A couple of months ago, I downloaded a beta version of Firefox 3 just to look at the new ideas Mozilla was working on. My intention was to try it for a couple days, then switch back to Firefox 2. I wasn't worried about stability (it's a browser after all -- what's the worst that can happen?). But the beta wasn't compatible with lots of my favorite extensions and who wants to live without them?
As it turns out, I'm still using a prerelease version of Firefox (they're at Release Candidate 1 now) and loving it, even without my beloved add-ons. The improvements Mozilla has made to the browser, while subtle, are so helpful that I didn't want to give them up. Here are five of my favorites.
1. Much better performance
If you've used previous versions of Firefox you've likely had this experience, perhaps frequently: you're working away, but gradually become aware that something is horribly wrong with your PC. It's sluggish and apps take forever to load. You open up Task Manager and find that Firefox is chewing up 95 percent of your CPU cycles. Once you kill the browser and start over, you're running fine again.
I can't remember the last time I've had that experience with the Firefox 3 betas. Mozilla developers borrowed some memory management tricks from the Free BSD operating system for the Windows and Linux versions of Firefox. (They say memory management on Macs already worked pretty well.) The effect is clear. The browser is much less likely to commandeer too many system resources. And Firefox's developers worked to make sure that add-ons, notorious memory thieves, don't cause problems either. They've rolled in cycle collectors that help prevent extensions from locking up RAM and not giving it back. They're also distributing tools to third-party developers that will help them build more abstemious add-ons.
2. The "Awesome Bar"
Okay, so the official name is the Location Bar, the field where you enter URLs you want to visit. But beta testers have nicknamed it the Awesome Bar and it is, well, pretty awesome. Enter text in the Location Bar and a dropdown list appears of pages from your browsing history that include that text, not just in the URL, but in the page title or the page's tag (see #4 below). The list even includes Gmail messages that include that word in the subject line. If you've already visited a Web page, there's a good chance it's useful to you. The Location Bar lets you very quickly search that useful subset of the Web.
3. Can't miss warnings
Lots of browsers have had phishing warnings before (including Firefox), but they've been wimpy. Usually they involve some part of the address bar changing color or some icon popping up near the URL. The problem is they're too easy to miss. I'm not looking at the address bar when I'm waiting for a page to load. I'm looking at the main well of the browser where the page will display.
But there's no danger of missing one of Firefox's new warnings. When you enter the URL of a suspected attack site, Firefox brings up a full-page warning. With a click, you can see a detailed explanation of why the site was blocked. Or you can just click "Get me out of here," which takes you to Firefox's start page. If you really want to live dangerously, there's a small link that lets you ignore the warning and proceed to the suspect site.
4. Better bookmarks
If you like a page, you just click the star in the Location Bar and it's a favorite. A dropdown box lets you name it, choose a folder to put it in or add a tag to categorize it. Bookmarks (and your browsing history) are now stored in a database, which means you don't have to spend so much time organizing bookmark folders. You can perform detailed searches of your bookmarks, then save that search as a special folder. Any new bookmarked page that fits the criteria automatically goes in the folder.
5. Whole-page zooming
If your eyes aren't what they used to be, it's nice to bump up the size of text on Web pages, as Firefox 2 will do. But it only changes the text size -- the other elements remain the same size. That makes for pages that look like The Incredible Hulk, with words bursting through the boxs and tabs that are supposed to contain them.
The new Firefox magnifies everything on the page equally. Everything remains in proportion, but becomes easier to read. And the next time you visit that page, it'll display at the same level of zoom.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Retailer GameStop discontinues Zune sales
GameStop will no longer sell Microsoft's Zune digital media players in its stores once it runs out of its current inventory, the company said.
The games retailer, which started selling Zune when the player was released in November 2006, found Zune was not "working with our product mix," said GameStop Vice President of Corporate Communications Chris Olivera in an e-mail on Monday. GameStop is primarily a video game retailer.
GameStop made the decision internally to discontinue selling the product about a month ago, Olivera said. News of the decision first came out publicly on a conference call last week to discuss the company's first-quarter 2008 earnings.
In an e-mail statement from its public relations firm on Monday, Microsoft focused on other retail partnerships rather than address GameStop's decision specifically.
The company noted that Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and other stores continue to sell Zune, and the company finds "good momentum online and at retail over the last few months, including a great response to our recent spring update."
For that spring update, Microsoft unveiled that NBC would be selling content through the Zune Marketplace, Microsoft's online store that sells content for the player. The news was significant in that it followed a spat NBC had with Apple that spurred the television network to pull its content from Apple's iTunes online music store.
Microsoft released its Zune player as a competitor to Apple's enormously popular iPod. So far, however, Microsoft has seen only marginal success with Zune, selling more than 2 million since its launch. That compares to more than 10 million iPods sold in the first three months of this year.
According to its Web site, GameStop has 5,264 stores, with 4,061 of them in the U.S. The retailer also has 287 stores in Canada, 280 in Australia and New Zealand, and 636 in Europe. The stores operate under the names GameStop and EB Games.
The games retailer, which started selling Zune when the player was released in November 2006, found Zune was not "working with our product mix," said GameStop Vice President of Corporate Communications Chris Olivera in an e-mail on Monday. GameStop is primarily a video game retailer.
GameStop made the decision internally to discontinue selling the product about a month ago, Olivera said. News of the decision first came out publicly on a conference call last week to discuss the company's first-quarter 2008 earnings.
In an e-mail statement from its public relations firm on Monday, Microsoft focused on other retail partnerships rather than address GameStop's decision specifically.
The company noted that Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and other stores continue to sell Zune, and the company finds "good momentum online and at retail over the last few months, including a great response to our recent spring update."
For that spring update, Microsoft unveiled that NBC would be selling content through the Zune Marketplace, Microsoft's online store that sells content for the player. The news was significant in that it followed a spat NBC had with Apple that spurred the television network to pull its content from Apple's iTunes online music store.
Microsoft released its Zune player as a competitor to Apple's enormously popular iPod. So far, however, Microsoft has seen only marginal success with Zune, selling more than 2 million since its launch. That compares to more than 10 million iPods sold in the first three months of this year.
According to its Web site, GameStop has 5,264 stores, with 4,061 of them in the U.S. The retailer also has 287 stores in Canada, 280 in Australia and New Zealand, and 636 in Europe. The stores operate under the names GameStop and EB Games.
Google beefs up Mini search appliance for SMBs
Google's Mini search appliance for small and midsize businesses has grown a new set of capabilities for crawling and categorizing documents, the company announced in a blog post Tuesday.
"Almost all employees store files on shared servers so other employees can access them. The Mini is now able to securely crawl and serve these file shares," says the post by Cyrus Mistry, enterprise product manager.
The revision also introduces document "biasing," the practice of ranking the importance of related or similar pieces of information.
"Many customers have told us that they want to tell us which documents are more valuable within their own companies -- for instance, published marketing collateral is more authoritative than the first draft," Mistry wrote. "Source biasing enables users to give us URL patterns and tell us if they should be weighted higher or lower."
The Mini now also enables users to rank documents based on their age.
Finally, Google has boosted the Mini's international reach, adding support for Basque, Catalan, Galician, Greek, Hungarian, and Polish in its help files and administrative interfaces, according to the blog post.
However, the posting does not list any increase in the product's scalability. It can index up to 300,000 documents, compared to its stablemate, the Google Search Appliance, which is geared for larger enterprises and can handle up to 30 million documents.
The announcement of new features stands in contrast to a recent rumor, reported by TechCrunch, that the company planned to stop selling the product and launch a new hosted search site.
Both IBM and Microsoft offer free, entry-level search products that compete with the Mini. Pricing for the Mini begins at about US$3,000, including two years of support and the necessary hardware.
A Google spokesperson did not respond directly to a query about the TechCrunch rumor, but said the company's "commitment to the Google Mini as the search solution for small to medium-sized businesses and smaller departments of large corporations is evidenced by this announcement."
The new features were prompted by customer requests and market demand, the spokesperson said.
While the capabilities are "not groundbreaking," and high-end systems have had them for years, they "do increase the functionality of base levels of search," said Guy Creese, an analyst with Burton Group, via e-mail.
Customers wouldn't have revolted if Google hadn't added the features, according to Creese. "However, I do think it points to Google viewing the way to win in this market as giving good value for the money," he said. "While competitors are probably grinding their teeth, this is good news for the entire search market, as competing solutions will have to [improve] their feature sets as well."
The move falls in line with past practices, he added: "This is similar to what Google has done with Web analytics. In the past, free or inexpensive Web analytics [were] pretty bare-bones. However, Google Analytics has consistently added features that mean the entry-level solution is now quite full-featured."
Stephen Arnold, a search analyst who tracks Google closely, said the move shows the company has "confidence that sophisticated features are solid enough for toaster customers."
However, it is unlikely that Google plans to boost the Mini's scalability, because it wouldn't make business sense, according to Arnold.
"They never will," he said. "The logic of every box is that it has a hard limit."
"Almost all employees store files on shared servers so other employees can access them. The Mini is now able to securely crawl and serve these file shares," says the post by Cyrus Mistry, enterprise product manager.
The revision also introduces document "biasing," the practice of ranking the importance of related or similar pieces of information.
"Many customers have told us that they want to tell us which documents are more valuable within their own companies -- for instance, published marketing collateral is more authoritative than the first draft," Mistry wrote. "Source biasing enables users to give us URL patterns and tell us if they should be weighted higher or lower."
The Mini now also enables users to rank documents based on their age.
Finally, Google has boosted the Mini's international reach, adding support for Basque, Catalan, Galician, Greek, Hungarian, and Polish in its help files and administrative interfaces, according to the blog post.
However, the posting does not list any increase in the product's scalability. It can index up to 300,000 documents, compared to its stablemate, the Google Search Appliance, which is geared for larger enterprises and can handle up to 30 million documents.
The announcement of new features stands in contrast to a recent rumor, reported by TechCrunch, that the company planned to stop selling the product and launch a new hosted search site.
Both IBM and Microsoft offer free, entry-level search products that compete with the Mini. Pricing for the Mini begins at about US$3,000, including two years of support and the necessary hardware.
A Google spokesperson did not respond directly to a query about the TechCrunch rumor, but said the company's "commitment to the Google Mini as the search solution for small to medium-sized businesses and smaller departments of large corporations is evidenced by this announcement."
The new features were prompted by customer requests and market demand, the spokesperson said.
While the capabilities are "not groundbreaking," and high-end systems have had them for years, they "do increase the functionality of base levels of search," said Guy Creese, an analyst with Burton Group, via e-mail.
Customers wouldn't have revolted if Google hadn't added the features, according to Creese. "However, I do think it points to Google viewing the way to win in this market as giving good value for the money," he said. "While competitors are probably grinding their teeth, this is good news for the entire search market, as competing solutions will have to [improve] their feature sets as well."
The move falls in line with past practices, he added: "This is similar to what Google has done with Web analytics. In the past, free or inexpensive Web analytics [were] pretty bare-bones. However, Google Analytics has consistently added features that mean the entry-level solution is now quite full-featured."
Stephen Arnold, a search analyst who tracks Google closely, said the move shows the company has "confidence that sophisticated features are solid enough for toaster customers."
However, it is unlikely that Google plans to boost the Mini's scalability, because it wouldn't make business sense, according to Arnold.
"They never will," he said. "The logic of every box is that it has a hard limit."
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
UK's Tranquil PC taking orders for Atom-based home servers
Tranquil PC, a computer maker in the U.K., is taking orders for two home servers based on Intel's upcoming Atom processor, formerly called Diamondville.
The two home servers, the T7-HSAi and T2-WHS-A3i, are both based on Intel's 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor, which will be launched at the Computex exhibition in Taipei next week.
The £278 (US$550) T7-HSAi comes with 512M bytes of RAM, a 500G-byte hard disk, and Windows Home Server. The T2-WHS-A3i costs £299 and has the same basic specifications, but has room for two 3.5-inch hard disks, while the smaller T7-HSAi can hold a single 3.5-inch hard disk or two 2.5-inch hard disks.
The Atom-based systems replace earlier systems based on Via Technologies' older and less powerful C7 processor. The C7-based home servers are no longer available, although Tranquil still sells other computers based on Via processors.
The home servers are not the first products to be offered by Tranquil that use Atom, a chip designed for low-cost laptops and desktops. Last week, the company began accepting preorders for a motherboard with an Atom processor, priced at £53.
The two home servers, the T7-HSAi and T2-WHS-A3i, are both based on Intel's 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor, which will be launched at the Computex exhibition in Taipei next week.
The £278 (US$550) T7-HSAi comes with 512M bytes of RAM, a 500G-byte hard disk, and Windows Home Server. The T2-WHS-A3i costs £299 and has the same basic specifications, but has room for two 3.5-inch hard disks, while the smaller T7-HSAi can hold a single 3.5-inch hard disk or two 2.5-inch hard disks.
The Atom-based systems replace earlier systems based on Via Technologies' older and less powerful C7 processor. The C7-based home servers are no longer available, although Tranquil still sells other computers based on Via processors.
The home servers are not the first products to be offered by Tranquil that use Atom, a chip designed for low-cost laptops and desktops. Last week, the company began accepting preorders for a motherboard with an Atom processor, priced at £53.
Vodafone CEO Sarin steps down, to be replaced by Colao
Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin will step down from the top job at the mobile operator in July, the company said Tuesday.
Sarin will leave the CEO's chair, a position he has occupied for the last five years, on July 28 at the company's annual general meeting, Vodafone said. He will be replaced by Vittorio Colao, the group's deputy CEO.
Vodafone also announced its full-year results, posting a £6.66 billion (US$13.1 billion) net profit for its fiscal 2008, compared to a loss of £4.93 billion for fiscal 2007.
Sarin was appointed CEO of Vodafone in July 2003, after serving as a non-executive director of the company. He also did a stint as CEO of Vodafone United States and Asia-Pacific. Sarin joined Vodafone in 1999, when the company acquired AirTouch Communications, where he served as president and CEO.
"Sarin has done a very good job, but has he done everything right? Of course not," said Martin Gutberlet, analyst at Gartner.
Gutberlet gave Sarin high marks for transforming Vodafone from a pure mobile operator into more of a service provider.
Under Sarin's tenure, Vodafone continued to expand its international reach, most recently with the acquisition of Indian operator Hutchison Essar, Gutberlet said. Fixed networks are also part of Vodafone's services now, he said.
Through this expansion, the number of Vodafone subscribers worldwide increased from 120 million to more than 260 million, Vodafone said.
Sarin received a lot of credit for his frank comments about what he thinks the vendors' development plans. At the Mobile World Congress in February, Sarin said WiMax and LTE (Long-Term Evolution) should be merged into one technology. Last year, Sarin challenged vendors to develop LTE faster.
Sarin's comments, along with other pressure from companies such as NTT Docomo and T-Mobile, lit a match under the vendor community resulting in faster LTE development, Gutberlet said.
Colao previously served as head of Vodafone Italy and regional CEO for Southern Europe. He left Vodafone in 2004 to become group CEO of the Italian publisher RCS MediaGroup. He rejoined Vodafone in 2006 as CEO of Vodafone's European region before taking on his current position.
The CEO of Vodafone is one of the most important roles in the industry. The rest of the mobile operators look to Vodafone for technology leadership, according to Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics.
"He has to have a very clear vision and be very vocal about it, but I don't think Vodafone would pick someone who hasn't got that," Webb said.
"Colao's biggest challenge will be to keep Vodafone from turning into a bit pipe, but that is true for all mobile operators. Colao needs a dedicated Internet approach, including areas like advertising," Gutberlet said.
Sarin will leave the CEO's chair, a position he has occupied for the last five years, on July 28 at the company's annual general meeting, Vodafone said. He will be replaced by Vittorio Colao, the group's deputy CEO.
Vodafone also announced its full-year results, posting a £6.66 billion (US$13.1 billion) net profit for its fiscal 2008, compared to a loss of £4.93 billion for fiscal 2007.
Sarin was appointed CEO of Vodafone in July 2003, after serving as a non-executive director of the company. He also did a stint as CEO of Vodafone United States and Asia-Pacific. Sarin joined Vodafone in 1999, when the company acquired AirTouch Communications, where he served as president and CEO.
"Sarin has done a very good job, but has he done everything right? Of course not," said Martin Gutberlet, analyst at Gartner.
Gutberlet gave Sarin high marks for transforming Vodafone from a pure mobile operator into more of a service provider.
Under Sarin's tenure, Vodafone continued to expand its international reach, most recently with the acquisition of Indian operator Hutchison Essar, Gutberlet said. Fixed networks are also part of Vodafone's services now, he said.
Through this expansion, the number of Vodafone subscribers worldwide increased from 120 million to more than 260 million, Vodafone said.
Sarin received a lot of credit for his frank comments about what he thinks the vendors' development plans. At the Mobile World Congress in February, Sarin said WiMax and LTE (Long-Term Evolution) should be merged into one technology. Last year, Sarin challenged vendors to develop LTE faster.
Sarin's comments, along with other pressure from companies such as NTT Docomo and T-Mobile, lit a match under the vendor community resulting in faster LTE development, Gutberlet said.
Colao previously served as head of Vodafone Italy and regional CEO for Southern Europe. He left Vodafone in 2004 to become group CEO of the Italian publisher RCS MediaGroup. He rejoined Vodafone in 2006 as CEO of Vodafone's European region before taking on his current position.
The CEO of Vodafone is one of the most important roles in the industry. The rest of the mobile operators look to Vodafone for technology leadership, according to Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics.
"He has to have a very clear vision and be very vocal about it, but I don't think Vodafone would pick someone who hasn't got that," Webb said.
"Colao's biggest challenge will be to keep Vodafone from turning into a bit pipe, but that is true for all mobile operators. Colao needs a dedicated Internet approach, including areas like advertising," Gutberlet said.
