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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 15 Issue 14
Volume 15, Issue 14 Atari Online News, Etc. April 5, 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
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1514 04/05/13
~ Anonymous vs N. Korea? ~ People Are Talking! ~ Dutch Banks Hacked!
~ Raspberry Pi Now in US ~ IBM is #1 in Patents! ~ Win Blue = Win 8.1?
~ Europe Aims at Google! ~ Poaching Class Action! ~ New Browser Engine!
~ Modem Lights Warning? ~ April Fool's Online! ~ Apple's $13,000 OS!
-* Web Slowed by Cyber Attack! *-
-* Sony's PS Vita Comeback Continues! *-
-* Next Xbox Will Require Internet Connection *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
A belated April 1st - or April Fool's Day - greeting. Over the years,
I've seen and heard numerous April Fool's "pranks". And, those
attempts to enact them online or in print seem prevalent these days. I
remember pulling a few of them myself, as lead stories in our old Atari
usergroup, SSAG. One, in particular, referenced a fictitious purchase
of Atari Corp. when it was on the verge of bankruptcy many moons ago.
Others referred to other actions regarding Atari over the years.
After awhile, most "unlikely" stories that occur on or about April 1st
are usually April Fool's jokes - especially those that you encounter
online. People just seem more aware of the possibilities, and have
some doubts whenever they come across such stories. In this week's
issue, you'll see a couple of such prank attempts. C'mon people, you
really need to become more innovative!
Hopefully, none of you fell prey to any practical jokes this year!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Sonys PS Vita Comeback Continues!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" The Next Xbox Will Require an Internet Connection!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Sonys PS Vita Comeback Continues As Wii U Flails
This is a crucial period for the PlayStation Vita: several weeks after a
price cut that revived the console in Japan, Vita is demonstrating fairly
astonishing tenacity. According to Famitsu, Vita remained the No. 2
console in Japan during the week of March 31st with 33,000 units sold,
down moderately from 38,000 units in the previous week. The reason this
week was particularly important was the debut of a major new title for
Nintendos struggling home console Wii U. Alarm bells at Nintendos
headquarters must be on full blast, because Dragon Quest X sold just
36,000 units and failed to lift weekly Wii U sales higher than 21,000
units from the previous weeks dismal 10,000 unit level.
During the same week, the PS Vita received a far less known title,
Muramasa: The Demon Blade, yet it was able to shift 39,000 units.
Following the price cut of the PS Vita under 20,000 yen, the Japanese
video game market has suddenly shifted to a new equilibrium where two
portable consoles dominate the field. In the last week, Nintendos 3DS
sold 67,000 units and Sonys PS Vita sold 33,000 units. All home consoles
sold 21,000 units or less.
The 3DS has received a boost from the popular new Luigis Mansion game,
but the gap between the top portable consoles has narrowed meaningfully.
During the year 2012, 3DS outsold PS Vita by more than a 6-to-1 margin.
But even after Luigis Mansion: Dark Moon sold 400,000 units over a
fortnight, the PS Vita has managed to keep its sales volume at half the
3DS level.
The Vita resurgence more than a year after it debuted could well motivate
developers to give it another look. In the meantime, Nintendo is watching
the time slowly run out before home console sector focus swings decisively
towards the new PlayStation and XBOX models. Wii Us toehold in the
console market is beginning to look tenuous indeed.
The Next Xbox Will Require an Internet Connection To Start Games
Two Kotaku sources have added more credence to the rumor that the next
Xbox, expected to battle the PlayStation 4 in late 2013 or early 2014,
will be an always-online system, though it will be able to tolerate
dropped connections.
"Unless something has changed recently," one of the sources told us over
email, "Durango consumer units must have an active internet connection to
be used."
Durango is the codename for the next-gen Xbox.
"If there isn't a connection, no games or apps can be started," the source
continued. "If the connection is interrupted then after a period of ime -
currently three minutes, if I remember correctly - the game/app is
suspended and the network troubleshooter started."
The PS4 will not require an online connection to start or run games, Sony
has confirmed. No gaming console ever has.
Reporting about the next-gen Xbox is still mostly a matter of checking
rumors and leaks. No one in or out of Microsoft is authorized to discuss
the console publicly. But there are a growing number of people tied to
the gaming industry, including our sources for this story, who have had
the opportunity to familiarize themselves with Microsoft's plans for the
machine. Development of games for the console is intensifying. Microsoft
has sent beta development kits, sporting a new controller and Kinect
motion/voice sensor array to game creators. Our main sources for this
story have a perfect track record in getting these kinds of things right.
