Volume 10, Issue 09 Atari Online News, Etc. February 29, 2008 Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2008 All Rights Reserved Atari Online News, Etc. A-ONE Online Magazine Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor Atari Online News, Etc. Staff Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking" Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile" Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips" Rob Mahlert -- Web site Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame" With Contributions by: To subscribe to A-ONE, change e-mail addresses, or unsubscribe, log on to our website at: www.atarinews.org and click on "Subscriptions". OR subscribe to A-ONE by sending a message to: dpj@atarinews.org and your address will be added to the distribution list. To unsubscribe from A-ONE, send the following: Unsubscribe A-ONE Please make sure that you include the same address that you used to subscribe from. To download A-ONE, set your browser bookmarks to one of the following sites: http://people.delphiforums.com/dpj/a-one.htm Now available: http://www.atarinews.org Visit the Atari Advantage Forum on Delphi! http://forums.delphiforums.com/atari/ =~=~=~= A-ONE #1009 01/29/07 ~ New Paradigm: Woomail! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Companies Firing! ~ Pakistan Broke YouTube ~ MS Sued Over Vista! ~ eBay Dispute Over! ~ Harvard and Net Safety ~ Google & HIM Service! ~ Open XML Standard? ~ EU Sets Record Fine! ~ eBay Boycott Nets 13%! ~ Spam Verdict Upheld! -* PayPal: Steer Clear of Safari *- -* FCC Vows To Protect Net Neutrality! *- -* Microsoft Mail Prepares for Yahoo Takeover *- =~=~=~= ->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!" """""""""""""""""""""""""" Happy Leap Year folks! Just what we need, an additional day on the calendar, in the middle of winter! Have I mentioned that I'm really fed up with this winter? Another snow storm is heading this way as I'm writing this, and it's going to last all night. I'm really not in the mood to clean up more of this white stuff. However, I am ready to get out on a nice green golf course, where the only thing white is the golf ball! Some fairly good news to report this week. I've never been a big fan of red tape, but I have to admit that my insurance company expedited our two recent claims and they've been finalized. We received checks for the damage settlements this past week. While these settlements won't do much to put us into a higher tax bracket, they will help out to take care of a few bills! So, in one of those rare moments of a lack of something to say, I'll keep an eye out for signs of snow while you can relax and take in this week's issue! Until next time... =~=~=~= PEOPLE ARE TALKING compiled by Joe Mirando joe@atarinews.org Hidi ho friends and neighbors. Another week has come and gone, and I find myself looking again at the posts to the NewsGroup and wondering if there'll be enough to make a decent column. It's going to be close, but we're going to give it a try. Those of you who stop by these environs on occasion may remember that I like to reminisce about 'the good old days' and compare what was with what is. Like the fact that, when I wanted to upgrade my 1040STE's RAM (that's when they went to using SIMMS instead of chips soldered to the motherboard), 1 meg SIMMS were somewhere around $100.00 a piece, if I remember correctly. While talking to Jim Allen of FaSTech about the possibilities of going past the 4 MEG limit after modifying the OS and all that other stuff. I remember Jim lamenting that 4 Megabyte SIMMS were outrageously expensive (around $500 each, I think), and that, while prices would, of course, drop, they would never drop to the point where the average user would be able to justify 16 megabytes of RAM. The first hard drive I bought for my ST was a Supra. The case was the size of a shoebox, and the drive inside was a 5.25" half-height drive that held a whopping 60 megabytes. I ordered it from my local Atari dealer (a good friend of mine), and with my store discount, it still cost me almost $600.00. Six hundred bucks for a sixty megabytes of storage. Imagine that. Ten dollars per meg. Well, last week I bought myself a little MP3 player. It's a little smaller than a box of wooden stick matches (the small boxes that are meant to go into your pocket, not the boxes your grandmother used to keep on the kitchen stove)... actually, I guess it's about the size of two books of matches. Yeah, that's about right. Well, anyway, it cost me about sixty bucks. Aside from being small, it holds TWO GIGABYTES of stuff. You don't even have to use it for MP3s... you can just as easily load it up with software and/or data files to transfer between machines (as long as they have USB ports). So, whereas that first shoe-box-sized hard drive worked out to costing about ten bucks per megabyte, this new little MP3 player works out to about THREE CENTS per meg. Wait, let me re-do the math on that... sixty bucks divided by two thousand megabytes... yep, three damned cents per megabyte... $0.03/1024 kbytes. It's also faster than the old hard drive, more portable, and draws a heck of a lot less power. If it wasn't for the fact that everything seems to take up more space these days than it did back then, it'd be even more incredible. Back when I bought that 60 Meg Supra box, my dealer told me that I was crazy... that no one was ever going to use up 60 megabytes of hard drive space. These days, it's not tough at all to take up huge amounts of space, is it? Movies on DVD routinely take up nine gigabytes, MP3s take up multi-megabytes each, high-rez picture files can take up megabytes upon megabytes too. So I guess you've got to kind of balance not only the size and cost per megabyte, but what you routinely do with that space. Heck, maybe just to prove a point (but exactly what that