Via releases laptop design as open source
Via Technologies released the hardware design for a low-cost laptop with WiMax support under an open-source license on Tuesday, a move intended to make customization easier and shorten design cycles for system makers.
The CAD (computer-assisted design) files for the OpenBook reference design can be downloaded for free and made available to anyone under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. The terms of this license allow the CAD files to be freely copied, shared and modified.
The only requirements are that use of the design is attributed to Via and changes made to the design can only be distributed under the same license or one that has similar terms.
"We're hoping we'll get some interesting feedback, and look forward to seeing what the community thinks about this concept," said Richard Brown, vice president of marketing at Via.
The OpenBook is based on Via's 1.6 GHz C7-M processor and VX800 chipset. The design includes an 8.9-inch screen with a resolution of 1,024 pixels by 600 pixels and calls for a hard disk with a capacity of 80G bytes or more. The basic wireless module included in the design supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Optional modules include Assisted GPS (AGPS), WiMax, and support for high-speed cellular networks based on EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized), HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access), and WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access).
Other features of the 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) OpenBook include a full-size keyboard, up to 2G bytes of DDR (double data rate) memory, a 2-megapixel camera, a memory-card reader, and a 4-cell battery that offers up to three hours of life. The laptop is designed to run Windows Vista, Windows XP, or Linux, including G/OS, SuSE Linux, and Ubuntu.
The OpenBook design is similar in appearance to Everex's CloudBook Max unveiled at the CTIA Wireless exhibition in April, but the two designs are different, Brown said, pointing to subtle design changes made to suit the requirements of Sprint, the operator that commissioned the CloudBook Max.
Depending on the exact configuration, OpenBook systems will likely cost between US$500 to $800, Brown said, adding that the first products will likely hit the market during the third quarter.
Via isn't the first company to release a hardware design as open source. In March, Openmoko, a company set up by Taiwanese hardware maker First International Computer (FIC), released an open-source smartphone design, the Neo 1973. The handset, which runs Linux, supports GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) networks, and includes Bluetooth and AGPS.
Like Via's OpenBook, the Neo 1973 hardware design was released under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license.
The CAD (computer-assisted design) files for the OpenBook reference design can be downloaded for free and made available to anyone under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. The terms of this license allow the CAD files to be freely copied, shared and modified.
The only requirements are that use of the design is attributed to Via and changes made to the design can only be distributed under the same license or one that has similar terms.
"We're hoping we'll get some interesting feedback, and look forward to seeing what the community thinks about this concept," said Richard Brown, vice president of marketing at Via.
The OpenBook is based on Via's 1.6 GHz C7-M processor and VX800 chipset. The design includes an 8.9-inch screen with a resolution of 1,024 pixels by 600 pixels and calls for a hard disk with a capacity of 80G bytes or more. The basic wireless module included in the design supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Optional modules include Assisted GPS (AGPS), WiMax, and support for high-speed cellular networks based on EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized), HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access), and WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access).
Other features of the 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) OpenBook include a full-size keyboard, up to 2G bytes of DDR (double data rate) memory, a 2-megapixel camera, a memory-card reader, and a 4-cell battery that offers up to three hours of life. The laptop is designed to run Windows Vista, Windows XP, or Linux, including G/OS, SuSE Linux, and Ubuntu.
The OpenBook design is similar in appearance to Everex's CloudBook Max unveiled at the CTIA Wireless exhibition in April, but the two designs are different, Brown said, pointing to subtle design changes made to suit the requirements of Sprint, the operator that commissioned the CloudBook Max.
Depending on the exact configuration, OpenBook systems will likely cost between US$500 to $800, Brown said, adding that the first products will likely hit the market during the third quarter.
Via isn't the first company to release a hardware design as open source. In March, Openmoko, a company set up by Taiwanese hardware maker First International Computer (FIC), released an open-source smartphone design, the Neo 1973. The handset, which runs Linux, supports GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) networks, and includes Bluetooth and AGPS.
Like Via's OpenBook, the Neo 1973 hardware design was released under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license.
Sierra Leone set for solar-powered school PC center
Plans are set to install the first computer center powered by solar energy in Sierra Leone.
The beneficiary, the Prince Of Wales (POW) Secondary School, is located less than a third of a mile from Kingtom Power Station, a major Freetown electricity distribution center, but has no power.
The Prince Of Wales Alumni Association (POWAA) branch in the U.S. state of Georgia has proposed to provide the center with new desktop and laptop computers, a solar-power system and high-speed satellite Internet access – which is the only broadband option -- for their school. The estimated total capital cost of the project is between $60,000 and $70,000.
The government-owned school was officially inaugurated by the prince of Wales in 1925, and chartered to foster science education and studies in modern languages. The POWAA in Georgia was founded in 2002 by former POW students residing in the U.S.
The alumni also plan to extend Wi-Fi capability so that students and teachers who already have their own laptops can access the Internet without going to the computer center.
The solar power basics will comprise photovoltaic (PV) panels, batteries, three charge controllers, inverters, meter and breakers. The system will require about 30 solar panels to produce a total wattage of between 5 kilowatts and 6kw.
According to POWAA President Samuel O. Atere-Roberts, the solar equipment including panels and other accessories was procured from African Energy in Arizona. Atere-Roberts said that there have been delays in shipping the equipment to the U.S., due to fluctuating costs, and that installation of the center depends on when the equipment will arrive in Freetown.
POW school principal Millicent Ogoo confirmed the plans, and said that the school is expecting laptops next week.
"We’ve been getting support from organizations but this is the first time we’ll be getting a solar power system. We are also expecting 20 laptops next week. We are very proud of the project. They have really done well. It also shows that they have concern for the school," she said.
A contract for securing the classroom that will host the new computer center has been awarded to Sky Construction in Freetown and work has started in earnest, Atere-Roberts said. He charged more donors to join the project and change history in Sierra Leone as they follow the footsteps of Myeka High School in South Africa. In 2000, Myeka overcame many logistical problems courtesy of a similar project. Pass rates at Myeka school reportedly increased from 55 percent to 69 percent.
The beneficiary, the Prince Of Wales (POW) Secondary School, is located less than a third of a mile from Kingtom Power Station, a major Freetown electricity distribution center, but has no power.
The Prince Of Wales Alumni Association (POWAA) branch in the U.S. state of Georgia has proposed to provide the center with new desktop and laptop computers, a solar-power system and high-speed satellite Internet access – which is the only broadband option -- for their school. The estimated total capital cost of the project is between $60,000 and $70,000.
The government-owned school was officially inaugurated by the prince of Wales in 1925, and chartered to foster science education and studies in modern languages. The POWAA in Georgia was founded in 2002 by former POW students residing in the U.S.
The alumni also plan to extend Wi-Fi capability so that students and teachers who already have their own laptops can access the Internet without going to the computer center.
The solar power basics will comprise photovoltaic (PV) panels, batteries, three charge controllers, inverters, meter and breakers. The system will require about 30 solar panels to produce a total wattage of between 5 kilowatts and 6kw.
According to POWAA President Samuel O. Atere-Roberts, the solar equipment including panels and other accessories was procured from African Energy in Arizona. Atere-Roberts said that there have been delays in shipping the equipment to the U.S., due to fluctuating costs, and that installation of the center depends on when the equipment will arrive in Freetown.
POW school principal Millicent Ogoo confirmed the plans, and said that the school is expecting laptops next week.
"We’ve been getting support from organizations but this is the first time we’ll be getting a solar power system. We are also expecting 20 laptops next week. We are very proud of the project. They have really done well. It also shows that they have concern for the school," she said.
A contract for securing the classroom that will host the new computer center has been awarded to Sky Construction in Freetown and work has started in earnest, Atere-Roberts said. He charged more donors to join the project and change history in Sierra Leone as they follow the footsteps of Myeka High School in South Africa. In 2000, Myeka overcame many logistical problems courtesy of a similar project. Pass rates at Myeka school reportedly increased from 55 percent to 69 percent.
RIM says it can't provide e-mail interception in India
Research In Motion (RIM) has said it is unable to give the Indian government access to messages sent by its enterprise clients over the BlackBerry service.
The BlackBerry security architecture for enterprise customers is specially designed to exclude the capability for RIM or any third party to read encrypted information under any circumstances, the company said in an update to its Indian customers on Monday.
For enterprise customers, the security architecture is based on a symmetric key system whereby the customer creates his own key, and only the customer possesses a copy of his encryption key, RIM said. The company does not possess a "master key", nor does any "back door" exist in the system that would allow RIM or any third party to gain unauthorized access to the key or corporate data, it said.
Further, RIM would be unable to accommodate any request for a copy of an enterprise customer's encryption key, as neither RIM nor any wireless network operator possess a copy of the key, it said.
RIM also offers a separate product for individual customers, BlackBerry Internet Service, hosted by telecommunications operators. It did not comment on that service Monday, and a spokesman was unsure whether carriers offering such a service would have access to the security keys.
The Indian government had refused to allow an Indian network operator, Tata Teleservices, to offer BlackBerry services until the government was able to intercept BlackBerry messages for security reasons. Other mobile service providers, who were already offering the BlackBerry service, were also asked to introduce measures that would allow the government to intercept and read BlackBerry messages whenever necessary.
Governments have a wide range of resources and methodologies to satisfy national security and law enforcement needs without compromising commercial security requirements, RIM said.
The use of strong encryption in wireless technology is not unique to the BlackBerry platform, and is a mandatory requirement for all enterprise-class wireless e-mail services, it added.
Government sources were not immediately available for comment. Discussions between RIM and the government continue, according to informed sources.
The BlackBerry security architecture for enterprise customers is specially designed to exclude the capability for RIM or any third party to read encrypted information under any circumstances, the company said in an update to its Indian customers on Monday.
For enterprise customers, the security architecture is based on a symmetric key system whereby the customer creates his own key, and only the customer possesses a copy of his encryption key, RIM said. The company does not possess a "master key", nor does any "back door" exist in the system that would allow RIM or any third party to gain unauthorized access to the key or corporate data, it said.
Further, RIM would be unable to accommodate any request for a copy of an enterprise customer's encryption key, as neither RIM nor any wireless network operator possess a copy of the key, it said.
RIM also offers a separate product for individual customers, BlackBerry Internet Service, hosted by telecommunications operators. It did not comment on that service Monday, and a spokesman was unsure whether carriers offering such a service would have access to the security keys.
The Indian government had refused to allow an Indian network operator, Tata Teleservices, to offer BlackBerry services until the government was able to intercept BlackBerry messages for security reasons. Other mobile service providers, who were already offering the BlackBerry service, were also asked to introduce measures that would allow the government to intercept and read BlackBerry messages whenever necessary.
Governments have a wide range of resources and methodologies to satisfy national security and law enforcement needs without compromising commercial security requirements, RIM said.
The use of strong encryption in wireless technology is not unique to the BlackBerry platform, and is a mandatory requirement for all enterprise-class wireless e-mail services, it added.
Government sources were not immediately available for comment. Discussions between RIM and the government continue, according to informed sources.
San Francisco's BART in talks for full Wi-Fi rollout
The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District is negotiating with a startup for a Wi-Fi network that would provide fast Internet access to riders throughout its 104-mile (167 kilometers) regional rail system.
BART would not pay anything for the network, which would be paid for by rider subscriptions and advertising, according to Wi-Fi Rail, a company based near Sacramento that says it has four patents pending on its Wi-Fi technology for predetermined paths such as railways and roads.
Municipal wireless networks have had a hard time financially, but public transit offers a daily captive audience that is growing as gasoline prices rise. Wi-Fi Rail estimates that within three years, as many as 20 percent of BART's 180,000 regular riders will subscribe to the service, according to Michael Cromar, chief financial officer of Wi-Fi Rail.
Wi-Fi Rail has been testing the system for about a year on a stretch of track in downtown San Francisco as well as on an outdoor test track. More than 9,000 people have signed up to use the system and have signed on more than 42,000 times, Cromar said.
Now BART and the company are in negotiations on the terms of a full deployment, in phases, which would take as much as two years. On Thursday, BART staff presented an update at a meeting of the transit system's board of directors.
Unlike other, established Wi-Fi providers, Wi-Fi Rail was willing to build the network, for an estimated US$20 million, at no cost to BART, the agency said. Like Sprint Nextel, which operates cellular base stations along a busy stretch of track in San Francisco, Wi-Fi Rail will have to offer wholesale capacity to other service providers to resell, said BART spokesman Linton Johnson.
The transit agency will use the wireless bandwidth to set up its in-car security cameras for live viewing, and it plans to also put screens in cars that give service information to riders, he said. BART would also receive a licensing fee from Wi-Fi Rail.
Riders will be able to use the service free with commercials that pop up every few minutes or buy a monthly subscription, Cromar said. The monthly fee would be competitive with other hot-spot services that are priced between about $20 and $30, according to Cromar. Daily and other types of subscriptions would also be offered. For that, subscribers would share between 15M bps (bits per second) and 22M bps -- both upstream and downstream -- with other riders in a car. Tests have shown no noticeable slowdown between one and eight riders on a car, he said earlier this year. In tests, the system worked on trains moving as fast as 65 miles per hour.
Riders will connect directly to a standard Cisco Systems access point on each car, which in turn will link up to the trackside network. Underground, that system will use deliberately unshielded coaxial cable, called "leaky coax," and outdoor sections of the track will be served using solar-powered parabolic antennas.
Neither side estimated how long negotiations for the full buildout would take. But once talks are concluded, the first phase of the network should be finished and paid commercial service launched in about four months, according to Cromar.
BART would not pay anything for the network, which would be paid for by rider subscriptions and advertising, according to Wi-Fi Rail, a company based near Sacramento that says it has four patents pending on its Wi-Fi technology for predetermined paths such as railways and roads.
Municipal wireless networks have had a hard time financially, but public transit offers a daily captive audience that is growing as gasoline prices rise. Wi-Fi Rail estimates that within three years, as many as 20 percent of BART's 180,000 regular riders will subscribe to the service, according to Michael Cromar, chief financial officer of Wi-Fi Rail.
Wi-Fi Rail has been testing the system for about a year on a stretch of track in downtown San Francisco as well as on an outdoor test track. More than 9,000 people have signed up to use the system and have signed on more than 42,000 times, Cromar said.
Now BART and the company are in negotiations on the terms of a full deployment, in phases, which would take as much as two years. On Thursday, BART staff presented an update at a meeting of the transit system's board of directors.
Unlike other, established Wi-Fi providers, Wi-Fi Rail was willing to build the network, for an estimated US$20 million, at no cost to BART, the agency said. Like Sprint Nextel, which operates cellular base stations along a busy stretch of track in San Francisco, Wi-Fi Rail will have to offer wholesale capacity to other service providers to resell, said BART spokesman Linton Johnson.
The transit agency will use the wireless bandwidth to set up its in-car security cameras for live viewing, and it plans to also put screens in cars that give service information to riders, he said. BART would also receive a licensing fee from Wi-Fi Rail.
Riders will be able to use the service free with commercials that pop up every few minutes or buy a monthly subscription, Cromar said. The monthly fee would be competitive with other hot-spot services that are priced between about $20 and $30, according to Cromar. Daily and other types of subscriptions would also be offered. For that, subscribers would share between 15M bps (bits per second) and 22M bps -- both upstream and downstream -- with other riders in a car. Tests have shown no noticeable slowdown between one and eight riders on a car, he said earlier this year. In tests, the system worked on trains moving as fast as 65 miles per hour.
Riders will connect directly to a standard Cisco Systems access point on each car, which in turn will link up to the trackside network. Underground, that system will use deliberately unshielded coaxial cable, called "leaky coax," and outdoor sections of the track will be served using solar-powered parabolic antennas.
Neither side estimated how long negotiations for the full buildout would take. But once talks are concluded, the first phase of the network should be finished and paid commercial service launched in about four months, according to Cromar.
TJX staffer sacked after talking about security problems
A low-level TJX employee has lost his job for speaking in public about information security problems he uncovered while working for the company.
The employee, Nick Benson, is a University of Kansas student who worked at T.J. Maxx's Pine Ridge Plaza store in Lawrence, Kansas. In an e-mail interview, he said he was fired Wednesday for violating corporate policy by disclosing proprietary information.
TJX is sensitive about information security after being the victim of a massive data theft, apparently made possible by poor security on the company's wireless networks. That breach, which compromised 94 million credit and debit card accounts, has cost the company tens of millions of dollars in legal settlements.
Benson, also known by his hacker name, Cryptic Mauler, is a frequent poster to computer security discussion groups such as Full Disclosure and the Sla.ckers.org Web forum, where he criticized the company's password policy, its server security settings, and the competence of the technicians who install firewalls at the company's stores.
"I never use anything but cash at their stores, but it's hard to sleep at night knowing the same network stores my employee information," he wrote on Aug. 22, 2007. "For all I know that information has already been picked cleaned by the hackers and [the] company could have swept it under the rug."
Although Benson didn't disclose anything that would have been news to a "vaguely smart" criminal, he did make a mistake by not disclosing the problems he'd found through the proper channels, said Robert Hansen, the CEO of Sectheory.com and owner of the Sla.ckers.org site. He first blogged about Benson's termination on Thursday.
Hansen said he felt bad for Benson, as did many of the contributors to his Web site. "He's a young guy," he said. "He didn't know the rules."
It's an all-too-common story in the information security industry, Hansen said. "When people are new to information disclosure ... they're idealistic and young and they tend to make mistakes," he said. "A good chunk of the people who sympathize with him have had almost exactly the same thing happen to them."
Benson said he reported the issues to his store manager and the company's district loss prevention manager but no immediate action was taken.
Just last week, Benson expressed concern that he might be fired for reporting the problem. "I don't want to lose my job for reporting this," he wrote. "Unfortunately anonymously reporting this will not work, since it would require me giving the store location which would then easily zero me out. "
Apparently TJX zeroed Benson anyhow, identifying him from the IP address he used to post his comments to the Web site, Hansen said.
