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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 16 Issue 04
Volume 16, Issue 04 Atari Online News, Etc. January 24, 2014
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2014
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 #1604 01/24/14
~ Apple's 1984 Commercial ~ People Are Talking! ~ FBA Warns Retailers!
~ Nintendo, 28 Years Ago! ~ Facebook vs Princeton! ~ Gmail Down for Many!
~ Click Like, Help Scams? ~ Pwnium Hacking Contest ~ Apple's Mac Hits 30!
~ ISPs, Common Carriers? ~ Broadband Speed Record ~ "Password" Not #1!
-* Judge Overturns Madden Ruling *-
-* Healthcare.gov's Poor Security Test *-
-* China Censors May Have Caused Web Outage! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Okay, so I may have caused a small furor last week; I received a few
e-mails as a result of my comments. I was pleased at the comments and
they were supportive in a variety of ways. People understand that it
takes a lot of time and work to put this magazine together week after
week; and we've been doing it for over 15 years now. People also
understand (and have for many years now) that our original focus - to
cover computer-related news - especially Atari-related in A-ONE's
original focal point - has changed over the years. Regarding Atari,
there just isn't any news that's really relative to our computing
"passion" of yesteryear. What's it been, perhaps 20 years or so since
Atari had any real relevance within the computing scene? In the world
of technology, those were the dark ages!
I still fondly remember using all of my Atari systems, and the plethora
of software that I used to enjoy using. I'm sure that we all do. I
still have it all, but it's all been put away in closets and stored in
many boxes in the house. Yes, I've been using a Windows-based computer
for many years ago. And, while it's true that they don't get the same
type of use that I had with my Atari uses, a lot of that is because my
needs andinterests have also changed over the years. I no longer spend
a lot of time playing games, doing productivity or working with a
publishing program. I still spend a lot of time online, but I really
cannot do so [well] using my Atari systems. So, I moved on to systems
that will allow me to better utilize my time - things change.
So, while I've been enjoying putting A-ONE together for all of these
years, things continue to change. As I mentioned last week, when doing
this magazine starts to become more work than enjoyment, it may perhaps
be time to reevaluate. And, that's what I'm in the process of doing.
I do appreciate the continued support, and the occasional e-mails and
article contributions - they mean a lot. I hope that continues for as
long as A-ONE remains. I'll keep you posted; we won't just disappear
one week and fade into oblivion without a whimper!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Nintendo Won Its First Console War 28 Years Ago!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Judge Overturns Ruling in Madden Football Case!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Twenty-eight Years Ago This Month, Nintendo Won Its First Console War
Twenty-eight years ago this month, Atari took on Nintendo... and lost.
In January of 1986, Atari re-released the Atari 7800 - and promptly ran
into the buzzsaw that was the Nintendo Entertainment System. Little
remembered today, the event marked the end of Atari's status as the
dominant player in the home console market.
The home console business infamously crashed in 1983, but that didn't keep
companies like Atari from churning out new systems. First launched in
1984, the Atari 7800's major selling points included backward
compatibility with the Atari 2600 and an expansion slot that could house
a High Score Cartridge. However, legal issues arising from the console's
development (see: it hadn't fully paid the console's designers yet)
forced Atari to pull it from shelves soon after its arrival, leaving it
to molder in warehouses for another two years.
Fast-forward to January 1986, just a few months after the initial release
of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Unfortunately for the 7800, it
seemed dated by comparison. The colors weren't as vibrant, the music
wasn't as sharp, and the game library mainly consisted of retreads from
the glory days of the Atari 2600. The NES was superior in pretty much
every way, and it had one of console gaming's first true killer apps:
Super Mario Bros.
In addition to these shortcomings, the Atari 7800 was also one of the
earliest victims of Nintendo's licensing policies, which forbade
developers from porting their games to other consoles. Thus, without a
viable library or retail presence, it was quickly banished to the far
corners of the marketplace, where it joined contemporaries like the Sega
Master System. Today, it retains a small but fanatical homebrew community
- not quite a new lease on life, but enough that is remembered.
As for Nintendo, it received its eventual comeuppance in 1995, when the
same licensing practices that killed the Atari 7800 drove developers into
the arms of Sony and the PlayStation. Ultimately, Nintendo's desire to
establish strict controls on development likely saved it from the sort of
glut of awful titles that nearly killed the industry in the first place.
Judge Overturns Ruling in John Madden Football Designer's Case
Despite winning his case against Electronic Arts back in July, John
Madden Football designer Robin Antonick will not see his promised $11
million. The San Francisco Chronicles reports US district judge Charles
Breyer has overturned that ruling.