That said, a caution and a caveat: other sources familiar with the
codenamed Durango console have told us that they are still unaware of any
Microsoft plans regarding an online requirement. No one has been able to
say it's not true and some have speculated that this is required at the
operating system level and therefore isn't something Microsoft has to tell
all developers or retail partners. Microsoft also has the ability to
change this type of requirement seemingly at a moment's notice through
changes in firmware or networking infrastructure.
Microsoft doesn't comment at all about its next-gen system, so the best we
have from them on the matter is as follows: "We do not comment on rumors
or speculation. We are always thinking about what is next for our
platform, but we don't have anything further to share at this time."
That's from a Microsoft spokesperson after we asked, today, about this
always-online rumor and told them this story was planned.
But if Microsoft is about to walk this back, they probably haven't done so
yet. One of our sources says that the always-online plan was in effect as
recently as two weeks ago.
The always-online rumor has been swirling for about a year. We'd been
hearing it but couldn't nail it down with the specificity we have today.
We raised it as a possibility, tied to a good source, but were unclear
how dropped connections would be handled. We also weren't clear if this
was something like Microsoft's anti-used-game system, a plan the company
briefed partners on in 2012 but that we had heard so little of since that
it may well have gone away - or if this was like the plans for the new
Kinect, which, it has become increasingly clear, is an essential element
of the Durango.
An always-online requirement would obviously be a big deal. It raises many
questions about how the system would perform in places that don't have
reliable Internet and about the extent that the connection would be used
to authenticate ownership of games. This is something every gamer would
want to know about. So, since we first heard about it, we have tried to
confirm whether the requirement was real and in the cards. Sources in
development, publishing and retail mostly responded with shrugs.
In January, the hacker SuperDaE began sharing official development
documents for the next-gen PlayStation and Xbox. Many of the dozens of
pages of the Xbox/Durango documentation were full of programming code but
the parts in plain English - the parts that, honestly, we could understand
- said nothing about an online requirement. They were, however, crystal
clear about the new system needing the new Kinect to operate: "Every
Durango console ships with a Kinect sensor. A Kinect sensor must be
attached and configured for the console to function."
Some sources told us that they believed that the Durango development kit
required an online connection so that Microsoft could keep tabs on them
and update them with new, ever-evolving firmware. Others weren't sure.
A few weeks ago, we heard from one reliable industry source who told us
about a Durango developer making a game that would use an always-online
connection for gameplay purposes, to constantly be able to share game
data back and forth. It wasn't clear, though, if this indicated the
Durango's capacity to be always online - Nintendo's Wii had its own
optional 24/7 always-online mode - or if the online connection was a
must.
Meanwhile, the site VGLeaks, which appeared to have access to many of the
same Durango documents shared with Kotaku by SuperDaE posted a new
document that appeared to indicate an online connection was required for
the console. It referred to an "Always Online, Always Connected" console,
the better to give users current content and quick access to their
entertainment, without waiting for updates or for the machine to boot up.
We were unable to confirm this document's authenticity, but the major
gaming website IGN reported that they confirmed that it is real. The
gaming magazine Edge has also reported that their sources say the next
Xbox will require an online connection.
The new confirmation we've heard from sources, including the specifics
about how the Durango would handle a dropped connection, bolsters our
confidence that all this smoke is a sign of some fiery facts.
But why would they do this?
Every person we've talked to about the always-online connection,
internally and externally, has been incredulous. They predict a fiasco.
They detect hubris in a Microsoft riding high off of the Xbox 360's
incredible post-Kinect sales performance. But they also detect, as I
have, an intensified interest in Microsoft's part to position the next
Xbox as an entertainment device, to not emphasize games as significantly
as they had with past Microsoft consoles. Add that to far shakier rumors
of the next Xbox working as a cable box or DVR or some other TV-viewing
enabler - something not a single source of mine could confirm - and you
might wonder: if my cable box always has to be connected, why not my next
Xbox?
There are reasons for Microsoft to not do this, of course. They merely
need to see the disastrous launch of EA's always-online SimCity and decide
whether the negative backlash of selling people a product that can't work
when the servers go down is worth it - especially if the earlier version
of that product didn't require that kind of Internet connection.
They could also look at the competition and imagine a consumer standing at
a store, deciding whether to buy a PS4 or the next Xbox. One wouldn't
require online; the other, if our best sources are right, would. Surely,
some would prefer the system without the online requirement.
As mentioned above, things can change. Microsoft may reveal its next Xbox
this month, in May or, at the latest, at E3 in June. We'll know more
then. We'll hopefully know what they've decided.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Internet Slowed By Cyber Attack on Spam Blocker
One of the largest ever cyber attacks is slowing global internet services
and the disruption could get worse, experts said on Wednesday, after an
organization blocking "spam" content became a target.