The company met with him on Wednesday and asked him to explain all the security issues he'd found. After that, he was "fired on the spot," he said.
TJX did not return calls seeking comment for this story.
Benson said the company has threatened to take legal action against him if he talks any more about the company's security problems.
The employee, Nick Benson, is a University of Kansas student who worked at T.J. Maxx's Pine Ridge Plaza store in Lawrence, Kansas. In an e-mail interview, he said he was fired Wednesday for violating corporate policy by disclosing proprietary information.
TJX is sensitive about information security after being the victim of a massive data theft, apparently made possible by poor security on the company's wireless networks. That breach, which compromised 94 million credit and debit card accounts, has cost the company tens of millions of dollars in legal settlements.
Benson, also known by his hacker name, Cryptic Mauler, is a frequent poster to computer security discussion groups such as Full Disclosure and the Sla.ckers.org Web forum, where he criticized the company's password policy, its server security settings, and the competence of the technicians who install firewalls at the company's stores.
"I never use anything but cash at their stores, but it's hard to sleep at night knowing the same network stores my employee information," he wrote on Aug. 22, 2007. "For all I know that information has already been picked cleaned by the hackers and [the] company could have swept it under the rug."
Although Benson didn't disclose anything that would have been news to a "vaguely smart" criminal, he did make a mistake by not disclosing the problems he'd found through the proper channels, said Robert Hansen, the CEO of Sectheory.com and owner of the Sla.ckers.org site. He first blogged about Benson's termination on Thursday.
Hansen said he felt bad for Benson, as did many of the contributors to his Web site. "He's a young guy," he said. "He didn't know the rules."
It's an all-too-common story in the information security industry, Hansen said. "When people are new to information disclosure ... they're idealistic and young and they tend to make mistakes," he said. "A good chunk of the people who sympathize with him have had almost exactly the same thing happen to them."
Benson said he reported the issues to his store manager and the company's district loss prevention manager but no immediate action was taken.
Just last week, Benson expressed concern that he might be fired for reporting the problem. "I don't want to lose my job for reporting this," he wrote. "Unfortunately anonymously reporting this will not work, since it would require me giving the store location which would then easily zero me out. "
Apparently TJX zeroed Benson anyhow, identifying him from the IP address he used to post his comments to the Web site, Hansen said.
The company met with him on Wednesday and asked him to explain all the security issues he'd found. After that, he was "fired on the spot," he said.
TJX did not return calls seeking comment for this story.
Benson said the company has threatened to take legal action against him if he talks any more about the company's security problems.
Future Apple devices may be solar powered
Employees at Apple have filed a patent for integrating solar cells into portable devices by placing them underneath the layers of a touch-sensitive display, according to the filing.
Solar power could help make devices truly portable, freeing from the need for wires to connect them to a power supply.
When generating electricity from solar panels, the larger the panel the better -- but as the patent "Solar cells on portable devices" warns, after allowing space for buttons, screens and a way to hold the device, only a small area is left on most devices for solar cells.
One of the ways around that suggested in the patent is to stack a touch-sensitive layer, a display and solar panel on top of one another. That could make Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch good candidates for such a power supply, as the display occupies almost the entire face of those devices.
The use of solar powered charging in portable devices is starting to get more attention, for more immediate consumer use as well.
When Vodafone announced its plan in April to reduce its emissions of the greenhouse gase CO2 by 50 percent by 2020, it also announced plans for solar-powered phone chargers and universal phone chargers for Vodafone-branded handsets.
At the recent ITU Telecom Africa 2008 conference, Ugandan Minister for Communications and Information and Communication Technologies Ham-Mukasa Mulira talked about trials of solar-powered charging conducted there, which had showed promise.
Solar power could help make devices truly portable, freeing from the need for wires to connect them to a power supply.
When generating electricity from solar panels, the larger the panel the better -- but as the patent "Solar cells on portable devices" warns, after allowing space for buttons, screens and a way to hold the device, only a small area is left on most devices for solar cells.
One of the ways around that suggested in the patent is to stack a touch-sensitive layer, a display and solar panel on top of one another. That could make Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch good candidates for such a power supply, as the display occupies almost the entire face of those devices.
The use of solar powered charging in portable devices is starting to get more attention, for more immediate consumer use as well.
When Vodafone announced its plan in April to reduce its emissions of the greenhouse gase CO2 by 50 percent by 2020, it also announced plans for solar-powered phone chargers and universal phone chargers for Vodafone-branded handsets.
At the recent ITU Telecom Africa 2008 conference, Ugandan Minister for Communications and Information and Communication Technologies Ham-Mukasa Mulira talked about trials of solar-powered charging conducted there, which had showed promise.
Samsung shows 256GB SSD, plans launch this year
Samsung Electronics plans to launch within this year a flash memory-based solid-state disk that boasts a 256G byte capacity and high-speed interface, it said Monday.
The drive, which was unveiled in prototype form at a Samsung event in Taipei, has the same form factor as a 9.5-millimeter high 2.5-inch hard-disk drive for which it is designed to be a drop-in replacement.
Solid-state disks (SSDs) are an emerging type of storage device that use flash memory chips in place of the spinning magnetic disks used in hard-disk drives. The memory chips mean the drives are more sturdy and typically have a higher performance but the per-byte storage cost is also much higher, so they are generally more expensive. That has largely restricted them to niche applications but as flash prices come down they are expected to become more widely used.
Samsung, which is one of the world's largest makers of flash memory chips, is eager to see the drives become popular as their widespread use will represent a big new market for its chips.
The prototype drive announced by the company has a read speed of 200M bytes per second (Bps) and a sequential write speed of 160M Bps, said Samsung.
Samples of the drive will be available to customers from September with mass production due by the end of the year.
A version with a similar form factor to a 1.8-inch drive is also expected to be available in the fourth quarter of the year, the company said.
The drive isn't the first SSD launched at this capacity. Last month a competitor, U.S.-based Super Talent, began sales of a 256G byte SSD but that drive is thicker than Samsung's at 12.5 millimeters. It has a SATA I interface, which means read speeds of 65M bytes per second and write speeds of 50M bytes per second.
The drive, which was unveiled in prototype form at a Samsung event in Taipei, has the same form factor as a 9.5-millimeter high 2.5-inch hard-disk drive for which it is designed to be a drop-in replacement.
Solid-state disks (SSDs) are an emerging type of storage device that use flash memory chips in place of the spinning magnetic disks used in hard-disk drives. The memory chips mean the drives are more sturdy and typically have a higher performance but the per-byte storage cost is also much higher, so they are generally more expensive. That has largely restricted them to niche applications but as flash prices come down they are expected to become more widely used.
Samsung, which is one of the world's largest makers of flash memory chips, is eager to see the drives become popular as their widespread use will represent a big new market for its chips.
The prototype drive announced by the company has a read speed of 200M bytes per second (Bps) and a sequential write speed of 160M Bps, said Samsung.
Samples of the drive will be available to customers from September with mass production due by the end of the year.
A version with a similar form factor to a 1.8-inch drive is also expected to be available in the fourth quarter of the year, the company said.
The drive isn't the first SSD launched at this capacity. Last month a competitor, U.S.-based Super Talent, began sales of a 256G byte SSD but that drive is thicker than Samsung's at 12.5 millimeters. It has a SATA I interface, which means read speeds of 65M bytes per second and write speeds of 50M bytes per second.
China plans telecom restructuring, clears way for 3G
China announced a restructuring plan for the country's fixed-line and mobile operators on Saturday, a final step towards the long-awaited release of 3G (third-generation) mobile licenses.
The plan, long a focus of discussion among Chinese government organizations, will merge or split the operations of Chinese carriers, creating three new operators that will have both mobile and fixed-line services. At present, Chinese fixed-line operators -- which are split along geographical lines -- are not permitted to offer mobile services, while mobile operators may not offer fixed-line services.
When the restructuring is completed, China will issue 3G licenses, the government said in a statement (in Chinese) that was signed by the newly formed Ministry of Industry and Information, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Finance.
The 3G licenses may even be issued before the restructuring process is completed, said Bryan Wang, Springboard Research's Greater China country manager and director of connectivity research. "Optimistically, it could happen before end of this year," he said.
By restructuring the operators into companies that offer both types of services, the Chinese government hopes to enhance the competitiveness of local operators and clear the way for 3G licenses to be released. China has one of the world's biggest mobile markets, but will be one of the last to roll out commercial 3G services.
Under the restructuring plan, fixed-line carrier China Telecommunications (China Telecom) will acquire the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile network from China United Telecommunications (China Unicom). China Telecom will also acquire China Satcom, which offers satellite-based communications services.
China Unicom will retain its GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) network and merge with fixed-line operator China Network Communications (China Netcom).
China Mobile Communications, China's largest mobile operator, will merge with China Tietong Telecommunication, which operates a national fixed-line network.
The most difficult part of the restructuring process will involve splitting out China Unicom's CDMA network and transferring it to China Telecom. "China Telecom has already set up a team for CDMA, but obviously that's a smaller team conducting some studies to understand Unicom's network," Wang said.
Growing that team will be a challenge, as some important China Unicom executives may not join China Telecom. "Unicom plans to keep all the key guys for its GSM business," he said.
The statement that announced the plan did not offer a deadline for when the restructuring will be completed, but a report by the official Xinhua News Agency estimated the process could take 12 months to 18 months.
However, Wang estimated the process may be completed sooner, perhaps "within 12 months."
The plan, long a focus of discussion among Chinese government organizations, will merge or split the operations of Chinese carriers, creating three new operators that will have both mobile and fixed-line services. At present, Chinese fixed-line operators -- which are split along geographical lines -- are not permitted to offer mobile services, while mobile operators may not offer fixed-line services.
When the restructuring is completed, China will issue 3G licenses, the government said in a statement (in Chinese) that was signed by the newly formed Ministry of Industry and Information, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Finance.
The 3G licenses may even be issued before the restructuring process is completed, said Bryan Wang, Springboard Research's Greater China country manager and director of connectivity research. "Optimistically, it could happen before end of this year," he said.
By restructuring the operators into companies that offer both types of services, the Chinese government hopes to enhance the competitiveness of local operators and clear the way for 3G licenses to be released. China has one of the world's biggest mobile markets, but will be one of the last to roll out commercial 3G services.
Under the restructuring plan, fixed-line carrier China Telecommunications (China Telecom) will acquire the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile network from China United Telecommunications (China Unicom). China Telecom will also acquire China Satcom, which offers satellite-based communications services.
China Unicom will retain its GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) network and merge with fixed-line operator China Network Communications (China Netcom).
China Mobile Communications, China's largest mobile operator, will merge with China Tietong Telecommunication, which operates a national fixed-line network.
The most difficult part of the restructuring process will involve splitting out China Unicom's CDMA network and transferring it to China Telecom. "China Telecom has already set up a team for CDMA, but obviously that's a smaller team conducting some studies to understand Unicom's network," Wang said.
Growing that team will be a challenge, as some important China Unicom executives may not join China Telecom. "Unicom plans to keep all the key guys for its GSM business," he said.
The statement that announced the plan did not offer a deadline for when the restructuring will be completed, but a report by the official Xinhua News Agency estimated the process could take 12 months to 18 months.
However, Wang estimated the process may be completed sooner, perhaps "within 12 months."
Monday, May 26, 2008
Microsoft's ODF support points to OOXML challenges
Microsoft's plan to include ODF support in its Office suite next year reflects continued challenges for the OOXML file format, as the industry moves ahead with adopting ODF and sorts out OOXML's troubles.
Though OOXML (Open Office XML) was approved by the ISO on April 1, it continues to face impediments to widespread adoption. On Friday, it was revealed that South Africa is appealing ISO (International Organization for Standardization) approval of the standard. And earlier this week, New York state officially promoted ODF (OpenDocument Format) as a standard file format based on customer demand as it launched a new initiative for technology openness and open standards.
"If all that proprietary vendors are waiting for before they directly support ODF is a 'broad based customer request' then they should be aware that such a demand already exists in New York State," according to the report, which has been posted online.
Even Microsoft has delayed full support of the current OOXML specification, yet will support ODF in Office in a service pack to be released early next year, a move the company announced Wednesday. Office will not natively support the current OOXML specification until its next version code-named Office 14, a release date for which has not been announced.
Jay Lyman, an analyst with The 451 Group, said Microsoft coming out in favor of supporting ODF first shows that Microsoft, "is being steered toward greater support for open source, open standards and interoperability" by customers, "which in this case are primarily governments in the U.S. and around the world."
While OOXML will certainly be adopted and used in the future, ODF has a head start because it was approved by the ISO first and is not plagued by lingering questions or doubts about its merit as an international standard.
"Governments that must move now on their format plans are seeing benefits in ODF, which is approved, backed by a number of large vendors and being adopted around the globe," Lyman said.
The decision to appeal casts doubt on OOXML as a viable alternative to the already approved ODF, said Andrew Updegrove, an open-source advocate and attorney with Gesmer Updegrove in Boston. "No one can now say, until this is resolved, that OOXML 'is a global standard,'" he said.
Updegrove also noted that because Microsoft is delaying Office support for OOXML, there is reason to take the appeal very seriously because there is no sense of urgency around resolving it and deploying the format in the near term.
Microsoft declined to comment on South Africa's appeal, saying only that the ISO and the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) have a clear process for evaluating and resolving appeals and that the issue remains between them and the South African standards body. The company also promoted its moves toward interoperability in a statement through its public relations firm.
As for New York's decision to promote ODF, Jason Matusow, senior director of interoperability at Microsoft, noted in an e-mail that in the New York study the state calls for technology to be considered on a "value-for-money" basis and that openness is just one consideration among many.
He also said that New York officials recommend that the state legislature "not mandate in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technology," implying that it's likely the state will not officially favor ODF over any other file format.
(Peter Sayer in Paris contributed to this report.)
Though OOXML (Open Office XML) was approved by the ISO on April 1, it continues to face impediments to widespread adoption. On Friday, it was revealed that South Africa is appealing ISO (International Organization for Standardization) approval of the standard. And earlier this week, New York state officially promoted ODF (OpenDocument Format) as a standard file format based on customer demand as it launched a new initiative for technology openness and open standards.
"If all that proprietary vendors are waiting for before they directly support ODF is a 'broad based customer request' then they should be aware that such a demand already exists in New York State," according to the report, which has been posted online.
Even Microsoft has delayed full support of the current OOXML specification, yet will support ODF in Office in a service pack to be released early next year, a move the company announced Wednesday. Office will not natively support the current OOXML specification until its next version code-named Office 14, a release date for which has not been announced.
Jay Lyman, an analyst with The 451 Group, said Microsoft coming out in favor of supporting ODF first shows that Microsoft, "is being steered toward greater support for open source, open standards and interoperability" by customers, "which in this case are primarily governments in the U.S. and around the world."
While OOXML will certainly be adopted and used in the future, ODF has a head start because it was approved by the ISO first and is not plagued by lingering questions or doubts about its merit as an international standard.
"Governments that must move now on their format plans are seeing benefits in ODF, which is approved, backed by a number of large vendors and being adopted around the globe," Lyman said.
The decision to appeal casts doubt on OOXML as a viable alternative to the already approved ODF, said Andrew Updegrove, an open-source advocate and attorney with Gesmer Updegrove in Boston. "No one can now say, until this is resolved, that OOXML 'is a global standard,'" he said.
Updegrove also noted that because Microsoft is delaying Office support for OOXML, there is reason to take the appeal very seriously because there is no sense of urgency around resolving it and deploying the format in the near term.
Microsoft declined to comment on South Africa's appeal, saying only that the ISO and the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) have a clear process for evaluating and resolving appeals and that the issue remains between them and the South African standards body. The company also promoted its moves toward interoperability in a statement through its public relations firm.
As for New York's decision to promote ODF, Jason Matusow, senior director of interoperability at Microsoft, noted in an e-mail that in the New York study the state calls for technology to be considered on a "value-for-money" basis and that openness is just one consideration among many.
He also said that New York officials recommend that the state legislature "not mandate in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technology," implying that it's likely the state will not officially favor ODF over any other file format.
(Peter Sayer in Paris contributed to this report.)
Member of online piracy group faces prison term
A member of an online piracy group has been convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and faces up to five years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Barry Gitarts, 25, of Brooklyn, New York, was convicted Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In addition to up to five years in prison, Gitarts could face a fine of US$250,000, three years of probation and a requirement that he make full restitution, the DOJ said.
Gitarts was a key member of the Internet music piracy group Apocalypse Production Crew (APC) from at least June 2003 through April 2004, the DOJ said. Gitarts paid for and administered a computer server located in Texas that APC group members used to upload and download hundreds of thousands of copies of pirated music, movies, software and video games, the agency said.
Gitarts also received payment from the leader of APC, the DOJ said.
APC was a "first-provider" or "release group" of unauthorized materials online, the agency said. Release groups are the original sources for a majority of the pirated works downloaded through the Internet, the DOJ said.
"Music piracy is stealing and, unless you want to end up in a federal prison, don't do it," Chuck Rosenberg, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) praised federal authorities for bringing the case to trial. The Gitarts case was the first time a federal prosecution of an online criminal copyright infringement case primarily featuring music has gone to trial, the RIAA said.
"The crimes committed here -- as well as the harm to the music community -- are severe, and so are the consequences," Brad Buckles, the RIAA's executive vice president for antipiracy, said in a statement. "Groups like APC that specialize in leaking pre-release music are at the top of the piracy pyramid, and the efforts of federal law enforcement have dealt a real blow to these kinds of operations."
The Gitarts case is part of an ongoing federal investigation into the organized piracy groups responsible for the distribution of movies, software, games and music on the Internet. There have been 15 criminal convictions of APC members and 56 total convictions in Operation FastLink, an international investigation into Internet piracy.