Breyer said there was no clear evidence that Antonick's work had been
copied by EA without his permission. Breyer added that jurors in the
original ruling weren't shown Antonick's game alongside EA's subsequent
efforts, as the law requires in copyright infringement disputes, and
therefore were unable to make a proper evaluation. Antonick's lawyer
Robert Carey said they plan to appeal Breyer's new ruling, of course, and
added that evidence showed EA "used his source code without permission."
Antonick first filed suit against EA back in 2011. The original John
Madden Football launched in 1988 on the C64, Apple 2 and on MS-DOS. The
modern incarnation of the series is one of EA's most successful
franchises. Antonick is currently working on a basketball game called
Grudge Match.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
China Censors May Have Caused Huge Internet Outage
China's Internet suffered a massive breakdown as traffic was routed to an
overseas site linked to the banned religious group Falun Gong - a fiascoa
cyber-monitoring group Wednesday blamed on the country's own censors.
Web users in the country - which tightly restricts Internet access - had
trouble accessing numerous sites for about an hour on Tuesday afternoon,
said Greatfire.org, which tracks the vast Chinese online censorship
apparatus known as the Great Firewall.
"We have conclusive evidence that this outage was caused by the Great
Firewall," it said on its website, calling the incident "one of the
largest Internet outages ever in China".
Internet users were sent to an IP address owned by US-based Dynamic
Internet Technology, which runs a tool called FreeGate designed to bypass
Chinese internet censors.
The IP address - 65.49.2.178 - is linked to dongtaiwang.com, a news
portal run by Falun Gong members, Greatfire.org said.
The state news agency Xinhua raised the possibility of hacking, and the
official China Internet Network Information Centre attributed the
breakdown to a "root server for top-level domain names".
But Greatfire.org cast doubt on those claims, citing technical tests and
saying such an act was "not enough to cause this outage".
Falun Gong is a Buddhist-inspired religious group that was banned in
China in 1999 and branded an "evil cult".
Dynamic Internet Technology lists as clients on its website the Epoch
Times - a publication linked to the spiritual movement - along with Human
Rights in China and other groups.
China's vast censorship apparatus proactively suppresses any information
or websites online deemed sensitive, from popular sites such as Facebook
and Twitter to a frequently updated list of search terms.
FBI Warns Retailers That Target Fiasco Could Happen to Them
Consumers who weathered the Target scare shouldn't think they're out of
the woods yet.
The FBI is warning that more cyber attacks are likely after the agency
discovered around 20 cases similar to the Target hacking fiasco that
exposed millions of customers' credit cards, Reuters reported.
The similar cases used the same kind of malicious software that
infiltrated Target's system to compromise 70 million customer accounts.
In a confidential report, the FBI warned retailers to beware the risks
associated with "memory-parsing" malware that can breach such systems as
cash registers and credit card machines.
"We believe POS malware crime will continue to grow over the near term,
despite law enforcement and security firms' actions to mitigate it," said
the FBI report, seen by Reuters.
"The accessibility of the malware on underground forums, the
affordability of the software and the huge potential profits to be made
from retail POS systems in the United States make this type of
financially motivated cyber crime attractive to a wide range of actors,"
the FBI said.
An FBI spokeswoman confirmed the report to Reuters.
The information stolen from Target customers included addresses, phone
numbers and credit and debit card numbers.
Target has announced that it will offer one year of free credit card
monitoring and identity theft protection to those who visited U.S. stores
on Black Friday through when the breach was discovered.
A recent similar data breach was at luxury chain Neiman Marcus. The
hacking took place from July 16 to Oct. 30 of last year, exposing 1.1
million customer cards.
The inventor of the malware used on Target is still in question. Some
outlets earlier reported that the software was created by a 17-year-old
Russian boy.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the malware may be
partly the work of Rinat Shabaev, a 23-year-old who lives in southern
Russia.
Security researchers said that Shabaev offered to sell copies of a
version of the software used in the Target breach for $2,000 each.
Gmail Was Down for Many Users Friday Afternoon
Productivity ground to a halt yet again as a brief outage at Google kept
many users from being able to use Gmail on Friday afternoon.
The worst of the outage lasted for approximately 10 minutes, though
services remained unstable for about an hour. But it was long enough to
send Gmails millions of users to Twitter to complain about not being
able to check their e-mails.
Google said its looking into why some user services were unstable or
inaccessible for up to an hour.
Those trying to access their accounts were greeted with an error message
from Google saying that the accounts were temporarily unavailable. The
message also directed users to look at the companys Apps Status
Dashboard for updates on the outage. The dashboard initially showed no
disruptions for any Google services, but was later updated to show
problems with Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Drive, Google Groups
and other services.
Some users on social media networks also reported that they were unable
to open their Google+ accounts, even after mail had been restored.
In a statement, Google said that it is investigating reports of an issue
with some Google services and will be posting updates to its Apps Status
Dashboard. All services on the Google Dashboard were working as intended,
at about 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon.