Spamhaus, a London and Geneva-based non-profit group which helps weed out
unsolicited "spam" messages for email providers, said it had been
subjected to "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks on an
unprecedented scale for more than a week.
"Based on the reported scale of the attack, which was evaluated at 300
Gigabits per second, we can confirm that this is one of the largest DDoS
operations to date," online security firm Kaspersky Lab said in a
statement.
"There may be further disruptions on a larger scale as the attack
escalates."
Spamhaus publishes blacklists used by internet service providers (ISPs) to
weed out spam in email traffic.
The group is directly or indirectly responsible for filtering as much as
80 percent of daily spam messages, according to Cloudflare, a company that
said it was helping Spamhaus mitigate the attack.
"We've been under this cyber-attack for well over a week," Steve Linford,
chief executive of Spamhaus, told the BBC. "They are targeting every part
of the internet infrastructure that they feel can be brought down."
Perpetrators of DDoS attacks typically target websites by flooding
servers with messages from multiple systems so they cannot identify and
respond to legitimate traffic.
Paul Vlissidis, group technical director at internet security firm NCC,
said the volumes of traffic involved in the attack were having a knock-on
effect on the rest of the internet.
Because many computers were involved in the attack, it was difficult to
defend against.
"If you have a few computers sending large amounts of traffic you can
filter them out easily. When literally thousands and thousands are
involved it makes it much, much harder," he told Reuters.
However, according to thinkbroadband, an independent British information
website which allows users to test their broadband speed, there appeared
to be little evidence of a slowdown.
"Of course it is possible that people may be finding some services or
sites they access over the Internet are performing slower than usual ...
but there appears to be no evidence to say that UK broadband users have
been slowed down across the board," it said on its blog.
Anonymous Threatens Cyberwar on North Korea, Steals 15,000 Passwords
Notorious hacking group Anonymous has targeted pedophiles, corrupt
governments and financial institutions, however its latest target may be
its most audacious yet. The group says that it has begun a new initiative
called Operation Free Korea and is demanding controversial leader Kim
Jong-un resign and install free democracy in the Asian country. Other
demands include having North Korea abandon its nuclear ambitions and for
the government to give universal and uncensored Internet access to its
citizens. Anonymous hackers claim to have access to the countrys local
intranets, mail servers and Web servers and are threatening to wage war
if their demands are not met.
We got all over 15k membership records of Uriminzokkiri.com and many
more, the group wrote. First we gonna wipe your data, then we gonna wipe
your badass dictatorship government.
Anonymous threats towards North Korea come amid increased tensions on the
Korean Peninsula with South Korea and the United States. The group
explicitly stated, however, that it does not support the U.S. and is
instead a fighter for freedom.
Six European States Take Aim at Google Privacy Policy
European regulators moved a step closer to penalizing Google for the way
it handles user data after the search engine refused to change its
privacy policy.
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Britain said on Tuesday
they began a process to decide if Google's policy introduced in March 2012
broke national laws.
Google consolidated 60 privacy policies into one last year and started
combining data collected on individual users across its services, such as
YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+. It gave the users no means to
opt out.
Twenty-nine European data protection regulators began a joint enquiry as a
result.
The enquiry, led by France's CNIL, found in October that Google's new
policy posed a "high risk" to the privacy of individuals, although it
stopped short of declaring it illegal.
The regulators gave Google until February to propose changes but the
search engine did not make any after a March 19 with national regulators.
"Regulators in six states have begun the process of looking at penalties,
and each must now act based on national law," said Isabelle
Falque-Pierrotin, CNIL's president, in an interview.
"We have put in place a countdown for Google now. Promises to change will
no longer be enough."
The six states have the power to impose fines on Google, said
Falque-Pierrotin, but each must go through a local inquiry to determine
that a wrong had been committed under national law even after the European
joint position published in October.
They will use the joint analysis to underpin their investigations and will
"not start from scratch", she added.
Google said it would continue to cooperate with European regulators.
"Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler,
more effective services," said spokesman Al Verney in an emailed
statement.
The year-long tussle with the Web search giant is seen by legal experts
and policymakers as a test of Europe's ability to influence the behavior
of international Internet companies.
Policymakers are debating a draft Europe-wide data protection law under
which transgressors could be fined as much as 2 percent of their annual
global turnover.
It would impose stricter rules on how companies collect and store customer
data and would require notification of data breaches. The plan has sparked
a lobbying effort by big technology companies, banks and other firms who
worry it would lumber them with additional costs.