Barry Gitarts, 25, of Brooklyn, New York, was convicted Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In addition to up to five years in prison, Gitarts could face a fine of US$250,000, three years of probation and a requirement that he make full restitution, the DOJ said.
Gitarts was a key member of the Internet music piracy group Apocalypse Production Crew (APC) from at least June 2003 through April 2004, the DOJ said. Gitarts paid for and administered a computer server located in Texas that APC group members used to upload and download hundreds of thousands of copies of pirated music, movies, software and video games, the agency said.
Gitarts also received payment from the leader of APC, the DOJ said.
APC was a "first-provider" or "release group" of unauthorized materials online, the agency said. Release groups are the original sources for a majority of the pirated works downloaded through the Internet, the DOJ said.
"Music piracy is stealing and, unless you want to end up in a federal prison, don't do it," Chuck Rosenberg, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) praised federal authorities for bringing the case to trial. The Gitarts case was the first time a federal prosecution of an online criminal copyright infringement case primarily featuring music has gone to trial, the RIAA said.
"The crimes committed here -- as well as the harm to the music community -- are severe, and so are the consequences," Brad Buckles, the RIAA's executive vice president for antipiracy, said in a statement. "Groups like APC that specialize in leaking pre-release music are at the top of the piracy pyramid, and the efforts of federal law enforcement have dealt a real blow to these kinds of operations."
The Gitarts case is part of an ongoing federal investigation into the organized piracy groups responsible for the distribution of movies, software, games and music on the Internet. There have been 15 criminal convictions of APC members and 56 total convictions in Operation FastLink, an international investigation into Internet piracy.
IBM-Cognos to refund $13 million to Massachusetts
IBM will repay US$13 million to Massachusetts for performance management software its subsidiary, Cognos, sold to the state in August 2007, according to an agreement reached this week.
The deal came under scrutiny last year following allegations the procurement process had been rushed to favor Cognos.
IBM declined to comment beyond a brief statement confirming it will give back the money and that the state will return the software. The statement also noted that Cognos struck the deal before IBM acquired it.
An IBM spokesman, Chris Andrews, refused to provide documentation pertaining to the agreement, as did Governor Deval Patrick's office, which issued a similar statement.
Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi has been at the center of a political firestorm over the controversy, with allegations flying over his connections to Cognos. The Boston Globe reported that Cognos was a sponsor of a memorial golf tournament DiMasi helped organize and that a DiMasi friend served as a lobbyist for the vendor.
DiMasi has adamantly denied any wrongdoing. His office declined to comment on Friday.
However, a March report by state Inspector General Gregory Sullivan's office provides a time line of an investigation the agency conducted into the software deal.
The inspector general began scrutinizing the procurement following a tip from a whistleblower, as well as a December request from Patrick's administration, according to Jack McCarthy, a spokesman for Sullivan's office.
"They accomplished what we asked them to do, it appears, to get the money back from a flawed procurement process," McCarthy said. "It's nice to know IBM recognized the flaws in the process and did the right thing for Massachusetts. We're also happy the Patrick administration hung tough and followed through."
The report does not mention DiMasi, but describes a number of alleged flaws in the way the Cognos pact was formed.
For one, the state's Information Technology Division did not widely advertise the fact it was looking for performance management software, according to the report.
Instead, "a staff member at ITD simply consulted a chart of leaders in performance management developed by the analytical firm Gartner Group and e-mailed the Request for Quotes to four companies identified as 'leaders.' "
Three vendors -- Cognos, Oracle and SAS -- responded to the e-mail, according to the report. ITD staffers developed a scoring sheet containing 104 criteria. The ITD team in charge never finished evaluating the vendors with the sheet, but at the time they stopped Cognos had the high score, with 69.39 points, followed by SAS with 57.38 and Oracle with 27.49, the report states.
The IG's investigation found that due to a typographical error in the spreadsheet's formula, the scores for all three vendors were flawed, with many points going uncounted.
The ITD procurement team never finalized or submitted the scoring document to the Patrick administration, and therefore the IG's office did not attempt to rework the calculations, according to the report.
Instead, after meeting with all three vendors the procurement team "unanimously felt that much more information had to be gathered because they did not adequately understand how various agencies and administrators would use performance management software," and recommended the procurement process be done over, the report states.
But on May 18, 2007, the acting CIO of ITD, Bethann Pepoli, told Henry Dormitzer, deputy to Patrick's secretary of administration and finance, Leslie Kirwan, that Cognos "was the best choice for performance management software procurement."
Dormitzer relayed the information to Kirwan, who subsequently signed an agreement to buy the software in August, the report states.
DiMasi allegedly met personally with Pepoli at some point to discuss the importance of performance management software, according to The Boston Globe. "The speaker and I never had a conversation about a vendor," Pepoli told the Globe. "I don't feel like my recommendation was influenced by any outside sources."
The ITD has "already approached us to help them go through the procurement process" as they once again seek to purchase performance management software," McCarthy said.
"It may not be Cognos' software," he noted.
The deal came under scrutiny last year following allegations the procurement process had been rushed to favor Cognos.
IBM declined to comment beyond a brief statement confirming it will give back the money and that the state will return the software. The statement also noted that Cognos struck the deal before IBM acquired it.
An IBM spokesman, Chris Andrews, refused to provide documentation pertaining to the agreement, as did Governor Deval Patrick's office, which issued a similar statement.
Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi has been at the center of a political firestorm over the controversy, with allegations flying over his connections to Cognos. The Boston Globe reported that Cognos was a sponsor of a memorial golf tournament DiMasi helped organize and that a DiMasi friend served as a lobbyist for the vendor.
DiMasi has adamantly denied any wrongdoing. His office declined to comment on Friday.
However, a March report by state Inspector General Gregory Sullivan's office provides a time line of an investigation the agency conducted into the software deal.
The inspector general began scrutinizing the procurement following a tip from a whistleblower, as well as a December request from Patrick's administration, according to Jack McCarthy, a spokesman for Sullivan's office.
"They accomplished what we asked them to do, it appears, to get the money back from a flawed procurement process," McCarthy said. "It's nice to know IBM recognized the flaws in the process and did the right thing for Massachusetts. We're also happy the Patrick administration hung tough and followed through."
The report does not mention DiMasi, but describes a number of alleged flaws in the way the Cognos pact was formed.
For one, the state's Information Technology Division did not widely advertise the fact it was looking for performance management software, according to the report.
Instead, "a staff member at ITD simply consulted a chart of leaders in performance management developed by the analytical firm Gartner Group and e-mailed the Request for Quotes to four companies identified as 'leaders.' "
Three vendors -- Cognos, Oracle and SAS -- responded to the e-mail, according to the report. ITD staffers developed a scoring sheet containing 104 criteria. The ITD team in charge never finished evaluating the vendors with the sheet, but at the time they stopped Cognos had the high score, with 69.39 points, followed by SAS with 57.38 and Oracle with 27.49, the report states.
The IG's investigation found that due to a typographical error in the spreadsheet's formula, the scores for all three vendors were flawed, with many points going uncounted.
The ITD procurement team never finalized or submitted the scoring document to the Patrick administration, and therefore the IG's office did not attempt to rework the calculations, according to the report.
Instead, after meeting with all three vendors the procurement team "unanimously felt that much more information had to be gathered because they did not adequately understand how various agencies and administrators would use performance management software," and recommended the procurement process be done over, the report states.
But on May 18, 2007, the acting CIO of ITD, Bethann Pepoli, told Henry Dormitzer, deputy to Patrick's secretary of administration and finance, Leslie Kirwan, that Cognos "was the best choice for performance management software procurement."
Dormitzer relayed the information to Kirwan, who subsequently signed an agreement to buy the software in August, the report states.
DiMasi allegedly met personally with Pepoli at some point to discuss the importance of performance management software, according to The Boston Globe. "The speaker and I never had a conversation about a vendor," Pepoli told the Globe. "I don't feel like my recommendation was influenced by any outside sources."
The ITD has "already approached us to help them go through the procurement process" as they once again seek to purchase performance management software," McCarthy said.
"It may not be Cognos' software," he noted.
Mozilla IDs 10 bugs, 3 'critical' in Firefox 3.0 RC1
Mozilla has identified 10 high-priority bugs in Firefox 3.0, three of them pegged "critical," but won't decide until next week whether to release the browser anyway or restart the final stretch by issuing a second release candidate (RC2).
"We are making a go/no go decision early next week, as we are still collecting feedback [on Release Candidate 1]," Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, said in an e-mail Thursday.
Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) launched a week ago, but Mozilla has not yet committed to RC2. Previously, the company has only said it is targeting June as the release window for the final code.
On the "mozilla.dev.planning" newsgroup, Schroepfer also said that on May 27 Mozilla will either call Firefox 3.0 finished with RC1, or build RC2 with fixes for the 10 bugs that have been collected.
In the meantime, testing will begin on the 10 bugs. "If we need to do an RC2, they'll be ready to go," he said. "If we ship RC1, we can get them in the 3.0.1."
The bug list includes three marked "critical" on Bugzilla, Mozilla's bug-tracking database and management system. Eight of the bugs affect Firefox on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, while two afflict only Linux.
One of Linux bugs has caught the eye of some Firefox users, in part, because of a short blog post that garnered attention on Digg.com. The blogger, Jason Clinton, who works for Advanced Clustering Technologies Inc., a Kansas City company that specializes in cluster-based systems and Linux servers, took Mozilla to task.
On Tuesday, Clinton called Mozilla's support for Linux "second-class" and blasted the open-source developer over a bug. "Release managers just made the call that Firefox 3.0 will release with a known bug which brings Linux systems to their knees."
The bug Clinton referenced, tagged as "421482" in Bugzilla, is one of the 10 on the list that Mozilla's using to decide whether to release Firefox 3.0 as is or craft RC2 for another go towards final code.
In Bugzilla, developers argued over the extent of the problem -- which some Linux users said seriously affected Firefox's performance, as well as their systems overall -- and where the fault lay -- in the browser or in SQLite, the database Firefox uses for its revamped bookmark and history feature, dubbed "Places."
On Wednesday, in a separate e-mail, Schroepfer said that Mozilla developers were looking into the bug and were confident a solution had been found. "You can see that a couple different issues have been accidently confused," he said. "Overall, I think we have some good options to make this work well."
Firefox 3.0 will be the first major upgrade to the browser since October 2006. But Mozilla may ship another version before the end of the year, Schroepfer has said, in order to add features that weren't ready in time for Firefox 3.0.
Firefox 3 RC1 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 41 languages from Mozilla's site.
"We are making a go/no go decision early next week, as we are still collecting feedback [on Release Candidate 1]," Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, said in an e-mail Thursday.
Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) launched a week ago, but Mozilla has not yet committed to RC2. Previously, the company has only said it is targeting June as the release window for the final code.
On the "mozilla.dev.planning" newsgroup, Schroepfer also said that on May 27 Mozilla will either call Firefox 3.0 finished with RC1, or build RC2 with fixes for the 10 bugs that have been collected.
In the meantime, testing will begin on the 10 bugs. "If we need to do an RC2, they'll be ready to go," he said. "If we ship RC1, we can get them in the 3.0.1."
The bug list includes three marked "critical" on Bugzilla, Mozilla's bug-tracking database and management system. Eight of the bugs affect Firefox on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, while two afflict only Linux.
One of Linux bugs has caught the eye of some Firefox users, in part, because of a short blog post that garnered attention on Digg.com. The blogger, Jason Clinton, who works for Advanced Clustering Technologies Inc., a Kansas City company that specializes in cluster-based systems and Linux servers, took Mozilla to task.
On Tuesday, Clinton called Mozilla's support for Linux "second-class" and blasted the open-source developer over a bug. "Release managers just made the call that Firefox 3.0 will release with a known bug which brings Linux systems to their knees."
The bug Clinton referenced, tagged as "421482" in Bugzilla, is one of the 10 on the list that Mozilla's using to decide whether to release Firefox 3.0 as is or craft RC2 for another go towards final code.
In Bugzilla, developers argued over the extent of the problem -- which some Linux users said seriously affected Firefox's performance, as well as their systems overall -- and where the fault lay -- in the browser or in SQLite, the database Firefox uses for its revamped bookmark and history feature, dubbed "Places."
On Wednesday, in a separate e-mail, Schroepfer said that Mozilla developers were looking into the bug and were confident a solution had been found. "You can see that a couple different issues have been accidently confused," he said. "Overall, I think we have some good options to make this work well."
Firefox 3.0 will be the first major upgrade to the browser since October 2006. But Mozilla may ship another version before the end of the year, Schroepfer has said, in order to add features that weren't ready in time for Firefox 3.0.
Firefox 3 RC1 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 41 languages from Mozilla's site.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Symantec: Microsoft to blame for Windows XP SP3 registry
Symantec Thursday said it was Microsoft's code that crippled some PCs after upgrades to Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) emptied Device Manager, deleted network connections, and packed the registry with thousands of bogus entries.
"We finally got to the bottom of this last night," said Dave Cole, Symantec's senior director for product management of its consumer software. "All of these problems are related to the same thing, a Microsoft file that created all the garbage entries [in the registry]."
He also said that some of the same symptoms had been acknowledged by Microsoft when users updated to Windows XP SP2 several years ago; Cole referenced a pair of Microsoft support documents to back up his claim.
Two weeks ago, after Microsoft launched Windows XP SP3 on Windows Update, users started reporting that their network cards and previously crafted connections had mysteriously vanished from Windows after updating with the service pack. The Device Manager had been emptied, they said, and Windows' registry, a directory that stores settings and other critical information, had been packed with large numbers of bogus entries.
Most users who posted messages on Microsoft's XP SP3 support forum said that the errant registry keys -- which started with characters such as "$%&" and appeared corrupted at first glance -- were located in sections devoted to settings for Symantec products. Not surprisingly, they quickly pinned blame on the security company.
Earlier this week, Symantec denied that its software was at fault, and instead pointed a finger at Microsoft.
Thursday, Cole said Symantec engineers had connected the current problem to a Microsoft file named "fixccs.exe." According to information on the Web, fixccs.exe stands for "Fix CCS MaxSubkeyName mismatch," and appears to be part of both XP SP3's and SP2's update packages.
Cole wasn't sure exactly what function fixccs.exe served. "But it caused similar problems with the Device Manager after SP2. It looks like it's reared its head again."
Two Microsoft support documents -- KB893249 and KB914450 -- both describe a problem remarkably similar to what users have reported recently. "After you install Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) on a Windows XP-based computer, the Device Manager window is blank or some devices no longer appear," reads KB893249.
The fixccs.exe file attempts to make changes to the registry, said Cole, but in some cases also adds large numbers of unnecessary keys. When asked why so many users had reported seeing the errant entries in sections reserved for Symantec products, Cole called it "the luck of the draw. We have a fair number of keys in the registry, and we're on a lot of systems. This is not exclusive to Symantec."
Others have noted that too. A user identified as MRFREEZE61, who posted the first message on the Microsoft support forum thread two weeks ago, and later came up with a workaround, said as much today.
"The reported problems are not just limited to those using Symantec products," wrote MRFREEZE61 in a comment added to the original Computerworld story. "Folks on the forum report this specific registry corruption with no Symantec products installed at all. Some find this corruption in device control set enumerators associated with UPNP (Universal Plug and Play) and other 'legacy devices,' others from users of Avast [Antivirus]."
Fixccs.exe has also been linked to problems some users had installing early builds of XP SP3 late last year. In a support forum thread that started Dec. 22, 2007, Shashank Bansal, a Microsoft engineer helping users troubleshoot XP SP3 installation bugs, said: "This is a serious problem for us and we would like to investigate it to further depths. We would need help from all users on this forum for the same." Bansal then asked users who had had trouble updating from XP SP2 to SP3 to identify the process that had hung or had hogged CPU cycles. "Look out for cscipt.exe or fixccs.exe," he asked.
On Thursday, Cole said Symantec was working on a standalone tool that would delete the extraneous registry entries. "We hope to have it ready pretty quickly," he said. "We're working with Microsoft in the normal channels."
That word must not have trickled down to Microsoft's technical support representatives. Users who have posted to Symantec's support forum and others who have e-mailed Computerworld claim that they have been told by Microsoft support that the fault is all or partially Symantec's.
A user going by "ZLevee" copied messages received from Microsoft support to a Thursday post on the Symantec support site. "Based on the current research, the issue can probably be caused by the conflicts between SP3 and Norton. Please let me know if you have any Norton product installed.," ZLevee said the Microsoft support representative had claimed.
A Computerworld reader e-mailed an account of his experience last week with Microsoft's support. "I had an online chat with a tech support person named 'Obaid' on 5/18," said Thom Nielsen in the e-mail. "He told me that Symantec products do NOT work with XP SP3. He told me Symantec is aware of the problem(s) & is working on it."
"This is the first I've heard of this," said Cole when asked to comment. "I hope we can clear up any confusion."
When asked earlier Thursday whether it had uncovered any more information about the disappearing Device Manager and the corrupted registry entries, Microsoft said it nothing new to add beyond the recommendation it made Tuesday: that users contact the company's technical support desk if they have had problems upgrading to XP SP3.
Microsoft was not available for comment Thursday night.
"We finally got to the bottom of this last night," said Dave Cole, Symantec's senior director for product management of its consumer software. "All of these problems are related to the same thing, a Microsoft file that created all the garbage entries [in the registry]."
He also said that some of the same symptoms had been acknowledged by Microsoft when users updated to Windows XP SP2 several years ago; Cole referenced a pair of Microsoft support documents to back up his claim.
Two weeks ago, after Microsoft launched Windows XP SP3 on Windows Update, users started reporting that their network cards and previously crafted connections had mysteriously vanished from Windows after updating with the service pack. The Device Manager had been emptied, they said, and Windows' registry, a directory that stores settings and other critical information, had been packed with large numbers of bogus entries.