The company hasnt released official usage numbers for Gmail in over a
year the firm last touted 425 million in June 2012 but companies that
partner with Gmail, such as Todoist, have said that Gmail now has over 500
million accounts.
The service has not had a major outage since 2009, when an issue with one
of the companys servers caused communication problems for days. But
hiccups with the system are not uncommon. Most recently, Gmail and Google
Docs were both hit by a limited outage in April that left some users
unable to access their messages, documents or Google chat for the better
part of the morning.
Healthcare.gov's Poor Security Diagnosis Shows Importance of Security Lifecycle
Four minutes that is how long security researcher David Kennedy said it
took him to expose a hole that could have allowed him to access
information on 70,000 people courtesy of Healthcare.gov.
The security of the website has become a political battleground in the
fight over Obamacare. But behind the politics, Kennedy told SecurityWeek,
are serious security issues caused by a rushed development cycle.
"They didnt have enough time to formally develop the website and grow in
a manner to be successful," said Kennedy, founder of TrustedSec. "When
that happens, security is put in the back burner to making sure you can
get the site out in time. To this date, they cant be doing any formal
testing all around on the site. Maybe some here or there, but nothing that
we would consider industry best practices."
While he declined to get into the specifics of what he did because the
issue is still present, he described it as not so such much a hack but an
abuse of the site's legitimate functionality.
In testimony before Congress last week, Teresa Fryer, chief information
officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS), testified
that the site had passed a "security control assessment" in December and
had "no open high findings." In his testimony however, Kennedy disagreed,
claiming that only half of the 18 major issues he had previously told
Congress about in November had been fixed.
"Vulnerabilities are a fact of life for any large scale service delivered
via the Internet, and especially the web," Tim Erlin, director of IT risk
and security strategy for Tripwire, opined in an interview with
SecurityWeek. "The problem here is not that these vulnerabilities exist,
but that there seems to be no defined process for addressing them, outside
of political mudslinging and defensive posturing. Commercial vendors deal
with this reality on a daily basis."
"People, both customers and researchers of varying affiliations, find
vulnerabilities," he continued. "They are encouraged
to report them to
the affected vendor first, but some are disclosed publically with no
vendor notification, or are discovered through their exploitation by
criminals. The vendors establish a process for validating, responding and
fixing these issues. This kind of a process is whats behind Microsofts
monthly release of security bulletins. A good process assesses risk,
adjusts priorities appropriately and provides a framework for setting
expectations and for public response."
"Instead of engaging in a PR war, Healthcare.gov should implement a
constructive process for finding, prioritizing, and fixing the
vulnerabilities in their service," he added.
Kennedy agreed, arguing that healthcare.gov is not a solitary case. On
the contrary, this is a federal and statewide issue, he said.
"There needs to be a higher governance structure where all security
reports in through the fed/state in order to ensure appropriate controls
and functioning security programs," he said. "Specifically for
Healthcare.gov, Im not sure how they can [improve security] at this
point, they just booted the developers for the original site and moved to
a new one. Its going to be a mess for awhile.
"I hope Accenture incorporates best practices and performs full security
reviews," he added. "The word FISMA compliance is thrown around as being
secure. FISMA is far from security and anything from being close to
industry best practices or a successful security program."
Google Lays $2.7 Million on the Line for Pwnium Hacking Contest
Google yesterday said it would again host its Pwnium hacking contest at a
Canadian security conference in March, putting $2.7 million at stake to
draw out researchers who can hack its browser-based operating system,
Chrome OS.
Dubbed Pwnium 4, the challenge will again pit researchers against Chrome
OS, but this year will let them choose between Intel- or ARM-powered
laptops. In 2013, hackers had to try to crack a Chromebook with an Intel
processor.
Prizes of $110,000 and $150,000 will again be rewarded to individuals or
teams who can hack the operating system, with the top dollar handed to
those who deliver an exploit able to persistently compromise an HP or Acer
Chromebook - in other words, hijack the device so that it remains under
their control even after a reboot.
Google capped the total up for grabs at $2.71828 million, giving multiple
researchers a chance at prize money. The "2.71828" comes from a
mathematical constant that is the base of the natural logarithm.
Last year Google put $3.14159 million in the pot - another nod to
mathematics, as those are the first six digits of the value of Pi - but
paid out just $40,000 to a prolific hacker who goes by "Pinkie Pie," the
contest's sole participant, for what Google later called a partial
exploit.
Google also said it would consider larger bonuses this year to researchers
who demonstrated what it called a "particularly impressive or surprising
exploit," such as one that could circumvent kASLR, (kernel Address Space
Layout Randomization), a relatively new variant of the better-known ASLR
anti-exploit technology used by Apple's iOS and OS X, Microsoft's
Windows 8 and Chrome OS.