Jacob Konhstamm, head of the Dutch data protection regulator, said the
fact that each state had to take enforcement action separately showed the
need for the new law.
"If anybody needed an argument that the directive should change, then this
is it," he said in an interview.
A spokesman for Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said it
was likely to decide in the summer what action, if any, to take against
Google. The highest penalty the ICO can impose is 500,000 pounds
($756,400).
France's CNIL has begun its action against Google and the next likely step
would be to notify the search engine that it is in violation of local law,
giving it three months to respond before fines can be applied. The maximum
fine is 300,000 euros.
Italy and Spain also confirmed in emailed statements that they had begun
local enforcement actions.
Dutch Banks' Online Services Hit by Cyberattack
Dutch banks say a cyberattack has affected their online services, but did
not breach the security of customers' accounts.
The Netherlands Association of Banks says Dutch and some foreign banks
were hit by a denial-of-service attack, in which huge amounts of data
overwhelm servers like hundreds of letters being jammed through a mail
slot at the same time.
The association did not say who was responsible for the attack Friday.
In the Netherlands, the attack temporarily forced Internet and mobile
banking sites of the ING bank offline and also affected online payments
for other banks.
The association stressed that bank customers could still get cash and pay
bills at ATMs.
Windows Blue May Be Released This Summer As Windows 8.1
The next version of the Windows operating system may not be known as
Windows 9, as had previously been reported. According to ZDNet, the
operating system, which is currently known internally as Windows Blue,
will come to market as Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 later this summer.
The latest rumors suggest that Microsofts (MSFT) upcoming Windows update
will include a variety of new features such as customized live tiles and
improvements to the Snap View feature. The company is expected to
announce Windows 8.1 at its Build developers conference on June 26th in
San Francisco, and it will reportedly be released to manufacturing
partners around August.
$25 Raspberry Pi Model A Now Available in the U.S.
The cheaper model of the Raspberry Pi Foundations microcomputer is now
available in the United States. The Raspberry Pi Model A is equipped with
the same 700MHz processor as the more expensive Model B but includes only
one USB port, no Ethernet port, and half the RAM of the original model to
keep the price low. Sales of the Model A began in Europe in February and
expanded to Asia last week. Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton has revealed
that sales of the cheaper Pi unit are around a few thousand a week so
far.
We burned through the first 20,000 units quite quickly, and are building
a few thousand a week at the moment, but we dont have good visibility of
sell through yet, Upton said in a statement to TechCrunch. Id expect
us to dip in and out of availability for the next month or so until we
reach a steady state.
The device consumes roughly a third of the power of the Model B and is
marketed towards do-it-yourself projects that use a battery or solar
power. The Raspberry Pi Model A is available to American buyers for $25
from Allied Electronics.
Mozilla and Samsung Collaborate on Next Generation Web Browser Engine
Mozillas mission is about advancing the Web as a platform for all. At
Mozilla Research, were supporting this mission by experimenting with
whats next when it comes to the core technology powering the Web
browser. We need to be prepared to take advantage of tomorrows faster,
multi-core, heterogeneous computing architectures. Thats why weve
recently begun collaborating with Samsung on an advanced technology Web
browser engine called Servo.
Servo is an attempt to rebuild the Web browser from the ground up on
modern hardware, rethinking old assumptions along the way. This means
addressing the causes of security vulnerabilities while designing a
platform that can fully utilize the performance of tomorrows massively
parallel hardware to enable new and richer experiences on the Web. To
those ends, Servo is written in Rust, a new, safe systems language
developed by Mozilla along with a growing community of enthusiasts.
We are now pleased to announce with Samsung that together we are bringing
both the Rust programming language and Servo, the experimental web browser
engine, to Android and ARM. This is an exciting step in the evolution of
both projects that will allow us to start deeper research with Servo on
mobile. Samsung has already contributed an ARM backend to Rust and the
build infrastructure necessary to cross-compile to Android, along with
many other improvements. You can try this now by downloading the code
from Github, but its just the beginning.
Rust, which today reached v0.6, has been in development for several years
and is rapidly approaching stability. It is intended to fill many of the
same niches that C++ has over the past decades, with efficient high-level,
multi-paradigm abstractions, and offers precise control over hardware
resources. But beyond that, it is *safe by default*, preventing entire
classes of memory management errors that lead to crashes and security
vulnerabilities. Rust also features lightweight concurrency primitives
that make it easy for programmers to leverage the power of the many CPU
cores available on current and future computing platforms.