Most users who posted messages on Microsoft's XP SP3 support forum said that the errant registry keys -- which started with characters such as "$%&" and appeared corrupted at first glance -- were located in sections devoted to settings for Symantec products. Not surprisingly, they quickly pinned blame on the security company.
Earlier this week, Symantec denied that its software was at fault, and instead pointed a finger at Microsoft.
Thursday, Cole said Symantec engineers had connected the current problem to a Microsoft file named "fixccs.exe." According to information on the Web, fixccs.exe stands for "Fix CCS MaxSubkeyName mismatch," and appears to be part of both XP SP3's and SP2's update packages.
Cole wasn't sure exactly what function fixccs.exe served. "But it caused similar problems with the Device Manager after SP2. It looks like it's reared its head again."
Two Microsoft support documents -- KB893249 and KB914450 -- both describe a problem remarkably similar to what users have reported recently. "After you install Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) on a Windows XP-based computer, the Device Manager window is blank or some devices no longer appear," reads KB893249.
The fixccs.exe file attempts to make changes to the registry, said Cole, but in some cases also adds large numbers of unnecessary keys. When asked why so many users had reported seeing the errant entries in sections reserved for Symantec products, Cole called it "the luck of the draw. We have a fair number of keys in the registry, and we're on a lot of systems. This is not exclusive to Symantec."
Others have noted that too. A user identified as MRFREEZE61, who posted the first message on the Microsoft support forum thread two weeks ago, and later came up with a workaround, said as much today.
"The reported problems are not just limited to those using Symantec products," wrote MRFREEZE61 in a comment added to the original Computerworld story. "Folks on the forum report this specific registry corruption with no Symantec products installed at all. Some find this corruption in device control set enumerators associated with UPNP (Universal Plug and Play) and other 'legacy devices,' others from users of Avast [Antivirus]."
Fixccs.exe has also been linked to problems some users had installing early builds of XP SP3 late last year. In a support forum thread that started Dec. 22, 2007, Shashank Bansal, a Microsoft engineer helping users troubleshoot XP SP3 installation bugs, said: "This is a serious problem for us and we would like to investigate it to further depths. We would need help from all users on this forum for the same." Bansal then asked users who had had trouble updating from XP SP2 to SP3 to identify the process that had hung or had hogged CPU cycles. "Look out for cscipt.exe or fixccs.exe," he asked.
On Thursday, Cole said Symantec was working on a standalone tool that would delete the extraneous registry entries. "We hope to have it ready pretty quickly," he said. "We're working with Microsoft in the normal channels."
That word must not have trickled down to Microsoft's technical support representatives. Users who have posted to Symantec's support forum and others who have e-mailed Computerworld claim that they have been told by Microsoft support that the fault is all or partially Symantec's.
A user going by "ZLevee" copied messages received from Microsoft support to a Thursday post on the Symantec support site. "Based on the current research, the issue can probably be caused by the conflicts between SP3 and Norton. Please let me know if you have any Norton product installed.," ZLevee said the Microsoft support representative had claimed.
A Computerworld reader e-mailed an account of his experience last week with Microsoft's support. "I had an online chat with a tech support person named 'Obaid' on 5/18," said Thom Nielsen in the e-mail. "He told me that Symantec products do NOT work with XP SP3. He told me Symantec is aware of the problem(s) & is working on it."
"This is the first I've heard of this," said Cole when asked to comment. "I hope we can clear up any confusion."
When asked earlier Thursday whether it had uncovered any more information about the disappearing Device Manager and the corrupted registry entries, Microsoft said it nothing new to add beyond the recommendation it made Tuesday: that users contact the company's technical support desk if they have had problems upgrading to XP SP3.
Microsoft was not available for comment Thursday night.
Criminal banned from posting clips of himself on YouTube
A man who posted more than 80 videos of himself and others apparently committing crimes on Google's YouTube video-sharing website has been banned from uploading any more clips or images of himself.
Speeding, taking drugs, setting off fireworks in a wheelie bin and refusing to pay a taxi fare were among the offenses that Andrew Kellett is alleged to have committed in clips posted on the site. In response to his antics, Leeds Magistrates' Court issued him with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) that prevents him posting any more videos or images of his activities.
Kellet, who was called "Leeds' dumbest criminal" by a Leeds Councillor, claimed the ban restricted his freedom of speech and that he was simply an innocent bystander recording events.
If he breaches the terms of the Asbo, Kellet may face an immediate jail sentence.
Speeding, taking drugs, setting off fireworks in a wheelie bin and refusing to pay a taxi fare were among the offenses that Andrew Kellett is alleged to have committed in clips posted on the site. In response to his antics, Leeds Magistrates' Court issued him with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) that prevents him posting any more videos or images of his activities.
Kellet, who was called "Leeds' dumbest criminal" by a Leeds Councillor, claimed the ban restricted his freedom of speech and that he was simply an innocent bystander recording events.
If he breaches the terms of the Asbo, Kellet may face an immediate jail sentence.
Criminal banned from posting clips of himself on YouTube
A man who posted more than 80 videos of himself and others apparently committing crimes on Google's YouTube video-sharing website has been banned from uploading any more clips or images of himself.
Speeding, taking drugs, setting off fireworks in a wheelie bin and refusing to pay a taxi fare were among the offenses that Andrew Kellett is alleged to have committed in clips posted on the site. In response to his antics, Leeds Magistrates' Court issued him with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) that prevents him posting any more videos or images of his activities.
Kellet, who was called "Leeds' dumbest criminal" by a Leeds Councillor, claimed the ban restricted his freedom of speech and that he was simply an innocent bystander recording events.
If he breaches the terms of the Asbo, Kellet may face an immediate jail sentence.
Speeding, taking drugs, setting off fireworks in a wheelie bin and refusing to pay a taxi fare were among the offenses that Andrew Kellett is alleged to have committed in clips posted on the site. In response to his antics, Leeds Magistrates' Court issued him with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) that prevents him posting any more videos or images of his activities.
Kellet, who was called "Leeds' dumbest criminal" by a Leeds Councillor, claimed the ban restricted his freedom of speech and that he was simply an innocent bystander recording events.
If he breaches the terms of the Asbo, Kellet may face an immediate jail sentence.
Facebook security flaw could compromise accounts
A researcher has spotted a security problem in Facebook that could lead to hackers taking control of user accounts.
The flaw allows a hacker to execute scripts on Facebook, which could potentially be used to create a fake log-in page and capture people's passwords, according to the XSSED security blog. The discovery is credited to "Mox."
"Malicious people can exploit this issue to execute script code in the context of Facebook or obtain sensitive information from its users, such us clear text authentication credentials with a fake login form," according to the blog post, written by Dimitris Pagkalos.
A cross-site scripting vulnerability can let an attacker display data from another Web site or run malicious code, which can compromise user data on the targeted Web site.
Cross-site scripting flaws are increasingly becoming one of the favored vectors for hackers, and security experts have warned that a vast number of Web sites potentially contain the vulnerability. In 2006, the Web Application Security Consortium surveyed 31,373 sites and found that 85.57 percent were vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks.
The flaw allows a hacker to execute scripts on Facebook, which could potentially be used to create a fake log-in page and capture people's passwords, according to the XSSED security blog. The discovery is credited to "Mox."
"Malicious people can exploit this issue to execute script code in the context of Facebook or obtain sensitive information from its users, such us clear text authentication credentials with a fake login form," according to the blog post, written by Dimitris Pagkalos.
A cross-site scripting vulnerability can let an attacker display data from another Web site or run malicious code, which can compromise user data on the targeted Web site.
Cross-site scripting flaws are increasingly becoming one of the favored vectors for hackers, and security experts have warned that a vast number of Web sites potentially contain the vulnerability. In 2006, the Web Application Security Consortium surveyed 31,373 sites and found that 85.57 percent were vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks.
Users will be able to transfer N-Gage games, says Nokia
N-Gage owners will be able to transfer games from one phone to another, according to Nokia. Miscommunication is blamed for users not being told.
This week, fan Web site All About N-Gage noticed the existing licensing terms, which states that games bought and paid for can only be used on one phone, and got confirmation from Nokia that games can't be transferred to another phone.
"Internally there have been some mixed messages in this matter as well," said Oskar Södergren, communications manager at Nokia Scandinavia.
But users outraged over the licensing terms can rest easy; a mechanism for transferring games to a new phone is under development.
"We have been working on a way for this to work since the relaunch, but it is taking some time for everything to fall into place," said Södergren.
He doesn't want to elaborate on the details for when a mechanism for transferring games will be in place, or why it hasn't been released.
Nokia relaunched its gaming platform at the beginning of April. N-Gage allows owners of the N81, N82 and N95 to download games, for example FIFA 08, World Series of Poker Pro Challenge and Tetris. Each game costs between €6 (US$9.35) and €10, according to Nokia.
The original report: http://www.idgns.com/news.nsf/0/852573C4006938800025745100397BFE
This week, fan Web site All About N-Gage noticed the existing licensing terms, which states that games bought and paid for can only be used on one phone, and got confirmation from Nokia that games can't be transferred to another phone.
"Internally there have been some mixed messages in this matter as well," said Oskar Södergren, communications manager at Nokia Scandinavia.
But users outraged over the licensing terms can rest easy; a mechanism for transferring games to a new phone is under development.
"We have been working on a way for this to work since the relaunch, but it is taking some time for everything to fall into place," said Södergren.
He doesn't want to elaborate on the details for when a mechanism for transferring games will be in place, or why it hasn't been released.
Nokia relaunched its gaming platform at the beginning of April. N-Gage allows owners of the N81, N82 and N95 to download games, for example FIFA 08, World Series of Poker Pro Challenge and Tetris. Each game costs between €6 (US$9.35) and €10, according to Nokia.
The original report: http://www.idgns.com/news.nsf/0/852573C4006938800025745100397BFE
Vendor goes after SMBs with BSM offering
Startup BSM (business service management) vendor FireScope this week launched a low-priced product aimed at providing small and medium-size businesses with easier entry into BSM, where implementations can run into the six figures.
BSM software -- where FireScope competes with BMC, Hewlett-Packard and Managed Objects -- seeks to provide companies with a way to map the performance of their IT assets, such as servers and applications, against the day-to-day processes of a business.
"You can look at the 'health' of all your data-center stuff in relation to how smoothly, or not, the business is running," said Michael Coté, an analyst with Redmonk. "The idea there is two-fold: enabling, for lack of a better word, IT to simply do their job of running all the computers for the rest of the company, and, giving IT the raw data to justify their existence, resist budget cuts and ask for more budget."
Pricing for FireScope BSM Business Edition starts at US$2,450.
The product also simplifies the process of implementing BSM, said Mark Lynd, FireScope's president. "Everything has wizards and contextual information, step-by-step, how to do this." However, it does not include some key features found in FireScope's offering for larger enterprises. Among the omissions are the ability to customize the application's look and feel, multisite data aggregation, SAN (storage area network) support for Firescope data, real-time reporting and an advanced analytics package.
"Our goal is to go out there and reach [SMBs] with this, and as these companies grow, grow with them," Lynd said of the Business Edition, adding in reference to his competitors, "I don't think the market is ready for this kind of pricing."
But a representative of one FireScope rival downplayed the potential effect of such a low-cost offering on the market.
"The idea of providing some BSM functionality to smaller IT shops is noble and an interesting idea, but I'd recommend being cautious about raising expectations. ... BSM doesn't lend itself to tossing cheap and cheerful code over the wall and hoping it will self-install and model critical IT services independently," said Frank Strong, marketing communications director for Managed Objects, via e-mail.
BSM software -- where FireScope competes with BMC, Hewlett-Packard and Managed Objects -- seeks to provide companies with a way to map the performance of their IT assets, such as servers and applications, against the day-to-day processes of a business.
"You can look at the 'health' of all your data-center stuff in relation to how smoothly, or not, the business is running," said Michael Coté, an analyst with Redmonk. "The idea there is two-fold: enabling, for lack of a better word, IT to simply do their job of running all the computers for the rest of the company, and, giving IT the raw data to justify their existence, resist budget cuts and ask for more budget."
Pricing for FireScope BSM Business Edition starts at US$2,450.
The product also simplifies the process of implementing BSM, said Mark Lynd, FireScope's president. "Everything has wizards and contextual information, step-by-step, how to do this." However, it does not include some key features found in FireScope's offering for larger enterprises. Among the omissions are the ability to customize the application's look and feel, multisite data aggregation, SAN (storage area network) support for Firescope data, real-time reporting and an advanced analytics package.
"Our goal is to go out there and reach [SMBs] with this, and as these companies grow, grow with them," Lynd said of the Business Edition, adding in reference to his competitors, "I don't think the market is ready for this kind of pricing."
But a representative of one FireScope rival downplayed the potential effect of such a low-cost offering on the market.
"The idea of providing some BSM functionality to smaller IT shops is noble and an interesting idea, but I'd recommend being cautious about raising expectations. ... BSM doesn't lend itself to tossing cheap and cheerful code over the wall and hoping it will self-install and model critical IT services independently," said Frank Strong, marketing communications director for Managed Objects, via e-mail.
Larry Page: U.S. government should open up its spectrum
The U.S. government should explore ways to conduct real-time auctions of its vast, and often unused, wireless spectrum holdings, with agencies holding spectrum to get the profits from the sales, Google cofounder Larry Page said Thursday.
Page, speaking in Washington, D.C., repeated Google's position that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission should allow unlicensed wireless devices to access unused spectrum held by television stations. But in addition to TV stations opening up their so-called white spaces, Page called for government agencies to do the same thing.
Google suggested the FCC look into allowing winners of the 700MHz spectrum recently sold by the FCC to conduct real-time auctions as a new business model for spectrum ownership. That idea could be expanded to the federal government, with agencies that sell spectrum on a temporary basis potentially raising billions of dollars, Page said during a speech at the New America Foundation, an independent think tank.
If government agencies could conduct real-time auctions on their spectrum, the unused spectrum "doesn't stay wasted," said Page, now Google's president of products. "It's unclear how much demand you'd have. I think you'll have a lot of demand as you free up more spectrum."
At any one time, about 3 percent to 5 percent of wireless spectrum in the U.S. is being used, Page said. Wireless broadband signals in the TV white spaces could travel four times farther than typical Wi-Fi signals, he said.
It's unclear how much wireless spectrum the U.S. government holds, but estimates suggest the government has more spectrum than any private user. More than 30 U.S. government agencies control spectrum, according to New America, but the government doesn't disclose how much spectrum it has or uses.
Page suggested that government agencies using real-time auctions could shut down outside access whenever they needed additional spectrum.
Commercial spectrum holders could also conduct temporary auctions of excess spectrum, added Michael Calabrese, vice president and director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. "There's so much more unused and underutilized spectrum," he said. "That's part of what is wrong with what's been the conventional wisdom in Washington -- that there's spectrum scarcity. In fact, what's scarce is government licenses to use the spectrum."
Government agencies have been reluctant to give up or share spectrum, with some agencies citing national security reasons. Google and other tech companies advocating for using the white spaces in the TV spectrum have run into stiff opposition from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and wireless microphone vendors such as Shure.
The NAB has raised concerns about interference with TV signals, and three white-space prototype devices have malfunctioned in tests at the FCC since last July. Shure and other wireless microphone vendors have largely been using the TV spectrum without getting FCC licenses, and they, too, have raised interference concerns. Those same concerns could come up with government-controlled spectrum.
NAB has called white-space devices a technology that's "not ready for prime time." NAB has complained that Google and other tech companies "continue to try to muscle their way through Washington in support of a technology that simply does not work."
An NAB spokesman wasn't immediately available to comment on Page's speech.
But Page said opponents of using the white spaces in the TV spectrum have overblown concerns about interference. It's not difficult to deploy technology that will check for other spectrum users before sending out a signal, he said. The NAB in the past has complained about potential interference from other technologies, including satellite television signals, he said.
"People pay attention to that because they say it, but that doesn't mean it's true," he said. "I don't want people to be misled by [organizations] who have interests in this."
Page, speaking in Washington, D.C., repeated Google's position that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission should allow unlicensed wireless devices to access unused spectrum held by television stations. But in addition to TV stations opening up their so-called white spaces, Page called for government agencies to do the same thing.
Google suggested the FCC look into allowing winners of the 700MHz spectrum recently sold by the FCC to conduct real-time auctions as a new business model for spectrum ownership. That idea could be expanded to the federal government, with agencies that sell spectrum on a temporary basis potentially raising billions of dollars, Page said during a speech at the New America Foundation, an independent think tank.
If government agencies could conduct real-time auctions on their spectrum, the unused spectrum "doesn't stay wasted," said Page, now Google's president of products. "It's unclear how much demand you'd have. I think you'll have a lot of demand as you free up more spectrum."
At any one time, about 3 percent to 5 percent of wireless spectrum in the U.S. is being used, Page said. Wireless broadband signals in the TV white spaces could travel four times farther than typical Wi-Fi signals, he said.
It's unclear how much wireless spectrum the U.S. government holds, but estimates suggest the government has more spectrum than any private user. More than 30 U.S. government agencies control spectrum, according to New America, but the government doesn't disclose how much spectrum it has or uses.
Page suggested that government agencies using real-time auctions could shut down outside access whenever they needed additional spectrum.
Commercial spectrum holders could also conduct temporary auctions of excess spectrum, added Michael Calabrese, vice president and director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. "There's so much more unused and underutilized spectrum," he said. "That's part of what is wrong with what's been the conventional wisdom in Washington -- that there's spectrum scarcity. In fact, what's scarce is government licenses to use the spectrum."
Government agencies have been reluctant to give up or share spectrum, with some agencies citing national security reasons. Google and other tech companies advocating for using the white spaces in the TV spectrum have run into stiff opposition from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and wireless microphone vendors such as Shure.
The NAB has raised concerns about interference with TV signals, and three white-space prototype devices have malfunctioned in tests at the FCC since last July. Shure and other wireless microphone vendors have largely been using the TV spectrum without getting FCC licenses, and they, too, have raised interference concerns. Those same concerns could come up with government-controlled spectrum.