Even with bonuses in play, it's unlikely that Google will end up spending
anywhere close to $2.7 million this year.
To qualify for the prizes or bonuses, winners must provide functional
exploit code and details on all the vulnerabilities put into play, as was
the case last year.
Pwnium 4 will take place March 12 at CanSecWest, the Vancouver, British
Columbia, security conference known for another hacking contest, Pwn2Own,
which last year was co-sponsored by HP's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) bug
bounty program and Google. HP has not yet announced the details of its
2014 challenge.
The official rules for Pwnium 4 can be found on Google's Chromium
Security page.
On Facebook, Clicking 'Like' Can Help Scammers
It's an image that tugs at the heartstrings. A smiling 7-year-old girl
poses in her cheerleading uniform, circled by a ring of pompons, her bald
head a telltale sign of her chemotherapy treatments.
The photo hit Facebook last year and popped up all over with messages of
support. "Like" to show this little girl you care. "Share" to tell her
she's beautiful. Pray for her to beat cancer.
But here's the truth. The photo was nearly six years old. And neither the
girl, nor her parents - who never posted it to Facebook - had any idea it
was being used that way.
Welcome to the world of Facebook "like farming."
Those waves of saccharin-sweet posts that sometimes fill your news feed
may seem harmless. But all too often, they're being used for nefarious
purposes. At best, a complete stranger may be using the photos to stroke
their own ego. At worst, experts say, scammers and spammers are using
Facebook, often against the site's rules, to make some easy cash.
And they're wiling to play on the good intentions of Facebook users to do
it.
"The average user doesn't know any better," said Tim Senft, founder of
Facecrooks.com, a website that monitors scams and other illegal or
unethical behavior on Facebook. "I think their common sense tells them
it's not true, but in the back of their minds, they think 'What if it is
true? What does it hurt if I press like?' or whatever."
What does it hurt?
"I was first shocked," said Amanda Rieth of Northampton, Pennsylvania,
whose daughter was the subject of that photo. "And then infuriated."
After being notified by a friend who recognized the girl in a Facebook
post, Rieth tracked the image back to a link she'd posted to her
Photobucket account in a community forum in 2009, two years after it was
taken.
Her daughter, who was diagnosed with Stage IV neuroblastoma in early 2007,
has been featured in local news segments for her fundraising efforts to
fight cancer through Alex's Lemonade Stand. But her mom said she was
always part of the decision and was happy to help publicize the fight.
"This? This was entirely different and entirely out of our control," Rieth
said. "That's the most gut-wrenching part: the total lack of control."
Hurting the people featured in the posts, and their families, isn't the
only risk of sharing such content. Sometimes, a single click can help
people who are up to no good.
Often, Senft said, Facebook pages are created with the sole purpose of
spreading viral content that will get lots of likes and shares.
Once the page creators have piled up hundreds of thousands of likes and
shares, they'll strip the page and promote something else, like products
that they get a commission for selling. Or, they may turn around and sell
the page through black-market websites to someone who does the same.
It's a way to trick Facebook's algorithm, which is designed to give more
value to popular pages than the ones, like scams and spam, that pop up
overnight.
"The more likes and shares and comments and that sort of thing you have,
the more likely it is to be seen by other people," Senft said. "If
they're looking to sell the page in a black-hat forum somewhere, that's
what the value of the page is."
It gets worse
Sometimes, the threat is more direct.
The "new" page may be used to spread malware - software that attacks the
user's computer - or for phishing, the act of trying to gather credit
card numbers, passwords or other personal information through links to
phony giveaways or contests.
Simply liking a post, or the page itself, can't spread a virus or phish a
user. But malicious Facebook apps can, as can external links that page
owners may choose to share to their followers.
If the page owner has access to Facebook's developer tools, they can
collect data on the people who like the page. Personal information like
gender, location and age can be used to target more personalized attacks.
The kind of posts used run a gamut from cute to tasteless, from
manipulative to misleading.
Rieth said she still finds her daughter's photo on Facebook from time to
time, even though Facebook eventually deleted the original after she and
others reported it.
On the most recent page she found, the picture appears in a feed alongside
posts such as "Who loves French fries? Like & share if you do" and
multiple images encouraging people to like and share if they love Jesus.
There's an image of a premature baby, pictures of military troops cuddling
puppies and an image of a young boy pouring water on a man's cigarette
with the text "Sorry papa ... I need you."
"It's anything that's going to kind of tug at the heartstrings: the sick
kids, the animal abuse, acting like it's some kind of pet shelter," Senft
said. "That's the bad part with the scammers. They hit people where
they're vulnerable, play on their emotions."
Because of Facebook's sheer size, he said it sometimes takes lots of
reports for the site to delete an offensive or misleading image, or shut
down the page it came from. The best approach, Senft said, is to think
before sharing.
