingly," he says.
2. Learn the state law. If you work in a state that does have a social
media privacy law, or is on the cusp of passing one, read up on it. You
don't necessarily have to read the bland text of the law, but newspaper
articles, magazines or online blogs, can help you understand what your
state allows under the law, Snow says.
3. Go private on your profile. An inquisitive boss may be inclined to
look up what you've been doing on Facebook or Twitter during office
hours. Without privacy settings, he or she won't have to go through a
potential legal fuss to wrangle your username and password. Snow
recommends setting your privacy settings "to ensure that someone who is
not your friend or follower or isn't a general member of the public
doesn't have access to your content."
4. Pay attention to company culture. Working for a tech savvy company
like Google or Microsoft, you may have free license to browse your social
media pages during a shift, says Terri Thompson, an etiquette coach in
Kentucky. If a policy is unclear, examining the actions of colleagues is
one way to determine when visiting Facebook or Twitter is permissible.
But Thompson says to lay the burden for spelling out the policy on the
employer. "It needs to be communicated, maybe even as early as the
interview process," she says.
5. Be mindful when using company gear. It's a great deal: Your company
provides and picks up the tab for your laptop and iPhone. But if personal
exchanges between co-workers or friends and family are edgy, if not
outright inappropriate, then isolate your use to a personal device. "If
you're an employee, and you don't want your employer to have access to
any of your information, then don't access social media sites off your
employer-provided computer or employer-provided cellphone," Snow says.
6. Self-monitor your time. The company you work for may have a lax
policy, leaving you to either keep your roaming habits in check or
letting them run amok. Thompson recommends brief exchanges and limiting
usage to breaks and your lunch hour. "What can't and doesn't need to
happen is being constantly on it," she says.
7. Gracefully guide the company account(s). Wanting to make a splash
across several social media platforms, your company may want you to take
the reins of its newly created accounts. Thompson recommends not
revealing internal deliberations and straying away from posting anything
text or images that can be construed as negative. "Be very, very careful
that you're only ... putting the company in the most positive light
possible," she says.
=~=~=~=
Atari Online News, Etc. is a weekly publication covering the entire
Atari community. Reprint permission is granted, unless otherwise noted
at the beginning of any article, to Atari user groups and not for
profit publications only under the following terms: articles must
remain unedited and include the issue number and author at the top of
each article reprinted. Other reprints granted upon approval of
request. Send requests to: dpj@atarinews.org
No issue of Atari Online News, Etc. may be included on any commercial
media, nor uploaded or transmitted to any commercial online service or
internet site, in whole or in part, by any agent or means, without
the expressed consent or permission from the Publisher or Editor of
Atari Online News, Etc.
Opinions presented herein are those of the individual authors and do
not necessarily reflect those of the staff, or of the publishers. All
material herein is believed to be accurate at the time of publishing.