NAB has called white-space devices a technology that's "not ready for prime time." NAB has complained that Google and other tech companies "continue to try to muscle their way through Washington in support of a technology that simply does not work."
An NAB spokesman wasn't immediately available to comment on Page's speech.
But Page said opponents of using the white spaces in the TV spectrum have overblown concerns about interference. It's not difficult to deploy technology that will check for other spectrum users before sending out a signal, he said. The NAB in the past has complained about potential interference from other technologies, including satellite television signals, he said.
"People pay attention to that because they say it, but that doesn't mean it's true," he said. "I don't want people to be misled by [organizations] who have interests in this."
Green Computing Summit 2008: Going green is no longer optional
If one message stood out among the others at this week's Green Computing Summit in Washington, DC, it was that going green is no longer just good for the bottom line; it's absolutely necessary. And it's not just the tree huggers who are saying so. Prominent business executives and top ranking federal officials are leading a green revolution that promises to radically change computer technology and the way it is managed.
It may well have been skyrocketing energy prices that first got industry worried about its bottom lines and federal agencies grappling with their budgets, but concern for the escalating climate crisis was hardly an afterthought. What started as a realization that going green was the easiest way to save money has evolved into a series of federal initiatives jointly aimed at reducing energy consumption and cutting CO2 emissions.
Given industry projections of computer growth, dramatic increases in online data storage and additional floor space that could be required by expanding data centers along with the resultant power and cooling upgrades, energy issues will clearly move from problem to crisis if efforts to bring energy consumption under control are not successful.
According to EPA, corporate and governmental data centers in metropolitain areas are already driving the power grid toward gridlock. By 2010, we could have 41 million servers in the US, with less than 10% utilization. Power consumption in data centers in the US could cost $7.4 billion by 2011, compared to $4.5 billion today.
How did we get here? It is estimated that 80% of IT operations managers have no idea what computing power is costing them. Historically, those who manage technology and those who pay the utility bills share little, if any, communication. Meanwhile, idle servers typically waste in excess of 70% of the power they use. Computer users, even those with Energy Star compliant systems, may leave them on around the clock and fail to activate their energy saving features.
Solutions to the computing energy problem focus on strategies such as server consolidation and virtualization to reduce the number of servers, the use of more efficient electonics (e.g., cooler CPUs), better computer life cycle management and end user training.
Twenty-three federal agencies are meeting monthly under the auspices of the ITILOB (IT Infrastructure Line of Business) -- an unprecedented level of collaboration between agencies of the federal government aimed at improving energy efficiency in three areas: end user systems, mainframes/servers and telecommunications systems. They are looking to take advantage of commonalities across the federal government as well as define cost and efficiency measures.
Part of the new green federal infrastructure is a change in the way federal leaders view computer costs. Catherine Cesnik, a Senior Program Manager in the Department of the Interior describes the purchase price of a computer today as the "tip of the iceburg" with respect to the system's real cost. The cost of powering that same system over the span of its useful life is becoming an increasingly significant portion of its real cost -- a cost that both federal agencies and energy-conscious companies are beginning to factor into their IT plans.
The inaugural Green Computing Summit was held in December of last year. This week's summit -- a one-day conference held at the Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, DC -- featured speakers from the government, academia and business communities. Prominent among the many speakers were representatives from both GSA and DOE. Keynotes were provided by John Johnson, Assistant Commissioner, Integrated Technology Service, Federal Acquisition Service, General Services Administration and David Rodgers, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy.
Conference sponsors were on hand to display a range of energy efficient technology -- high-resolution monitor/camera units for effective teleconferencing, virtualization software to create multiple virtual systems on a single physical server, power management software that intelligently turns servers on and off, printers that use dry toner (no cartridges to recycle or throw away) and more.
This week's Green Computing Summit, subtitled "Actionable Strategies for Impact Today", highlighted federal initiatives and green technology. The next summit is scheduled for December 2nd, same venue. IT managers, procurement specialists and technology professionals should put this intense one-day event on their calendars and plan on learning about environmentally-conscious yet efficient solutions to today's IT challenges.
It may well have been skyrocketing energy prices that first got industry worried about its bottom lines and federal agencies grappling with their budgets, but concern for the escalating climate crisis was hardly an afterthought. What started as a realization that going green was the easiest way to save money has evolved into a series of federal initiatives jointly aimed at reducing energy consumption and cutting CO2 emissions.
Given industry projections of computer growth, dramatic increases in online data storage and additional floor space that could be required by expanding data centers along with the resultant power and cooling upgrades, energy issues will clearly move from problem to crisis if efforts to bring energy consumption under control are not successful.
According to EPA, corporate and governmental data centers in metropolitain areas are already driving the power grid toward gridlock. By 2010, we could have 41 million servers in the US, with less than 10% utilization. Power consumption in data centers in the US could cost $7.4 billion by 2011, compared to $4.5 billion today.
How did we get here? It is estimated that 80% of IT operations managers have no idea what computing power is costing them. Historically, those who manage technology and those who pay the utility bills share little, if any, communication. Meanwhile, idle servers typically waste in excess of 70% of the power they use. Computer users, even those with Energy Star compliant systems, may leave them on around the clock and fail to activate their energy saving features.
Solutions to the computing energy problem focus on strategies such as server consolidation and virtualization to reduce the number of servers, the use of more efficient electonics (e.g., cooler CPUs), better computer life cycle management and end user training.
Twenty-three federal agencies are meeting monthly under the auspices of the ITILOB (IT Infrastructure Line of Business) -- an unprecedented level of collaboration between agencies of the federal government aimed at improving energy efficiency in three areas: end user systems, mainframes/servers and telecommunications systems. They are looking to take advantage of commonalities across the federal government as well as define cost and efficiency measures.
Part of the new green federal infrastructure is a change in the way federal leaders view computer costs. Catherine Cesnik, a Senior Program Manager in the Department of the Interior describes the purchase price of a computer today as the "tip of the iceburg" with respect to the system's real cost. The cost of powering that same system over the span of its useful life is becoming an increasingly significant portion of its real cost -- a cost that both federal agencies and energy-conscious companies are beginning to factor into their IT plans.
The inaugural Green Computing Summit was held in December of last year. This week's summit -- a one-day conference held at the Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, DC -- featured speakers from the government, academia and business communities. Prominent among the many speakers were representatives from both GSA and DOE. Keynotes were provided by John Johnson, Assistant Commissioner, Integrated Technology Service, Federal Acquisition Service, General Services Administration and David Rodgers, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy.
Conference sponsors were on hand to display a range of energy efficient technology -- high-resolution monitor/camera units for effective teleconferencing, virtualization software to create multiple virtual systems on a single physical server, power management software that intelligently turns servers on and off, printers that use dry toner (no cartridges to recycle or throw away) and more.
This week's Green Computing Summit, subtitled "Actionable Strategies for Impact Today", highlighted federal initiatives and green technology. The next summit is scheduled for December 2nd, same venue. IT managers, procurement specialists and technology professionals should put this intense one-day event on their calendars and plan on learning about environmentally-conscious yet efficient solutions to today's IT challenges.
Microsoft Surface developer seeks new canvas
What if you threw out your mouse and laid down a touch-sensitive flat-panel monitor on your desktop?
That's essentially what Andy Wilson, one of the designers of Microsoft Surface, has done with his latest project, called LaserTouch.
The idea is to train a camera down on a sheet of infrared laser light and then keep track of what it sees on the surface. Track the lasers on a flat-screen computer monitor, and you've created something that feels remarkably like a touchscreen monitor.
To the uninitiated, Wilson's LaserTouch software seems to work a lot like Surface, Microsoft's tabletop computer that can read reflections on its screen. It responds to gestures, so instead of clicking on a mouse, the user drags and drops with a fingertip. Squeezing two fingers together shrinks the screen, and a quick dragging movement can flip the screen to the next window.
Surface is being rolled out in AT&T stores, where it's being used to power customer information kiosks.
Because LaserTouch can work with screens that have a much higher resolution than Surface, Wilson said it could be used by office workers, if it's ever brought to market.
Using experimental presentation software developed by Microsoft's Office Labs, called Plex, Wilson was able to navigate through PowerPoint-like presentation slides on a 30-inch flat-panel display.
The Microsoft researcher demonstrated LaserTouch at a Microsoft Research event held for media and researchers at the software vendor's Mountain View, California campus. This was actually LaserTouch's second public outing. Wilson said that his software was also used to power the interactive whiteboard technology called Touch Wall that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates demonstrated last week at the company's CEO Summit last week in Redmond, Washington.
What has Wilson excited, though, is the fact that LaserTouch could work on virtually any flat display, including a projection screen. The two lasers and a camera used in his demo cost just a few hundred dollars, he said. "By far the most expensive piece is the display."
Wilson's earlier research has shown how technology like LaserTouch can mesh with the real world in interesting ways. Wilson showed a demo video of two people playing chess against each other in two different locations. Each one put a white piece of paper and white or black chess pieces on the board and the LaserTouch software did the rest, superimposing a chess board and the opponent's pieces onto a projection screen. The only drawback: when you take a piece, your opponent, not you, has to remove it from the board.
Like Surface, the LaserTouch research work is showing how the virtual and real worlds are meshing in very interesting ways, said Rick Rashid, the senior vice president of Microsoft Research. "It's fun, but I really think it's the future."
That's essentially what Andy Wilson, one of the designers of Microsoft Surface, has done with his latest project, called LaserTouch.
The idea is to train a camera down on a sheet of infrared laser light and then keep track of what it sees on the surface. Track the lasers on a flat-screen computer monitor, and you've created something that feels remarkably like a touchscreen monitor.
To the uninitiated, Wilson's LaserTouch software seems to work a lot like Surface, Microsoft's tabletop computer that can read reflections on its screen. It responds to gestures, so instead of clicking on a mouse, the user drags and drops with a fingertip. Squeezing two fingers together shrinks the screen, and a quick dragging movement can flip the screen to the next window.
Surface is being rolled out in AT&T stores, where it's being used to power customer information kiosks.
Because LaserTouch can work with screens that have a much higher resolution than Surface, Wilson said it could be used by office workers, if it's ever brought to market.
Using experimental presentation software developed by Microsoft's Office Labs, called Plex, Wilson was able to navigate through PowerPoint-like presentation slides on a 30-inch flat-panel display.
The Microsoft researcher demonstrated LaserTouch at a Microsoft Research event held for media and researchers at the software vendor's Mountain View, California campus. This was actually LaserTouch's second public outing. Wilson said that his software was also used to power the interactive whiteboard technology called Touch Wall that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates demonstrated last week at the company's CEO Summit last week in Redmond, Washington.
What has Wilson excited, though, is the fact that LaserTouch could work on virtually any flat display, including a projection screen. The two lasers and a camera used in his demo cost just a few hundred dollars, he said. "By far the most expensive piece is the display."
Wilson's earlier research has shown how technology like LaserTouch can mesh with the real world in interesting ways. Wilson showed a demo video of two people playing chess against each other in two different locations. Each one put a white piece of paper and white or black chess pieces on the board and the LaserTouch software did the rest, superimposing a chess board and the opponent's pieces onto a projection screen. The only drawback: when you take a piece, your opponent, not you, has to remove it from the board.
Like Surface, the LaserTouch research work is showing how the virtual and real worlds are meshing in very interesting ways, said Rick Rashid, the senior vice president of Microsoft Research. "It's fun, but I really think it's the future."
Craigslist tops U.S. mobile browsing
Mobile Web surfers in the U.S. spend more time on classified-ad site Craigslist than on any other Web site, and they spent nearly twice as much time browsing as their British counterparts in March.
Those are among the findings from a study by mobile research company M:Metrics in which client software installed on participants' smartphones gleaned information about user activity. It found U.S. owners of smartphones -- not even counting iPhones or BlackBerry devices -- spent nearly 4 hours, 38 minutes using their browsers in March. U.K. subscribers spent just under 2 hours, 25 minutes, on average. The survey tracked 3,500 users of Symbian, Palm and Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphones in the U.S. and U.K.
The devotion to mobile browsing in the U.S. has a lot to do with the wider use of so-called "unlimited" data plans in the country, M:Metrics said. In the U.S., 10.9 percent of smartphone users have data plans that don't charge them per bit or per minute for browsing, the researchers said. In the U.K., only 2.3 percent have such plans. Mobile operators in Europe have been slower to adopt all-you-can-eat pricing, said M:Metrics analyst Mark Donovan.
U.S. users spent about 1 hour, 39 minutes per month on Craigslist, M:Metrics said. The site has two big factors in its favor as a mobile destination, Donovan said. It's text-based, so it's easier to load with a weak signal, and it emphasizes local information. Donovan believes mobile users are visiting local listings for events such as yard sales along with the site's popular personal ads.
E-commerce giant eBay was the second most popular destination, with smartphone users spending about 1 hour, 26 minutes per month there, closely followed by social networking sites Myspace and Facebook. The Walt Disney Co.'s Go.com entertainment portal was fifth, with 1 hour, 7 minutes.
Although average time spent per month was higher for Craigslist, individual visits to eBay lasted longer. On the days they visited eBay, users spent an average of 29 minutes there, versus 22 minutes on Craigslist, M:Metrics said.
Facebook led in browser time in the U.K., with an average of nearly 1 hour, 45 minutes per month, followed by the portal of Three, a popular 3G (third generation telephony) operator. Media company British Sky Broadcasting's site was third, followed by Microsoft's Live.com search site and the BBC.
The study covered all Internet visits through dedicated browsers and mobile operator portals, but not through the dedicated mobile client applications that Facebook and others have introduced, Donovan said. M:Metrics hasn't yet brought iPhone or BlackBerry users into the monthly survey. Although the iPhone is the single device used most often for mobile browsing (most mobile OSes are represented by many different devices), Donovan believes the use patterns would look similar if the iPhone and BlackBerry devices were included.
Those are among the findings from a study by mobile research company M:Metrics in which client software installed on participants' smartphones gleaned information about user activity. It found U.S. owners of smartphones -- not even counting iPhones or BlackBerry devices -- spent nearly 4 hours, 38 minutes using their browsers in March. U.K. subscribers spent just under 2 hours, 25 minutes, on average. The survey tracked 3,500 users of Symbian, Palm and Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphones in the U.S. and U.K.
The devotion to mobile browsing in the U.S. has a lot to do with the wider use of so-called "unlimited" data plans in the country, M:Metrics said. In the U.S., 10.9 percent of smartphone users have data plans that don't charge them per bit or per minute for browsing, the researchers said. In the U.K., only 2.3 percent have such plans. Mobile operators in Europe have been slower to adopt all-you-can-eat pricing, said M:Metrics analyst Mark Donovan.
U.S. users spent about 1 hour, 39 minutes per month on Craigslist, M:Metrics said. The site has two big factors in its favor as a mobile destination, Donovan said. It's text-based, so it's easier to load with a weak signal, and it emphasizes local information. Donovan believes mobile users are visiting local listings for events such as yard sales along with the site's popular personal ads.
E-commerce giant eBay was the second most popular destination, with smartphone users spending about 1 hour, 26 minutes per month there, closely followed by social networking sites Myspace and Facebook. The Walt Disney Co.'s Go.com entertainment portal was fifth, with 1 hour, 7 minutes.
Although average time spent per month was higher for Craigslist, individual visits to eBay lasted longer. On the days they visited eBay, users spent an average of 29 minutes there, versus 22 minutes on Craigslist, M:Metrics said.
Facebook led in browser time in the U.K., with an average of nearly 1 hour, 45 minutes per month, followed by the portal of Three, a popular 3G (third generation telephony) operator. Media company British Sky Broadcasting's site was third, followed by Microsoft's Live.com search site and the BBC.
The study covered all Internet visits through dedicated browsers and mobile operator portals, but not through the dedicated mobile client applications that Facebook and others have introduced, Donovan said. M:Metrics hasn't yet brought iPhone or BlackBerry users into the monthly survey. Although the iPhone is the single device used most often for mobile browsing (most mobile OSes are represented by many different devices), Donovan believes the use patterns would look similar if the iPhone and BlackBerry devices were included.
Yahoo postpones board meeting, director resigns
Facing a battle for its board, Yahoo on Thursday pushed back its annual meeting until the end of July and announced the resignation of a board member.
The annual meeting, during which the entire board is up for re-election, had been scheduled for July 3. Yahoo did not yet set a particular date for the annual meeting but said that it will be around the end of July.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been scooping up Yahoo shares and has told the company he is nominating 10 candidates to replace the entire board. He has said that in doing so he hopes to reignite talks with Microsoft, which recently pulled its acquisition bid for Yahoo.
The postponement of the board meeting probably means Yahoo needs more time to work out a deal with Microsoft, said Karsten Weide, an analyst at IDC. He believes Microsoft ultimately will buy Yahoo, even though the software giant removed its offer and has said it is working on another type of transaction with the company.
In addition to the change in the annual meeting, Yahoo said Edward Kozel resigned from the board. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo said Kozel had planned to leave the board in February but decided to stay on following the acquisition proposal from Microsoft.
As a result of his resignation, Yahoo has reduced the size of its board to nine directors, it said.
While Kozel said he is resigning in order to spend more time with his family, he probably has another reason, Weide said. "What it means is there is dissent," he said. Kozel may not have agreed with the board's refusal to make a deal with Microsoft and he may be worried about lawsuits charging the board with failing to do its duty, Weide said.
Yahoo appointed Kozel to the board in 2000. He had spent 11 years at Cisco, including as chief technology officer, and also served on Cisco's board. Kozel also previously worked at Boeing and McDonnell Douglas and as managing partner at Open Range Ventures, a private venture capital company.
Microsoft announced its US$44.6 billion cash-and-stock bid for Yahoo on Feb. 1 but abandoned it three months later, after Yahoo initially spurned the offer. Microsoft was interested in a deal with Yahoo as a way to boost its lagging search business, although since it pulled its offer, the company has said that it can gain more market share through internal innovations.