"If it sounds too good to be true, don't click on it," he said. "If it's
something that's obviously geared toward tugging on the heartstrings,
check it out first."
Facebook said it continues to work to make sure high-quality content
surfaces for users and low-quality posts don't. That includes trying to
diminish the reach of posts that appear to be "like farming" attempts.
"People have told us they associate requests to like or share a post with
lower quality content, and receiving that type of feedback helps us adjust
our systems to get better at showing more high quality posts," a Facebook
spokesperson said via e-mail.
"If you see a post that's low quality and seems to be focused only on
gaining traffic, hover over the top-right corner of the post and click the
arrow to report it."
Facebook uses "automated and manual methods to swiftly remove links and
pages that violate our policies," the spokesperson said. "We're always
making improvements to our detection and blocking systems to stay ahead of
threats."
Today, Rieth's daughter is 13 - an eighth-grader who has shown no signs of
her cancer since September 2007.
But her mom compares that cheerleading photo to the mythical hydra, a
monster with many heads that sprouts two more each time one is cut off.
Based just on the images she's found and reported, the photo has been
liked and shared on Facebook hundreds of thousands of times.
A search Monday also found it popping up on Pinterest, as well as one site
where it was wrongly used alongside a 2010 article about actor Jackie Chan
helping a girl with leukemia find a bone-marrow donor.
"What makes me truly angry, though, is knowing that they're using it as
an insidious way to make money," Rieth said. "That's not what her
survival is about to us."
For this article, CNN sent a Facebook message to the owner of the last
page where Rieth found the photo.
When asked whether he planned to sell his page, the owner replied with
two words:
"How much?"
Make ISPs Into "Common Carriers," Says Former FCC Commissioner
It's time for the Federal Communications Commission to correct its past
mistakes and get tough on broadband providers, a retired FCC commissioner
says.
Michael Copps, an FCC commissioner from 2001 to 2011 (and acting chairman
for several months in 2009), is proof that not every former FCC member
becomes a lobbyist for the industries the commission regulates. The only
commission member to vote against allowing the Comcast/NBC Universal
merger, Copps is now a self-described public interest advocate who leads
the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative at Common Cause.
The commission can still put ISPs under its thumb, but it may not want to.
On Wednesday, Copps wrote a blog post titled, "The Buck Stops At The FCC,"
calling upon the commission to "reclassify broadband as
'telecommunications' under Title II of the Communications Act." The effect
of that move would be to designate Internet service providers as "common
carriers," making them subject to increased FCC regulation.
Such a move would bring fierce opposition from telecommunications
companies and their friends in Congress. But the FCC's previous failure
to reclassify broadband blew up in its face when a court ruled that that
the agency couldn't impose anti-blocking and anti-discrimination
regulations on ISPs because they aren't classified as common carriers.
"The good news is that the solution is pretty simple," Copps wrote. "It
doesnt require a new telecommunications statute replete with
time-consuming years of legislative horse-trading and special interest
lobbying. All it requires is an FCC big enough to own up to its previous
mistakes and courageous enough to put our communications future back on
track."
He continued:
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals pointed the way out of the dilemma
created when the Commission reclassified broadband as an information
service over ten years ago. The Court held that the Commission has
authority to make decisions on broadband and that these decisions are
entitled to considerable deference by the judiciary. The FCC could have
decided on a different path and still garnered court approval.
Importantly, it can also change course if it justifies the reasons for
the change.
What the judges said last week was that the Commission justified its
Open Internet rules the wrong way. Had the agency just kept treating
advanced telecommunications as telecommunications, its Internet Freedom
rules would have passed muster. But by calling broadband an information
service, the FCC put it beyond the reach of Title II which applies to
telecommunications. And Title II is where such things as consumer
protections, privacy guarantees, public safety, and ubiquitous build-out
requirements pertain. Who, other than the big companies trying to gain
market power over broadband, would ever have argued that Congress
intended broadband communications to be stripped of such elemental
consumer and public interest protections?
The time is now for the FCC to classify broadband as Title II. Without
this step, we are playing fast-and-loose with the most
opportunity-creating technology in all of communications history. Without
this step, we are guaranteeing an Internet future of toll-booths,
gatekeepers, and preferential carriage. Without this step, we stifle
innovation, put consumers under the thumb of special interests, and pull
the props from under the kind of rich civic dialogue that only open and
non-discriminatory communications can provide.
Copps ended his post by encouraging readers to sign a Common Cause
petition telling the FCC to reclassify broadband.
Netflix has warned that without net neutrality regulations, "a domestic
ISP now can legally impede the video streams that members request from
Netflix, degrading the experience we jointly provide."