In the coming year, we are racing to complete the first major revision of
Rust cleaning up, expanding and documenting the libraries, building out
our tools to improve the user experience, and beefing up performance. At
the same time, we will be putting more resources into Servo, trying to
prove that we can build a fast web browser with pervasive parallelism, and
in a safe, fun language. We, along with our friends at Samsung will be
increasingly looking at opportunities on mobile platforms. Both of these
efforts are still early stage projects and theres a lot to do yet, so
now is a good time to get involved.
To take a look at what were doing and contribute to the projects you can
download and try the recently-released Rust 0.6 or check out the source
for Rust and Servo on GitHub. Then come participate in the development
process on the Rust (https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/rust-dev) and Servo
(https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-servo) mailing lists.
US Patent Office Results: IBM #1 for 20th Consecutive Year
IBM technology helps industry evolve to meet the most demanding end-users
and IT professionals
Every year, the USPTO publishes the top 50 U.S. Patent creators. And in
2012, IBM ranked #1 for the 20th consecutive year, with 6,478 patents
granted. IBM considers their most recent inventions as major contributors
to a shift in computing known as the era of cognitive systems.
The companys history of technological innovation has helped it stay at
the forefront of the IT industry for over 50 years, and is a major reason
why Sirius Computer Solutions has been an IBM Business Partner since 1980.
As the worlds top IBM solutions provider, Sirius offers clients the
complete IBM portfolio of advanced products and services.
Apple, Google Won't Face Poaching Class Action Suit, Yet
A U.S. judge ruled that a lawsuit alleging a broad conspiracy among
Silicon Valley companies not to poach each other's employees cannot
proceed as a class action for now, but left the door open for workers to
eventually sue as a group.
In a decision released on Friday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San
Jose, California said the five software engineers suing Apple Inc, Google
Inc and five other companies have yet to show enough in common among the
proposed class members to allow them to sue together.
But in deciding to give the plaintiffs another chance, the federal judge
said she was "keenly aware" new evidence had recently become available
that could support class certification.
She also said the nature of the "alleged overarching conspiracy" and
desire to litigate it all at once weighed "heavily" in favor of
certifying a class, which the plaintiffs' lawyers have said could include
tens of thousands of people.
The case has been closely watched in Silicon Valley, and much of it has
been built on emails among top executives, including the late Apple Chief
Executive Steve Jobs and former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.
If the plaintiffs win class certification, then they would have more
leverage to extract large financial settlements than if they were to sue
individually.
Other defendants in the case include Adobe Systems Inc, Intel Corp,
Intuit Inc, and Walt Disney Co's Lucasfilm Ltd and Pixar units.
The defendants were accused of violating the Sherman Act and Clayton Act
antitrust laws by conspiring to eliminate competition for labor, depriving
workers of job mobility and hundreds of millions of dollars of
compensation.
These allegations are similar to those raised in a U.S. Department of
Justice probe that ended in a 2010 settlement, which forbade several of
the defendants from entering an anti-poaching conspiracy, such as through
the use of "Do Not Cold Call" lists.
Koh said she wants more evidence that a proposed class does not include
large numbers of people who suffered no harm.
She also expressed concern over whether evidence would show that the
defendants had "such rigid compensation structures" that would have
affected nearly everyone in a class.
But in a signal that certification could be forthcoming, Koh appointed
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and the Joseph Saveri Law Firm as
co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs.
"The court has invited us to provide further answers to certain specific
questions, which we are prepared to do," Saveri said in an email. "We are
in the process of determining a schedule for doing that as quickly as
possible."
Apple spokeswoman Amy Bessette declined to comment. Google spokesman Matt
Kallman would not discuss the decision, but said "we have always actively
and aggressively recruited top talent."
Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said the chipmaker opposes certification, and
believes the evidence will show its employees "were fairly compensated in
a highly competitive market."
Adobe spokeswoman Christie Hui declined to comment. The other companies
did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Among the revelations in the litigation was a 2007 email trail involving
Jobs and Schmidt, then an Apple director, over Google's apparent effort to
recruit an Apple engineer.
After Jobs emailed Schmidt that he "would be very pleased if your
recruiting department would stop doing this," Schmidt forwarded the email
to others he urged to "get this stopped."
Koh also cited a January 2007 email from Ed Catmull, then Pixar's
president and now president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, to
the head of Disney Studios that suggested a desire to avoid bidding up the
price of talent.
"We have avoided wars up in Norther[n] California because all of the
companies up here - Pixar,, Dreamworks, and couple of smaller places -
have conscientiously avoided raiding each other," he wrote.
All of the defendants are based in California: Adobe in San Jose; Apple in
Cupertino; Google and Intuit in Mountain View; Intel in Santa Clara;
Lucasfilm in San Francisco; and Pixar in Emeryville. Walt Disney is based
in Burbank.