The annual meeting, during which the entire board is up for re-election, had been scheduled for July 3. Yahoo did not yet set a particular date for the annual meeting but said that it will be around the end of July.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been scooping up Yahoo shares and has told the company he is nominating 10 candidates to replace the entire board. He has said that in doing so he hopes to reignite talks with Microsoft, which recently pulled its acquisition bid for Yahoo.
The postponement of the board meeting probably means Yahoo needs more time to work out a deal with Microsoft, said Karsten Weide, an analyst at IDC. He believes Microsoft ultimately will buy Yahoo, even though the software giant removed its offer and has said it is working on another type of transaction with the company.
In addition to the change in the annual meeting, Yahoo said Edward Kozel resigned from the board. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo said Kozel had planned to leave the board in February but decided to stay on following the acquisition proposal from Microsoft.
As a result of his resignation, Yahoo has reduced the size of its board to nine directors, it said.
While Kozel said he is resigning in order to spend more time with his family, he probably has another reason, Weide said. "What it means is there is dissent," he said. Kozel may not have agreed with the board's refusal to make a deal with Microsoft and he may be worried about lawsuits charging the board with failing to do its duty, Weide said.
Yahoo appointed Kozel to the board in 2000. He had spent 11 years at Cisco, including as chief technology officer, and also served on Cisco's board. Kozel also previously worked at Boeing and McDonnell Douglas and as managing partner at Open Range Ventures, a private venture capital company.
Microsoft announced its US$44.6 billion cash-and-stock bid for Yahoo on Feb. 1 but abandoned it three months later, after Yahoo initially spurned the offer. Microsoft was interested in a deal with Yahoo as a way to boost its lagging search business, although since it pulled its offer, the company has said that it can gain more market share through internal innovations.
Google extends search dominance
Extending its dominance in the search market, Google grew its share of queries in April at the expense of rivals Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Ask.com.
Google's U.S. search query share in April grew to 61.6 percent, up from 59.8 percent in March, comScore announced Thursday. Google accomplished this although the number of search queries dropped 2 percent overall in April to 10.58 billion, compared with March, comScore said.
So even with the overall monthly decline, Google managed to increase its search queries by 1 percent, from 6.44 billion to 6.51 billion.
Meanwhile, the other four major search-engine players saw their queries and their market share drop in April, compared with March, not a great situation for them to be in, considering that search advertising accounts for about 41 percent of U.S. online advertising, according to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).
Yahoo's market share of queries dropped to 20.4 percent, and its number of queries fell 6 percent. Microsoft's market share shrunk to 9.1 percent, while its queries fell 5 percent. AOL, down to a 4.6 percent share, saw its queries drop by 6 percent. Ask.com, whose share slid to 4.3 percent, had the biggest fall in queries percentage-wise with 9 percent.
A desire to improve its position in search was a primary driver for Microsoft's now-abandoned acquisition bid for Yahoo. However, Microsoft is reportedly trying to strike a search deal with Yahoo, which is also in similar negotiations with Google. It's not clear whether Yahoo would be open to selling its search-advertising business outright or instead seek a deal to outsource part of it to Microsoft or Google.
Whatever happens, comScore's figures for April leave no doubt that Microsoft and Yahoo have resoundingly failed to slow down Google in search, and that Google remains well-positioned to use its search dominance to continue boosting its revenue and profits.
In a research note commenting on the comScore report, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney wrote: "As Google continues to take share, we continue to believe a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft would be necessary -- though not sufficient -- to compete effectively with Google."
Google's U.S. search query share in April grew to 61.6 percent, up from 59.8 percent in March, comScore announced Thursday. Google accomplished this although the number of search queries dropped 2 percent overall in April to 10.58 billion, compared with March, comScore said.
So even with the overall monthly decline, Google managed to increase its search queries by 1 percent, from 6.44 billion to 6.51 billion.
Meanwhile, the other four major search-engine players saw their queries and their market share drop in April, compared with March, not a great situation for them to be in, considering that search advertising accounts for about 41 percent of U.S. online advertising, according to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).
Yahoo's market share of queries dropped to 20.4 percent, and its number of queries fell 6 percent. Microsoft's market share shrunk to 9.1 percent, while its queries fell 5 percent. AOL, down to a 4.6 percent share, saw its queries drop by 6 percent. Ask.com, whose share slid to 4.3 percent, had the biggest fall in queries percentage-wise with 9 percent.
A desire to improve its position in search was a primary driver for Microsoft's now-abandoned acquisition bid for Yahoo. However, Microsoft is reportedly trying to strike a search deal with Yahoo, which is also in similar negotiations with Google. It's not clear whether Yahoo would be open to selling its search-advertising business outright or instead seek a deal to outsource part of it to Microsoft or Google.
Whatever happens, comScore's figures for April leave no doubt that Microsoft and Yahoo have resoundingly failed to slow down Google in search, and that Google remains well-positioned to use its search dominance to continue boosting its revenue and profits.
In a research note commenting on the comScore report, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney wrote: "As Google continues to take share, we continue to believe a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft would be necessary -- though not sufficient -- to compete effectively with Google."
Microsoft's embrace of ODF cautiously welcomed
Microsoft's support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) could mean greater opportunities for software makers already using the format, observers said Thursday.
Microsoft will put native support for ODF as part of its next service pack for Office 2007, due out by the first half of 2009. The surprise decision came as Microsoft's faces continued regulatory scrutiny from the European Commission over interoperability concerns.
The Commission said in a statement Thursday that it welcomes steps Microsoft takes toward "genuine" interoperability and that it would analyze the latest announcement to see how it impacts consumers' software choices.
In January, the Commission opened two new antitrust investigations against Microsoft concerning the interoperability of Windows with other software and the company's practice of bundling software products with Windows.
At least one office software maker thinks Microsoft's turnaround on ODF will mean more flexibility for software buyers. The ability to save in ODF in Microsoft Office could give users more confidence to switch to OpenOffice.org, a free open-source suite, said John McCreesh, spokesman for OpenOffice.org.
“The whole purpose of having an open standard is to give people freedom of choice,” McCreesh said. “It means we have a level playing field, which is what it’s all about.”
Of course, those users could migrate to Microsoft from OpenOffice.org, too, McCreesh said.
A looming concern is if Microsoft's implementation of ODF within Office will handle documents with the same or better performance as competing suites. Microsoft has been criticized for embracing a particular standard but using subtle means within its software to subvert it.
Those concerns aside, one organization that has been particularly critical of Microsoft also welcomed the news. Wider user of ODF through Office could also give a boost to competing operating systems such as Linux, said the Free Software Foundation Europe.
"The move to support ODF, if genuine, would remove one of the most effective barriers for migration to GNU/Linux on the desktop," wrote Georg C.F. Greve, spokesman for the organization, in an e-mail. "The Microsoft desktop monopoly would be unlikely to continue in such a situation and millions of computer users would enjoy genuine freedom of choice."
Despite years of bitter criticism, Microsoft resisted putting native support for ODF in Office, instead supporting projects to create translators. Sun Microsystems developed one of those translators, which allows users to save in ODF in Microsoft Office 2003.
Microsoft also chose to push its Office Open XML (OOXML) format, which was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in April. Opponents of OOXML said Microsoft's specification would unnecessarily splinter and complicate office software productivity products.
Microsoft said Wednesday that it would not implement ISO standard 29500, as the approved OOXML version is known, in Office 2007 but instead the next version of the program, known as Office 14.
That means ODF will have a few years' head start on the ISO's approved OOXML standard. Microsoft hasn't set a date for release of Office 14. Office 2007 was released first to business users in November 2006.
In the meantime, ODF could gain wider support, wrote ODF supporter Andrew Updegrove, an open-source and open-standards attorney with Gesmer Updegrove in Boston.
"Given the quality of open-source office suites such as OpenOffice...the frequency of ODF-based files popping up in the work flows of Office-based shops can now be expected to increase much more quickly," Updegrove wrote in an e-mail commentary.
Microsoft's latest move may help put out other fires. A British government agency filed a complaint with the European Commission earlier this month alleging Microsoft impedes the exchange of files between Office 2007 and competitors' products.
The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA), which advises British schools on technology, recommended in January that schools not upgrade to Vista and Office 2007.
BECTA has also called on Microsoft to make its products more interoperable, as well as putting "built-in and effective" support for ODF in Office 2007.
BECTA said Thursday it will examine Office 2007 after it has been upgraded. "If necessary we will update our advice to schools and colleges," the agency said in a statement.
IBM, one of Microsoft's fiercest critics during the OOXML deliberations, praised Microsoft's new stance on ODF.
"They will definitely benefit form being able to address this support requirement in the marketplace," said Bob Picciano, general manager and head of the company's Lotus software and collaboration business.
But Picciano said he hopes Microsoft is serious about contributing to the development of ODF as Microsoft has pledged.
Microsoft's closest competitor in the office software space, Corel, also recently decided to included ODF support.
The latest version WordPerfect Office X4, released in April, adds support for ODF as well as Microsoft's version of OOXML included in Office 2007, said Greg Wood, communications manager for WordPerfect Office. So far, Corel's customers have been more interested in OOXML support than ODF, Wood said.
Microsoft will put native support for ODF as part of its next service pack for Office 2007, due out by the first half of 2009. The surprise decision came as Microsoft's faces continued regulatory scrutiny from the European Commission over interoperability concerns.
The Commission said in a statement Thursday that it welcomes steps Microsoft takes toward "genuine" interoperability and that it would analyze the latest announcement to see how it impacts consumers' software choices.
In January, the Commission opened two new antitrust investigations against Microsoft concerning the interoperability of Windows with other software and the company's practice of bundling software products with Windows.
At least one office software maker thinks Microsoft's turnaround on ODF will mean more flexibility for software buyers. The ability to save in ODF in Microsoft Office could give users more confidence to switch to OpenOffice.org, a free open-source suite, said John McCreesh, spokesman for OpenOffice.org.
“The whole purpose of having an open standard is to give people freedom of choice,” McCreesh said. “It means we have a level playing field, which is what it’s all about.”
Of course, those users could migrate to Microsoft from OpenOffice.org, too, McCreesh said.
A looming concern is if Microsoft's implementation of ODF within Office will handle documents with the same or better performance as competing suites. Microsoft has been criticized for embracing a particular standard but using subtle means within its software to subvert it.
Those concerns aside, one organization that has been particularly critical of Microsoft also welcomed the news. Wider user of ODF through Office could also give a boost to competing operating systems such as Linux, said the Free Software Foundation Europe.
"The move to support ODF, if genuine, would remove one of the most effective barriers for migration to GNU/Linux on the desktop," wrote Georg C.F. Greve, spokesman for the organization, in an e-mail. "The Microsoft desktop monopoly would be unlikely to continue in such a situation and millions of computer users would enjoy genuine freedom of choice."
Despite years of bitter criticism, Microsoft resisted putting native support for ODF in Office, instead supporting projects to create translators. Sun Microsystems developed one of those translators, which allows users to save in ODF in Microsoft Office 2003.
Microsoft also chose to push its Office Open XML (OOXML) format, which was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in April. Opponents of OOXML said Microsoft's specification would unnecessarily splinter and complicate office software productivity products.
Microsoft said Wednesday that it would not implement ISO standard 29500, as the approved OOXML version is known, in Office 2007 but instead the next version of the program, known as Office 14.
That means ODF will have a few years' head start on the ISO's approved OOXML standard. Microsoft hasn't set a date for release of Office 14. Office 2007 was released first to business users in November 2006.
In the meantime, ODF could gain wider support, wrote ODF supporter Andrew Updegrove, an open-source and open-standards attorney with Gesmer Updegrove in Boston.
"Given the quality of open-source office suites such as OpenOffice...the frequency of ODF-based files popping up in the work flows of Office-based shops can now be expected to increase much more quickly," Updegrove wrote in an e-mail commentary.
Microsoft's latest move may help put out other fires. A British government agency filed a complaint with the European Commission earlier this month alleging Microsoft impedes the exchange of files between Office 2007 and competitors' products.
The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA), which advises British schools on technology, recommended in January that schools not upgrade to Vista and Office 2007.
BECTA has also called on Microsoft to make its products more interoperable, as well as putting "built-in and effective" support for ODF in Office 2007.
BECTA said Thursday it will examine Office 2007 after it has been upgraded. "If necessary we will update our advice to schools and colleges," the agency said in a statement.
IBM, one of Microsoft's fiercest critics during the OOXML deliberations, praised Microsoft's new stance on ODF.
"They will definitely benefit form being able to address this support requirement in the marketplace," said Bob Picciano, general manager and head of the company's Lotus software and collaboration business.
But Picciano said he hopes Microsoft is serious about contributing to the development of ODF as Microsoft has pledged.
Microsoft's closest competitor in the office software space, Corel, also recently decided to included ODF support.
The latest version WordPerfect Office X4, released in April, adds support for ODF as well as Microsoft's version of OOXML included in Office 2007, said Greg Wood, communications manager for WordPerfect Office. So far, Corel's customers have been more interested in OOXML support than ODF, Wood said.
Facebook provides more redesign details
Facebook is disclosing more details about the planned redesign for its core member profile pages, as it attempts to regain the layout's orderly, streamlined look that had been one of its trademarks and a differentiator from competitors like MySpace.
The latest plans in Facebook's ongoing redesign efforts call for profile pages to evolve from a single repository of content and applications into a tabbed interface.
The goal is to let users organize in these tabbed sub-pages the various components of their profiles, such as the activity feed, photos, personal information and applications.
Facebook members can see the latest screenshots in this album and view this video of a presentation held Wednesday by company officials about the redesign plans.
At the event, Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook's vice president of product marketing, explained that the interface changes are intended to make profiles cleaner and simpler and give users more control over their look and feel, and emphasize the most recent and relevant information.
"We need to take a step forward with respect to the user experience and the UI that we present to the consumer because the amount of information that's being created both passively and proactively is increasing," he said.
No doubt this is due to Facebook's membership explosive growth and the company's decision a year ago to let external developers create applications for the site. Facebook currently has about 70 million members and about 20,000 applications.
Still Facebook must be careful about how its redesign affects a member's experience, as in the past some of its changes have riled users and industry observers.
The activity feed feature was blasted by users as violating their privacy, as was the Beacon ad program that broadcast online transactions made by Facebook's users to their friends list.
Already, there have been some early grumblings among external developers concerned that the redesigned profile page will steal visibility from their applications.
But Palihapitiya argued that the redesign will do the opposite rather, and generate instead "a more meaningful engagement with users" for applications by offering new integration opportunities in the profiles.
Facebook plans to let developers and members test the redesign before launching it formally next month.
The latest plans in Facebook's ongoing redesign efforts call for profile pages to evolve from a single repository of content and applications into a tabbed interface.
The goal is to let users organize in these tabbed sub-pages the various components of their profiles, such as the activity feed, photos, personal information and applications.
Facebook members can see the latest screenshots in this album and view this video of a presentation held Wednesday by company officials about the redesign plans.
At the event, Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook's vice president of product marketing, explained that the interface changes are intended to make profiles cleaner and simpler and give users more control over their look and feel, and emphasize the most recent and relevant information.
"We need to take a step forward with respect to the user experience and the UI that we present to the consumer because the amount of information that's being created both passively and proactively is increasing," he said.
No doubt this is due to Facebook's membership explosive growth and the company's decision a year ago to let external developers create applications for the site. Facebook currently has about 70 million members and about 20,000 applications.
Still Facebook must be careful about how its redesign affects a member's experience, as in the past some of its changes have riled users and industry observers.
The activity feed feature was blasted by users as violating their privacy, as was the Beacon ad program that broadcast online transactions made by Facebook's users to their friends list.
Already, there have been some early grumblings among external developers concerned that the redesigned profile page will steal visibility from their applications.
But Palihapitiya argued that the redesign will do the opposite rather, and generate instead "a more meaningful engagement with users" for applications by offering new integration opportunities in the profiles.
Facebook plans to let developers and members test the redesign before launching it formally next month.
Chinese police detain woman over quake video
Chinese police in the northern city of Shenyang have detained a woman who posted a video filled with angry comments directed at victims of the devastating earthquake that rattled Sichuan province last week.
The 21-year-old woman, Gao Qianhui, was angry over a three-day mourning period that saw online entertainment and games shut down in China out of respect for those killed by the quake, according to a Xinhua News Agency report carried on Netease, a popular Chinese portal. The report, which was highlighted by Blogging for China, did not make clear what law Gao was alleged to have broken in her online outburst.
In the video, Gao is shown sitting inside what appears to be an Internet cafe. After introducing herself as a "common young girl" from Liaoning province in northeastern China, Gao complains she has no interest in coverage of the quake or its aftermath.
"How many of you died? It was just a few," Gao said. "China has so many people, anyway."
The video and apparent lack of sympathy on Gao's part for those affected by the Sichuan earthquake provoked an outpouring of anger and criticism from Chinese Internet users. The Xinhua story carried on Netease alone had more than 17,000 comments at the time of writing.
"Have you no humanity?" asked one commentator.
The 21-year-old woman, Gao Qianhui, was angry over a three-day mourning period that saw online entertainment and games shut down in China out of respect for those killed by the quake, according to a Xinhua News Agency report carried on Netease, a popular Chinese portal. The report, which was highlighted by Blogging for China, did not make clear what law Gao was alleged to have broken in her online outburst.
In the video, Gao is shown sitting inside what appears to be an Internet cafe. After introducing herself as a "common young girl" from Liaoning province in northeastern China, Gao complains she has no interest in coverage of the quake or its aftermath.
"How many of you died? It was just a few," Gao said. "China has so many people, anyway."
The video and apparent lack of sympathy on Gao's part for those affected by the Sichuan earthquake provoked an outpouring of anger and criticism from Chinese Internet users. The Xinhua story carried on Netease alone had more than 17,000 comments at the time of writing.