Current FCC commissioners have given no indication that they would
reclassify broadband as Copps suggests, but current Chairman Tom Wheeler
said he views the recent court decision as an invitation for the FCC to
act... in some undefined way. "The court invited the commission to act,
and I intend to accept that invitation," Wheeler said last week. "Using
our authority, we will readdress the concepts in the Open Internet Order,
as the court invited, to encourage growth and innovation and enforce
against abuse."
That could mean rewriting the Open Internet Order to put it on solid legal
footing, but the changes probably wouldn't impose anti-blocking and
anti-discrimination rules that prevent ISPs from blocking services and
charging content providers for access.
Facebook Fires Back at Princeton '80 Percent' Study
Watch out, Princeton University. According to Facebook's data, you could
also soon be a thing of the past.
The social network on Thursday hilariously fired back at a recent study
from the Ivy League school, which claimed Facebook will undergo a rapid
decline in the coming years, losing 80 percent of its peak user base
between 2015 and 2017. In a tongue-in-cheek post Thursday, Facebook data
scientists Mike Develin, Lada Adamic, and Sean Taylor used "the same
robust methodology featured in the [Princeton] paper" to argue that the
New Jersey school is, in fact, also at risk of dying off.
According to Facebook's not so scientific research, Princeton will have
only half its current enrollment by 2018, and by 2021 it will have no
students at all.
"Based on our robust scientific analysis, future generations will only be
able to imagine this now-rubble institution that once walked this earth,"
the researchers wrote.
The social network first examined Facebook Page "likes" for Princeton
compared to Harvard and Yale, and discovered an "alarming trend." While
page likes for Harvard and Yale ramped up significantly in recent years,
Princeton suffered a massive drop in page likes in 2010, and has only
slightly recovered in the years since.
"While we are concerned for Princeton University, we are even more
concerned about the fate of the planet Google Trends for 'air' have also
been declining steadily, and our projections show that by the year 2060
there will be no air left," they joked.
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The social network kids, of course. "As data scientists, we wanted to give
a fun reminder that not all research is created equal and some methods
of analysis lead to pretty crazy conclusions," the researchers wrote.
European Telecoms Break Broadband Speed Record
Two European telecommunications companies claimed this week that they
achieved the fastest ever real-world fiber network transfer speed using
commercial grade hardware.
According to a report released Tuesday, France's Alcatel-Lucent and
Britain's BT achieved fiber speeds of 1.4 Terabytes per second. That's
roughly the equivalent of transmitting 44 HD films in a single second.
Researchers accomplished this quite spectacular feat by developing an
"Alien Super Channel," which consists of seven 200 Gb/s channels bundled
together for a combined capacity of 1.4 Tb/s. The trial test was
conducted over an existing fiber link between the cities of London and
Suffolk, England.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the test was that it was merely an
improvement in the efficiency of existing fiber networksnot a radical
redesign of the network infrastructure. By increasing the density of
fiber channels, researchers achieved up to 42.5 percent greater
transmission efficiency compared to standard networks.
This means future applications of the technology could reduce the cost of
laying additional fiber cablea major obstacle to widespread adoption of
consumer-grade gigabit broadband.
Fiber-optic networks are widely seen as the vessel that will get us to the
super-fast broadband speeds needed to supply the ever-growing internet
population's ever-growing data demands. In the U.S., progress has been
slow, with only a few scattered locationsincluding a few spearheaded by
Googlecurrently enjoying access to fiber-optic speeds.
The problem is that major ISPs and cable providers, which often enjoy near
total monopolies in the U.S., have little incentive to invest in the
infrastructure fiber requires. As such, innovation in the sector is likely
to remain in more competitive overseas markets, as demonstrated by this
week's record-breaking transmission.
Happy 30th Birthday to Apples Macintosh Computer!
Today marks exactly 30 years ago that Steve Jobs took the stage in
Cupertino, Calif., to introduce the world to Apples Macintosh personal
computer. The company had invested $80 million of research and development
to reach that moment on Jan. 24, 1984, when the little beige computer
personally uttered the above greeting to the world.
The Macintosh was priced at $2,495 at its launch and had a 3.5-inch
floppy disk drive, black-and-white display and weighed 16 pounds
(considered fairly portable at the time). The model shown off by Jobs that
day was eventually renamed to the Macintosh 128K when Apple released an
updated Macintosh 512K later that year (128 and 512 represented the amount
of RAM the computers packed).
Apple's Macintosh was the first mass-marketed PC to feature a graphical
user interface and mouse controller. The new concept replaced the
text-only, terminal OS style with an early version of the point-and-click
software we now use on computers. Jobs would later famously accuse
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates of stealing the Macintosh software
concept to create Windows.
Some recent eBay listings still have Macintosh 128K models selling for
nearly $2,000, though considering inflation, thats still a darn good deal
today.