The case is In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District
Court, Northern District of California, No. 11-02509.
The Untold Story Behind Apple's $13,000 Operating System
In the common retelling of Apple's history, it was Steve Jobs' and Steve
Wozniak's second computer, the Apple II, that launched their fledgling
company toward stratospheric growth and financial success. The machine's
triumph as a single platform for business software, games, artistic tools
- and more - set the stage for the later debut of the first Mac, and
later OS X and iDevices.
What many forget - or may not even know - is that when the Apple II was
introduced at the inaugural West Coast Computer Faire in April, 1977, it
suffered from what, in retrospect, was a glaring shortcoming: It had no
disk drive.
Thanks to 35-year-old documents that have recently surfaced after
three-plus decades in storage, we now know exactly how Apple navigated
around that obstacle to create the company's first disk operating system.
In more than a literal sense, it is also the untold story of how Apple
booted up. From contracts - signed by both Wozniak and Jobs - to design
specs to page after page of schematics and code, CNET had a chance to
examine this document trove, housed at the DigiBarn computer museum in
California's Santa Cruz Mountains, which shed important new light on those
formative years at Apple.
What they show is the process, driven by Jobs' urgency and inspired by
Wozniak's technical vision, yet emblematic of their reliance on outside
help, behind one of the most vital software projects in Apple's history.
Without the project, we now know, Apple's ambitions of selling a serious
computer for a wide audience might very well have collapsed just as the
company was on the verge of making the big time.
With its professional-looking (for 1977) injection-molded case and a
design aesthetic to match Jobs' perfectionism, the Apple II was a
breakthrough product for the time. But though it was years ahead of the
kit-like Apple I that it was meant to replace, the Apple II still only
offered a cassette drive.
"They were in trouble," recalled Bruce Damer, founder of the DigiBarn.
"With a cassette, you had to wait and wait and wait [to load anything] and
it was unreliable. It was a hit or miss process. Can you imagine trying to
build a company on this?"
Wozniak and Jobs weren't blind to the need for a functional, and powerful,
disk drive and a disk operating system to run the system. But despite its
deep bench of in-house talent - a roster of eventual Silicon Valley
legends including the likes of Woz himself, Jef Raskin (the "father of the
Mac"), John "Captain Crunch" Draper, to name a few - building its own DOS
was beyond Apple's ability at the time. The company needed to look
elsewhere.
Though the Apple I brought Wozniak and Jobs fame in the largely insular
world of enthusiasts, the computer had no case, no power supply, and no
keyboard - and failed to generate much interest among business buyers.
With the Apple II, however, which Wozniak designed in the fall of 1976,
Apple set out to attract a wider audience. It was a decision that laid
the groundwork for a more expansive sales and marketing strategy. First
item on the agenda: Get a disk drive into the system to force the market
to take Apple seriously.
"The difference between cassette and disk systems was the difference
between hobbyist devices and a computer," said Lee Felsenstein, the
creator of the Osborne I, the world's first portable computer. "You
couldn't have expected, say, VisiCalc, to run on a cassette system."
VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, was one of - if not the -
single-most important pieces of software in PC history. As Paul Laughton,
who wrote Apple's DOS, put it, VisiCalc was "the thing that [made]
microcomputers take off."
That's because it gave businesspeople a reason to spend a lot of money on
a new microcomputer. "If you knew VisiCalc, and what it did, and you were
a skilled salesperson, and the right person came in the door," said Dan
Bricklin, the co-creator of VisiCalc (along with Bob Frankston). "You
could probably sell them a fully-loaded machine."
Bricklin explained that he and his publisher released VisiCalc for the
Apple II first, in part because his publisher, Dan Fylstra, was an Apple
fan, and in part because they had an assembler for the 6502 chip that the
Apple II was based on. But the decision to go first with the Apple,
Bricklin said, was partially based on the fact that the Apple II was more
likely than its competitors to have the floppy drive.
For a year, VisiCalc was an Apple exclusive, and during that time, about a
thousand copies of the software were sold a month. That number may seem
small today, but at the time, it was significant. Plus, Bricklin said, "it
corresponded to a lot of Apples being sold - more than a million dollars
in Apple computers being sold every month."
Can you draw a line from Apple's DOS to the company's eventual success
through VisiCalc? Felsenstein certainly thinks so. VisiCalc, he said, "was
the killer app, the one that made everybody pay attention and realize that
you could do real stuff with these devices. They were not toys."
Talk to just about anyone intimately familiar with the Apple II, and one
thing you'll hear often is that the disk controller Wozniak designed over
the 1977 Christmas holidays for the computer was a proverbial game
changer.