"Have you no humanity?" asked one commentator.
Chinese police detain woman over quake video
Chinese police in the northern city of Shenyang have detained a woman who posted a video filled with angry comments directed at victims of the devastating earthquake that rattled Sichuan province last week.
The 21-year-old woman, Gao Qianhui, was angry over a three-day mourning period that saw online entertainment and games shut down in China out of respect for those killed by the quake, according to a Xinhua News Agency report carried on Netease, a popular Chinese portal. The report, which was highlighted by Blogging for China, did not make clear what law Gao was alleged to have broken in her online outburst.
In the video, Gao is shown sitting inside what appears to be an Internet cafe. After introducing herself as a "common young girl" from Liaoning province in northeastern China, Gao complains she has no interest in coverage of the quake or its aftermath.
"How many of you died? It was just a few," Gao said. "China has so many people, anyway."
The video and apparent lack of sympathy on Gao's part for those affected by the Sichuan earthquake provoked an outpouring of anger and criticism from Chinese Internet users. The Xinhua story carried on Netease alone had more than 17,000 comments at the time of writing.
"Have you no humanity?" asked one commentator.
The 21-year-old woman, Gao Qianhui, was angry over a three-day mourning period that saw online entertainment and games shut down in China out of respect for those killed by the quake, according to a Xinhua News Agency report carried on Netease, a popular Chinese portal. The report, which was highlighted by Blogging for China, did not make clear what law Gao was alleged to have broken in her online outburst.
In the video, Gao is shown sitting inside what appears to be an Internet cafe. After introducing herself as a "common young girl" from Liaoning province in northeastern China, Gao complains she has no interest in coverage of the quake or its aftermath.
"How many of you died? It was just a few," Gao said. "China has so many people, anyway."
The video and apparent lack of sympathy on Gao's part for those affected by the Sichuan earthquake provoked an outpouring of anger and criticism from Chinese Internet users. The Xinhua story carried on Netease alone had more than 17,000 comments at the time of writing.
"Have you no humanity?" asked one commentator.
Ahead of rootkit talk, Cisco patches router flaw
Cisco has issued three security patches, fixing bugs that could crash its products and drawing a warning from the SANS Internet Storm Center.
The updates, issued Wednesday, fix denial of service bugs in the SSH (Secure Shell) software in Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS), used to power its routers, and in the Cisco Service Control Engine, which is provides carrier-grade networking services.
Cisco has also patched a privilege escalation vulnerability in its Voice Portal automated telephone customer service software.
In its security advisories Cisco said that all of the bugs had been discovered by its own researchers, but SANS warned that researchers are likely reverse-engineering the patches and may release exploit code publicly.
These particular updates are getting extra attention from the security community, which is now closely investigating how malicious software might work on IOS, an operating system that has largely evaded serious scrutiny. On Thursday, for example, Core Security's Sebastian Muniz is slated to give a widely anticipated presentation on a Cisco rootkit he calls the DIK (Da Ios rootKit) at the EuSecWest conference in London.
Cisco recently changed its software update policy, saying it will now only issue IOS patches in March and September each year, unless forced to rush out a fix for serious bugs that were publicly disclosed or which were being actively exploited. On Wednesday, a Cisco spokesman couldn't immediately say whether his company considered the IOS patch, which fixes a flaw in the SSH server, an out-of-cycle update.
But Core Security Chief Technology Officer Ivan Arce said that Cisco's SSH bug-fix was not connected to his company's rootkit presentation. "It is more likely that this is related to an ongoing distributed SSH brute forcing attack that a few people reported in the incidents mailing list last week," he said in an e-mail interview.
The SSH server is used by administers to remotely log into a router using encryption. Bugs in the software could let an attacker repeatedly reload the device or access "spurious" parts of the router's memory and could be used to disable the hardware in a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, Cisco said in its advisory.
"While the 'Exploitation and Public Announcements' portion of all three advisories states that the vulns were discovered in-house, it's a pretty safe bet that a fair number of security researchers are feverishly reverse engineering the updates to develop exploits," wrote SANS Internet Storm Center contributor George Bakos in a blog posting.
"Anytime we see a 'spurious memory access' leading to a denial of service, thoughts immediately go to arbitrary code execution. There is no evidence that this is possible, but in light of the recent work in IOS rootkits, vulns in Cisco devices should not be taken lightly," he wrote.
The updates, issued Wednesday, fix denial of service bugs in the SSH (Secure Shell) software in Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS), used to power its routers, and in the Cisco Service Control Engine, which is provides carrier-grade networking services.
Cisco has also patched a privilege escalation vulnerability in its Voice Portal automated telephone customer service software.
In its security advisories Cisco said that all of the bugs had been discovered by its own researchers, but SANS warned that researchers are likely reverse-engineering the patches and may release exploit code publicly.
These particular updates are getting extra attention from the security community, which is now closely investigating how malicious software might work on IOS, an operating system that has largely evaded serious scrutiny. On Thursday, for example, Core Security's Sebastian Muniz is slated to give a widely anticipated presentation on a Cisco rootkit he calls the DIK (Da Ios rootKit) at the EuSecWest conference in London.
Cisco recently changed its software update policy, saying it will now only issue IOS patches in March and September each year, unless forced to rush out a fix for serious bugs that were publicly disclosed or which were being actively exploited. On Wednesday, a Cisco spokesman couldn't immediately say whether his company considered the IOS patch, which fixes a flaw in the SSH server, an out-of-cycle update.
But Core Security Chief Technology Officer Ivan Arce said that Cisco's SSH bug-fix was not connected to his company's rootkit presentation. "It is more likely that this is related to an ongoing distributed SSH brute forcing attack that a few people reported in the incidents mailing list last week," he said in an e-mail interview.
The SSH server is used by administers to remotely log into a router using encryption. Bugs in the software could let an attacker repeatedly reload the device or access "spurious" parts of the router's memory and could be used to disable the hardware in a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, Cisco said in its advisory.
"While the 'Exploitation and Public Announcements' portion of all three advisories states that the vulns were discovered in-house, it's a pretty safe bet that a fair number of security researchers are feverishly reverse engineering the updates to develop exploits," wrote SANS Internet Storm Center contributor George Bakos in a blog posting.
"Anytime we see a 'spurious memory access' leading to a denial of service, thoughts immediately go to arbitrary code execution. There is no evidence that this is possible, but in light of the recent work in IOS rootkits, vulns in Cisco devices should not be taken lightly," he wrote.
Ahead of rootkit talk, Cisco patches router flaw
Cisco has issued three security patches, fixing bugs that could crash its products and drawing a warning from the SANS Internet Storm Center.
The updates, issued Wednesday, fix denial of service bugs in the SSH (Secure Shell) software in Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS), used to power its routers, and in the Cisco Service Control Engine, which is provides carrier-grade networking services.
Cisco has also patched a privilege escalation vulnerability in its Voice Portal automated telephone customer service software.
In its security advisories Cisco said that all of the bugs had been discovered by its own researchers, but SANS warned that researchers are likely reverse-engineering the patches and may release exploit code publicly.
These particular updates are getting extra attention from the security community, which is now closely investigating how malicious software might work on IOS, an operating system that has largely evaded serious scrutiny. On Thursday, for example, Core Security's Sebastian Muniz is slated to give a widely anticipated presentation on a Cisco rootkit he calls the DIK (Da Ios rootKit) at the EuSecWest conference in London.
Cisco recently changed its software update policy, saying it will now only issue IOS patches in March and September each year, unless forced to rush out a fix for serious bugs that were publicly disclosed or which were being actively exploited. On Wednesday, a Cisco spokesman couldn't immediately say whether his company considered the IOS patch, which fixes a flaw in the SSH server, an out-of-cycle update.
But Core Security Chief Technology Officer Ivan Arce said that Cisco's SSH bug-fix was not connected to his company's rootkit presentation. "It is more likely that this is related to an ongoing distributed SSH brute forcing attack that a few people reported in the incidents mailing list last week," he said in an e-mail interview.
The SSH server is used by administers to remotely log into a router using encryption. Bugs in the software could let an attacker repeatedly reload the device or access "spurious" parts of the router's memory and could be used to disable the hardware in a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, Cisco said in its advisory.
"While the 'Exploitation and Public Announcements' portion of all three advisories states that the vulns were discovered in-house, it's a pretty safe bet that a fair number of security researchers are feverishly reverse engineering the updates to develop exploits," wrote SANS Internet Storm Center contributor George Bakos in a blog posting.
"Anytime we see a 'spurious memory access' leading to a denial of service, thoughts immediately go to arbitrary code execution. There is no evidence that this is possible, but in light of the recent work in IOS rootkits, vulns in Cisco devices should not be taken lightly," he wrote.
The updates, issued Wednesday, fix denial of service bugs in the SSH (Secure Shell) software in Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS), used to power its routers, and in the Cisco Service Control Engine, which is provides carrier-grade networking services.
Cisco has also patched a privilege escalation vulnerability in its Voice Portal automated telephone customer service software.
In its security advisories Cisco said that all of the bugs had been discovered by its own researchers, but SANS warned that researchers are likely reverse-engineering the patches and may release exploit code publicly.
These particular updates are getting extra attention from the security community, which is now closely investigating how malicious software might work on IOS, an operating system that has largely evaded serious scrutiny. On Thursday, for example, Core Security's Sebastian Muniz is slated to give a widely anticipated presentation on a Cisco rootkit he calls the DIK (Da Ios rootKit) at the EuSecWest conference in London.
Cisco recently changed its software update policy, saying it will now only issue IOS patches in March and September each year, unless forced to rush out a fix for serious bugs that were publicly disclosed or which were being actively exploited. On Wednesday, a Cisco spokesman couldn't immediately say whether his company considered the IOS patch, which fixes a flaw in the SSH server, an out-of-cycle update.
But Core Security Chief Technology Officer Ivan Arce said that Cisco's SSH bug-fix was not connected to his company's rootkit presentation. "It is more likely that this is related to an ongoing distributed SSH brute forcing attack that a few people reported in the incidents mailing list last week," he said in an e-mail interview.
The SSH server is used by administers to remotely log into a router using encryption. Bugs in the software could let an attacker repeatedly reload the device or access "spurious" parts of the router's memory and could be used to disable the hardware in a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, Cisco said in its advisory.
"While the 'Exploitation and Public Announcements' portion of all three advisories states that the vulns were discovered in-house, it's a pretty safe bet that a fair number of security researchers are feverishly reverse engineering the updates to develop exploits," wrote SANS Internet Storm Center contributor George Bakos in a blog posting.
"Anytime we see a 'spurious memory access' leading to a denial of service, thoughts immediately go to arbitrary code execution. There is no evidence that this is possible, but in light of the recent work in IOS rootkits, vulns in Cisco devices should not be taken lightly," he wrote.
Singaporean blogger arrested, charged with racism
A 24-year-old Chinese man was arrested in Singapore on May 20 and charged with posting racist comments on his blog, according to the Singapore Police Force.
The man, who was not named, was arrested after police received two complaints about allegedly racist comments posted on his blog, SPF said in a brief statement. The blog was not identified.
"Police take a serious view of such irresponsible blog postings in a multi-racial society like Singapore and will expend all efforts in tracking the perpetrators," the statement said.
Under Singaporean law, comments made with the "deliberate intention of wounding the religious or racial feelings of any person" can result in a jail term of up to three years and a fine.
Singapore is predominantly Chinese, but also has large Malay and Indian communities. For historical reasons, the government is generally quick to clamp down on public comments that might create tension between the country's different ethnic groups.
In 1964, tensions between the Chinese and Malay communities in Singapore twice erupted into riots that killed 36 and left hundreds wounded. Riots again broke out between the two communities in 1969, sparked by violence between Malays and Chinese in Malaysia.
In the case of the blogger arrested Tuesday, his comments were directed at a fellow passenger on Singapore's train system, local media reported.
"There he sat, unaffected by his surroundings, smelling like he didn't showered (sic) in years and wore some really scary dirty clothes," the blogger allegedly wrote, according to The New Paper. The blogger allegedly proceeded to make "offensive" comments about the man's race, the report said, without providing details.
Details of the man described in the blog, including his race, were not disclosed.
The man arrested for making the comments apologized, the New Paper said, saying he was "shocked by the furore over his blog entry, which he said was only intended for his close friends."
The man plans to make an online apology, the report said.
The man, who was not named, was arrested after police received two complaints about allegedly racist comments posted on his blog, SPF said in a brief statement. The blog was not identified.
"Police take a serious view of such irresponsible blog postings in a multi-racial society like Singapore and will expend all efforts in tracking the perpetrators," the statement said.
Under Singaporean law, comments made with the "deliberate intention of wounding the religious or racial feelings of any person" can result in a jail term of up to three years and a fine.
Singapore is predominantly Chinese, but also has large Malay and Indian communities. For historical reasons, the government is generally quick to clamp down on public comments that might create tension between the country's different ethnic groups.
In 1964, tensions between the Chinese and Malay communities in Singapore twice erupted into riots that killed 36 and left hundreds wounded. Riots again broke out between the two communities in 1969, sparked by violence between Malays and Chinese in Malaysia.
In the case of the blogger arrested Tuesday, his comments were directed at a fellow passenger on Singapore's train system, local media reported.
"There he sat, unaffected by his surroundings, smelling like he didn't showered (sic) in years and wore some really scary dirty clothes," the blogger allegedly wrote, according to The New Paper. The blogger allegedly proceeded to make "offensive" comments about the man's race, the report said, without providing details.
Details of the man described in the blog, including his race, were not disclosed.
The man arrested for making the comments apologized, the New Paper said, saying he was "shocked by the furore over his blog entry, which he said was only intended for his close friends."
The man plans to make an online apology, the report said.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Vista laid low by new malware figures
It looks as if Vista's reputation for improved security could be heading for the pages of history. PC Tools has renewed last week's attack on the platform with new figures that appear to back up its claim that Vista is almost as vulnerable as its predecessors.
According to analysis from the Australian company's ThreatFire user base, 58,000 PCs running Vista were compromised by at least one piece of malware over the six months to May 2008, equivalent to 27 percent of all Vista machines probed. Vista made up 12.6 percent, or 190,692, of the 1,513,502 machines running Windows in the user base.
In total, Vista suffered 121,380 instances of malware from its 190,000 user base, a rate of malware detection per system is proportionally lower than that of XP, which saw 1,319,144 malware infections from a user base of 1,297,828 machines, but it indicates a problem that is worse than Microsoft has been admitting to.
Only a week ago, PC Tools revealed that Vista was as likely to be hit with software vulnerabilities as Windows 2000, a claim that was denied by a Microsoft staffer in a blog.
The problem with the figures given in all cases is that it is still hard to make direct - and therefore meaningful - comparisons. As PC Tools makes clear, that malware was detected did not mean harm had been done, simply that Vista's own security had in some way been circumvented to the degree that its ThreatFire tool stepped in.
"It is important to highlight that all systems used in the research pool were at the very least running PC Tool's ThreatFire and that because the technology is behavioral-based, the data refers to threats that actually executed and triggered our behavioral detection on the client machine", said PC Tools' CEO, Simon Clausen, before aiming a kick at Microsoft's own security software.
"Furthermore, in response to alternative research from Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool, PC Tools highlights that the MSRT is not a comprehensive anti-virus scanner, but a malware removal tool for a limited range of "specific, prevalent malicious software."
An obvious objection to this is that any operating system will suffer a degree of malware compromise, which could be traced back to a variety of issues including user behavior. The acid test for Vista will be its ability to resist serious attacks over the longer term, something it has so far managed to do. However, the figures do suggest that malware writers are mastering the OS, a possible sign of trouble to come
PC Tools has publicized details of some of the malware types it has found on Vista systems during its scans, including three pages of variants based on Trojan.Agent, a few of which were described as serious.
At time of writing, Microsoft had not responded to PC Tools' allegations.
According to analysis from the Australian company's ThreatFire user base, 58,000 PCs running Vista were compromised by at least one piece of malware over the six months to May 2008, equivalent to 27 percent of all Vista machines probed. Vista made up 12.6 percent, or 190,692, of the 1,513,502 machines running Windows in the user base.
In total, Vista suffered 121,380 instances of malware from its 190,000 user base, a rate of malware detection per system is proportionally lower than that of XP, which saw 1,319,144 malware infections from a user base of 1,297,828 machines, but it indicates a problem that is worse than Microsoft has been admitting to.
Only a week ago, PC Tools revealed that Vista was as likely to be hit with software vulnerabilities as Windows 2000, a claim that was denied by a Microsoft staffer in a blog.
The problem with the figures given in all cases is that it is still hard to make direct - and therefore meaningful - comparisons. As PC Tools makes clear, that malware was detected did not mean harm had been done, simply that Vista's own security had in some way been circumvented to the degree that its ThreatFire tool stepped in.
"It is important to highlight that all systems used in the research pool were at the very least running PC Tool's ThreatFire and that because the technology is behavioral-based, the data refers to threats that actually executed and triggered our behavioral detection on the client machine", said PC Tools' CEO, Simon Clausen, before aiming a kick at Microsoft's own security software.
"Furthermore, in response to alternative research from Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool, PC Tools highlights that the MSRT is not a comprehensive anti-virus scanner, but a malware removal tool for a limited range of "specific, prevalent malicious software."
An obvious objection to this is that any operating system will suffer a degree of malware compromise, which could be traced back to a variety of issues including user behavior. The acid test for Vista will be its ability to resist serious attacks over the longer term, something it has so far managed to do. However, the figures do suggest that malware writers are mastering the OS, a possible sign of trouble to come
PC Tools has publicized details of some of the malware types it has found on Vista systems during its scans, including three pages of variants based on Trojan.Agent, a few of which were described as serious.
At time of writing, Microsoft had not responded to PC Tools' allegations.
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