Why Apple's '1984' Commercial Is Still Talked About Today
On this day 30 years ago, Apple aired a commercial based on George
Orwell's dystopian novel "1984" that turned the advertising and computing
world on their heads.
Long before the colorful, mysterious invitations to Apples Cupertino,
Calif., headquarters for product announcements, Apple mastered the art of
creating buzz about its innovations.
Prime example: the ad it aired during the 1984 Super Bowl that aptly
played off George Orwells dystopian novel 1984." Using the simple
themes of control versus freedom, and stagnation versus innovation, in a
one-minute ad, Apple was able to spark viral curiosity just days before
the release of its first Macintosh computer, and set a precedent-breaking
tone that still prevails. The ad aired 30 years ago today.
The ad opens with a shot of a line of people in dark gray uniforms and
shaved heads marching into an auditorium, where a talking head on a giant
screen (a reference to Orwells character Big Brother) spouts
propaganda about being a garden of pure ideology ... secure from the
pests of any contradictory force and one people with one will, one
resolve, one course. This scene cuts back and forth with a scene of a
woman in bright orange shorts and a white top holding a sledgehammer and
sprinting toward the auditorium, guards in close pursuit. When she gets
close to the screen, she winds up, launches her sledgehammer, and the
impact creates a blinding explosion. Apple cuts to the tagline: "On
January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see
why 1984 won't be like '1984.' "
The idea was that Macintosh would revolutionize computing and that the
future of technology would bring freedom, rather than control. The message
was effective the ad launched Apple as a computing powerhouse, and made
the Mac one of the best-selling computers of its time.
Before it aired at the Super Bowl, however, it nearly didnt make it to
the screen. Apple had paid creative agency Chiat/Day $650,000 to create
the ad as well as a second commercial. Steve Jobs was thrilled with the
1984 concept, but the board wasnt as impressed according to Business
Insider, Chiat/Day copywriter Steve Hayden says the board was struck
silent after they were initially shown the ad, and were so unimpressed
they told the ad agency to sell the two-minute block of advertising time
Apple had bought during the Super Bowl. Apple ad account manager Fred
Goldberg also tested the commercial with a leading market research firm
for effectiveness, and it scored a 5 on a 43-point scale.
However, Chiat/Day executives were so enamored with the commercial, they
intentionally dragged their feet, and were only able to sell half the
airtime (also note that Mr. Goldberg decided to keep the market research
numbers to himself). The commercial had to run.
Shooting the commercial also proved to be a challenge. The commercial was
directed by Ridley Scott, who had directed "Blade Runner" and "Alien" in
years previous. To give the ad the same gritty, futuristic feel while
shooting in London, the creative team hired 300 locals as extras, many
actual skinheads, who got a bit antsy after three days of filming.
"The last day they started throwing the rocks at each other," Goldberg
told CNN. "The security company had police dogs there [to control them.]"
But the team behind the ad ultimately succeeded and the commercial was a
rousing success for Apple. The ensuing conversation and ad replay on news
programs and talk shows resulted in what Apple estimated as more than
$150 million of free airtime.
The commercial is also credited with ushering in more than just a new era
for Apple. Some say it brought about the modern era of Super Bowl
advertising, in which the commercials are as much a spectator sport as
the game.
"This commercial was classically disruptive," says Timothy de Waal
Malefyt, a professor at Fordham University, to Business Insider. "This
wasnt a machine where you were going to be kowtowed in the workplace,
this was a machine for the young, innovative, entrepreneurial mind. It
really inspires the creative individual to break free and start
something different."
Chinese Internet Traffic Redirected to Small Wyoming House
In one of the more bizarre twists in recent Internet memory, much of the
Internet traffic in China was redirected to a small, 1,700-square-foot
house in Cheyenne, Wyo., on Tuesday.
A large portion of Chinas 500 million Internet users were unable to load
websites ending in .com, .net or .org for nearly eight hours in most
regions of China, according to Compuware, a Detroit-based technology
company.
The China Internet Network Information Center, a state-run agency that
deals with Internet affairs, said it had traced the problem to the
countrys domain name system. And one of Chinas biggest antivirus
software vendors, Qihoo 360 Technology, said the problems affected
roughly three-quarters of the countrys domain name system servers.
Those servers, which act as a switchboard for Internet traffic behind
Chinas Great Firewall, routed traffic from some of Chinas most popular
sites, including Baidu and Sina, to a block of Internet addresses
registered to Sophidea Incorporated, a mysterious company housed on a
residential street in Cheyenne, Wyo.
A simple Google search reveals that the address on Thomes Avenue in
Cheyenne is not a corporate headquarters, but a 1,700-square-foot brick
house with a manicured lawn.