The chief innovation was making the controller compact by using software
while competitors relied on hardware. As Bill Fernandez, then an
electronic technician at Apple, remembers it, "the key advantage of
[Wozniak's] design [was] that it used only six chips instead of the usual
60 to 70 - a huge reduction in size and cost."
Wozniak's design for the disk drive controller is said to have been
groundbreaking for using just a handful of chips while most others needed
dozens.
Bricklin said Woz's controller was "wonderful," while Felsenstein marveled
at its "elegance." Damer called it "masterful." And surely Apple's
financial people were happy, because the simple design meant profit
margins would be much higher than those on competitors' drives.
But no matter how great its disk controller was, Apple had no DOS. Or any
way to build one of its own. "They looked around Apple," Damer said, "and
no one could write a DOS."
Wozniak's options were few. On the one hand, he told CNET, there were no
existing disk operating systems for the 6502 chip. And though the Apple II
did have a mini-DOS built into its ROM that could redirect input and
output streams to any slot by manual or program command, Wozniak wanted
more.
One option was CP/M, a popular OS at the time. But it was known to be
clunky, and though Wozniak said he talked to CP/M's creator, Gary Kildall,
about operating systems, "I was looking for something easier to use."
Although he knew little about operating systems, Wozniak is confident he
could have built a good one. But his co-founder couldn't wait. "Steve
Jobs, who didn't have patience for a project that took more than a week,
found [Shepardson Microsystems] and...they sounded eager and
knowledgeable...so we hired them."
As then-Shepardson employee Paul Laughton remembers it, Wozniak came by
one day saying Apple had a disk drive, but no DOS, and was wondering what
to do. "I said, 'I know about operating systems.' And so he said, 'Cool,
let's have you do it.'"
On April 10, 1978, the contract was signed. For $13,000 - $5,200 up front,
and $7,800 on delivery, and no additional royalties - Shepardson
Microsystems would build Apple's first DOS - and hand it over just 35
days later. "Amazing," said Damer, speaking about that deadline. "Can you
imagine delivering an operating system in just 35 days today, with no
tools and partially functional hardware? That truly was the greatest
generation of programmers."
For its money, Apple would get a file manager, an interface for integer
BASIC and Applesoft BASIC, and utilities that would allow disk backup,
disk recovery, and file copying.
"I sat down and started writing," Laughton recalled. It "was written on
punch cards. It was put into a minicomputer and assembled, and the output
was paper-taped. Then we proceeded to debug it."
In the recently surfaced documents, which Laughton donated to the
DigiBarn, is a wealth of information about the Apple DOS project. From
contracts - signed by both Wozniak and Jobs - to design specs to page
after page of schematics and code, this is a treasure trove of Silicon
Valley and Apple history. Or, as Damer said he thought upon looking
through the papers, "Oh my God, these are possibly the most important
Apple documents in history."
"The difference between cassette and disk systems was the difference
between hobbyist devices and a computer. You couldn't have expected, say,
VisiCalc, to run on a cassette system."
One of the fun parts about reading through the documents is seeing pages
filled with Wozniak's own writing. The project, after all, was based on
specs Apple's legendary co-founder gave Laughton for how to create a boot
disk. Among the treats - for those who can appreciate such things - is
Wozniak's hand-drawn diagram for his highly regarded floppy disk
controller.
The margins of the source code also have a series of notes explaining
what's going on that are like catnip for true Apple geeks. Looking over
the documents, and seeing a comment about "Must not cross page boundary,"
Apple's sixth employee, Randy Wigginton, who worked closely with
Shepardson Microsystems on the project, said, "I forgot how crossing a
page boundary added an extra cycle on the 6502."
"The 6502 liked everything to be in neat 256-byte 'page boundaries,'
Wigginton explained to CNET by e-mail. "When writing code that had to be
rigorous about timing, you had to be careful about crossing a page
boundary....[Otherwise] an extra cycle was consumed by the processor.
That's why Woz has a note 'Must not cross page boundary' on his code."
For Laughton, who turns 69 this month, his essential role in one of
Apple's most important projects was a career highlight. Even in 1978, he
could tell Apple was a special company, particularly because he recognized
the "genius of Wozniak in the design of the Apple II and the design of the
disk drive interface card."
He's also had plenty of opportunities to revisit his contribution to
Apple. "From time to time, it would come up in conversation and someone
would say they had an Apple II, and I'd say I wrote the DOS," Laughton
said. "They were like, 'Wow, did you make a lot of money," thinking I
probably worked for Apple.
In fact, though, Laughton made about $35,000 a year working for Shepardson
at the time. He knows how much he could have made on Apple stock if he'd
worked directly for Wozniak and Jobs, but in 1978, Apple was just another
startup, and Laughton enjoyed the steady work writing software for
Shepardson's many clients.