That address which is home to some 2,000 companies on paper was the
subject of a lengthy 2011 Reuters investigation that found that among the
entities registered to the address were a shell company controlled by a
jailed former Ukraine prime minister; the owner of a company charged with
helping online poker operators evade an Internet gambling ban; and one
entity that was banned from government contracts after selling
counterfeit truck parts to the Pentagon.
Wyoming Corporate Services, the registered agent for Sophidea
Incorporated, according to Internet records, did not respond to requests
for comment on Tuesday afternoon.
It was not immediately clear what caused the traffic shift Tuesday. One
Chinese newspaper suspected a cyberattack. But by late Tuesday, some
technologists had come to an alternate theory: a backfiring of Chinas
own Internet censoring system.
Sophidea appears to be a service that redirects traffic from one address
to another to mask a persons whereabouts or to evade a firewall.
Some technologists surmised Tuesday that the disruption may have been
caused by Chinese Internet censors who attempted to block traffic to
Sophideas websites but mistakenly redirected traffic to the service
instead.
That theory was buttressed by the fact that a separate wave of Chinese
Internet traffic Tuesday was simultaneously redirected to Internet
addresses owned by Dynamic Internet Technology, a company that helps
people evade Chinas Great Firewall, and is typically blocked in China.
Bill Xia, who created Dynamic Internet Technology in 2001, told The Wall
Street Journal Tuesday that his company had nothing to do with the
traffic shift and also suspected that the problem was the doing of
Chinas own Internet censors.
The disruption mirrored a similar incident in 2002 when Chinese Internet
users attempting to access Sina.com were redirected to a banned website
belonging to followers of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in
China.
Password Is No Longer The Most Common Password
The news that password is no longer the most common password for users
might seem like good news to IT managers. Maybe its a sign that theyre
finally beginning to take security seriously? That theyre finally
devoted to protecting information?
Not so fast. A new study by Splash Data shows the new favorite password is
123456. It moved up from second place, switching spots with password.
Other than satisfying that old rule of strong passwords containing at
least one number, thats not exactly a giant leap forward for security.
And the rest of the list is full of old chestnuts too, from iloveyou to
qwerty to the somewhat pushy letmein.
Password problems abound
These annual studies of weak passwords might elicit a chuckle or two. But
the temptation to believe a good password is enough protect you might be
a last-generation security mindset.
Password crackers contain dictionaries of all the words in the dictionary,
the Bible and pretty much any other source out there that users might draw
on for something memorable.
But until biometric solutions evolve beyond the fingerprint sensor on an
iPhone, youll have to live with these imperfect protections.
7 ideas for stronger passwords
Here are some ideas to pass along to users:
Make them unique. A stolen password on one account can easily be used
as a guess or jumping-off point for cracking passwords on other accounts.
Dont use words. Dictionaries can be guessed. Combining several words
doesnt work either.
Invent acronyms. Take first letters from song lyrics, favorite poems,
etc. and use them to invent a new word. If those phrases contain numbers
or upper-case words, so much the better.
Never write them down. This may seem like a no-brainer, but take a
walk around your office. We bet youll find at least one sticky note on
the side of a monitor or a drawer that lists user names and passwords.
Leave a reminder sticky note behind.
Change defaults right away. If a website or account is given a default
password, get rid of it ASAP. Replace it with one of your own.
Sharing is not caring. No one should ever share a password with
another user. Doing so only makes it harder to police who is doing what on
your networks and could lead to problems when users move on from your
company.
Make a perfect password
then throw it out. Dont stick with the same
password for too long. Make it good, secure and memorable. Then ditch it.
The longer you stick with the same password, the better the chance it will
be uncovered or compromised.
GIFYs Celebrate The Internet's Favorite Time Waster
The Internet has provided countless hours of mindless, GIF-fueled fun,
and these animated, Web-based images will now be honored with their very
own online award ceremony.
This marks the first-ever awards celebrating the animated GIF as more
than a simple time-waster, but "as a medium, social commentary, and art
form."
Twelve categoriesfrom design and film to science and politicsrepresent
the best of the best of 2013, as nominated by a panel of 15
tech/entertainment editors, illustrators, writers, and other creative
types from around the Internet.
Sponsored by advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B), The
GIFYs provide five or six videos in each category, including the
time-honored "cats" genre. Almost guaranteed to waste at least 45
minutes of your life, the awards include looping videos of sea otters,
Oprah, Hillary Clinton, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and a handful of other
mesmerizing, and often hilarious, clips.
"Winners are immortalized on our website, finally giving GIFs their
rightful glory," The GIFYs page said.
The site launched on Jan. 21, and voting remains open for a few more
days.
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) launched in 1987, but caught on
among Internet users, who can now post the animated videos on social
corkboard Pinterest.
Despite their popularity, the debate over correct pronunciationGIF
versus JIFrages on.
=~=~=~=
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