Besides, he recalled, "I remember talking to Wozniak, and his salary was
lower than mine."
Can Modem Lights Warn of Danger?
Your modem and router lights are blinking all the time even when you
know that no one is using the Internet. Is that a warning that
somethings wrong?
Mostly, the lights on your modem or router indicate perfectly normal
activity. Even when you arent actively browsing the web or downloading a
video, your computer busily monitors all its network connections to your
Internet Service Provider, to your Wi-Fi-connected phones, and to other
connected devices, like your cable box, AppleTV, or Xbox. And all of this
communication shows up as activity on your modem or router.
While most blinking lights are nothing to worry about, there are some
real threats that you should know how to protect yourself from.
Botnets: Botnets are software programs that scan through the Internet
looking for unsecured computers they can take over and turn into zombie
spam machines. But no need to panic here; any computer that has even a
basic firewall or is behind a router is perfectly safe.
Wi-Fi Thieves: Wi-Fi thieves are most likely your neighbors who dont feel
like paying for their own service. This isnt a big threat, except that it
may slow down your own connection plus, it isnt really fair. If you
suspect you have a Wi-Fi thief, log into your router and look at the list
of devices connected. You should mostly see devices you recognize. If a
neighbor is using your network, its likely their device will be simply
labeled. These Wi-Fi thieves are generally thwarted pretty easily; just
change the name of your router and your Wi-Fi password.
Viruses: if you have a virus on your computer, it could be sending traffic
through your router too. Or worse, if someone has installed monitoring
software, that could be sending out a log of all your Internet activity.
To check, first run a virus scan and then try a network traffic monitor
like Little Snitch for Mac or the Comodo Firewall for Windows machines.
April Fools: YouTube Shut Down, Google Adds Smells
Twitter did away with vowels, Google unveiled a button to add smells and
the cast of the 1990s sitcom "Wings" launched a Kickstarter campaign.
The digital world celebrated April Fools' Day with the rollout of mock
innovations and parody makeovers. Many of the top online destinations
spent Monday mocking themselves and, in Google's case, playfully trying to
lure users into pressing their noses against their computer screens.
Google, having already debuted its wearable Google Glass, on Monday
showcased Google Nose to add scents to it search results. It urged
visitors to lean in close and take a deep whiff for search results such
as "unattended litter box."
"In the fast-paced world that we live in, we don't always have time to
stop and smell the roses," product manager Jon Wooly said in a video.
"Now with Google Nose Beta, the roses are just a click away."
YouTube, despite 72 hours of video uploaded every minute, said it was
shutting down. The Google Inc.-owned video site joked that its eight-year
rise was merely a lengthy talent search. At the end of the day, nominees
were to no longer be accepted so judges could, for the next 10 years, sift
through the billions of videos and declare a winner.
Google has always been one of the most enthusiastic April Fools' Day
observers, and on Monday it trotted out an extensive lineup of satire. It
also added a "treasure map mode" to Google Maps, complete with "underwater
street view," and trumpeted Gmail Blue, in which the revolutionary upgrade
is the simple addition of the color blue.
The comedy site Funny or Die parodied the recent Kickstarter campaign for
a "Veronica Mars" movie with a number of crowd-funding campaigns for other
1990s shows, including "Wings" and "Family Matters." The mock campaigns
included videos with original cast members trapped by nostalgia.
"You've been asking for it for years," ''Wings" star Crystal Bernard says
in a video asking for $87 million. "Think of it like a $1,000 ticket to
the film. Or $20,000!"
Instead of linking to a way to donate money, the mock campaigns led users
to charities including the Make-a-Wish Foundation: "Please channel that
giving energy into one of these very real, very worthy charities," read
the site, slyly suggesting a more deserving cause for donation than
Kickstarter projects.
Twitter, not content with the brevity of 140 characters, said it was
"annncng" Twttr, a service that would limit messages to just consonants.
In an apparent dig at the splitting in half of Netflix memberships
between DVD and streaming, Twitter said users would now have to pay $5 a
month for the premium use of vowels.
Netflix, meanwhile, boasted joke genre categories such as "Reality TV
about people with no concept of reality."
Hulu offered a new slate of programming for its video site, presenting
fictional series as if real, completed shows. "30 Rock" fans were baited
with the promise of an actual "The Rural Juror" (a fake film frequently
alluded to on "30 Rock" starring Jane Krakowski's character), and
"Arrested Development" watchers were tempted by finally getting to see an
episode of "Mock Trial with J. Reinhold."
=~=~=~=
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