point would be, I don't know) I'll do a little bit of work and load that MP3 player up with one of the ST emulators configured with lots of virtual RAM, a bunch of virtual drives with lots of storage space each, and lots of software. I wouldn't be at all surprised if I was able to fit every piece of software I'd ever bought for my ST computers (and an 8-bit emulator or two to boot) without taxing the space constraints of the player. Well, while I'm figuring out exactly what I want to do with all that space, let's take a look at the news, hints, tips and info available from the UseNet. From the comp.sys.atari.st NewsGroup ==================================== 'Phantomm' asks about SCSI device order: "I am getting ready to setup a Falcon and have a question about the correct order of SCSI Devices for proper operation. I will have 2-3 SCSI Hard Drives, 1 maybe 2 SCSI CDRW drives, 1 SCSI CDROM, and 1 SCSI Flatbed Color Scanner. What order should I have these installed for proper operation of each item? I will be using, HD Driver and or Cecile. Also, I have a SCSI CDROM CD changer that I may use if possible, Does HD Driver and Cecile support CD Changers? If so, I guess each CD would require its own Drive Letter? Are there any other special settings for CD changers to work properly?" Edward Baiz tells Phantomm: "When I had the Hades060 I used specific order for my SCSI devices. When the Hades went bye-bye, I hook up the SCSI devices to my Falcon and used the same order and it worked fine. I am not sure if there is any real specific order, but here is mine: Scanner (ID 2), Jaz drive (ID 5) and Sony CD-RW drive (ID 6)." Dr. Uwe Seimet, author of HD Driver, adds: "The order of devices should not matter. Usually the hard disk drives get the lowest SCSI IDs. HDDRIVER does support CD changers, but it is also required that your CD-ROM drivers supports the CDROM CD changer. Ensure that HDDRIVER's SCSI initiator identification (please refer to the manual for details) is switched on. The Falcon should have SCSI ID 7." Greg Goodwin adds his thoughts: "In theory, it [the device order] shouldn't matter. In reality, some drives are more forgiving of being in the middle of the chain than others. Some trial and error may be in order. Of course, start with the first and last drive terminated (although rarely even that needs changing)." Jo Even Skarstein adds: "Don't terminate the first drive. The first device on the SCSI bus is the Falcon itself, and it's already terminated (unless you have an internal C-Lab SCSI connector). You should only terminate the last device on the bus." Phantomm tells everyone: "Thanks everyone for the info, In the past I have always had SCSI hard drives connected first then added on as I got the other devices. I've had a small problem in the past with one SCSI hard drive that had to be the second drive in the chain or it would not be seen. Most problems I've run into had to do with having good cables and proper termination. The hardware and cables I'm using on this future setup is good stuff, hopefully it will go well, I've had most of my hardware in storage and can't wait to start using the Falcon for Net and Graphics stuff again. I've found nothing so far that really does what my last Falcon setup did. Nothing I can really afford anyway." Jo Even Skarstein asks about a keymap for the Hades: "I've written a small GEM utility to edit AKP-style keyboard maps as used in TOS 5 and FreeMiNT. Support for Atari keyboards is finished, and I've also made an on-screen keyboard reflecting the physical layout of the PC keyboards typically used on Hades and Milan. In order to support this on the Hades I need a map/overview of scancodes. Does anybody know if such a thing exists?" Lonny Pursell tells Jo Even: "Sounds like a handy tool, I remember doing this by hand in devpac with a lot of trial and error. Is this what you are after? " Jo Even replies: "I did this in Devpac as well for the Milan, but then I started using Aranym on various laptops with various keyboards and needed a proper tool for this. Of course, I could have hand-crafted lots of keyboard tables in the time it's taken me to make this tool, but that would have been a lot less fun. That is a map of IBM scancodes, what I need is a map of which Atari scancode is assigned to which key. On my Milan I did this by adding a printf("scancode %d\n", event.ks) in the evnt_multi-loop for this edit-tool and taking notes as I pressed each key. As I don't have a Hades I can't use this method for the Hades keyboard - unless someone with a Hades would do it for me..." Peter West adds: "Don't know if it will help, but there is a 'Show Scancode' KEYCODE.CPX from Mark Baines that runs on Ataris (and emulators?) and gives scancode as well as ASCII code for each key. If you can't find it, I can mail it to you." Jo Even replies: "I already have such a tool (in fact I wasn't aware of the existence of this CPX so I made my own tool...), but that wouldn't help me on the Hades because I don't own such a machine. Anyway, Lonny has offered to help me on this, so it looks like the problem is solved." 'Phantomm' now asks about a graphics program: "Years ago I remember a program for the ST/E and or Falcon that allowed you to view many different pictures/graphic files from different computer platforms including the Atari 8-bit machines. I think it also allowed you to convert them to some of the Atari 16 bit picture/graphics formats as well. I can't recall the name of the program, and there may have been more than one program that does this. Anyhow I am looking for a ST/e-Falcon program(s) that allows viewing and converting of Atari 8-bit picture and graphics files. Also, a program or two that will allow the playing and converting of Atari 8-bit sound/music files on a ST/e-Falcon." Mark Bedingfield jumps in and offers: "Gemview or Imagecopy? Nice to see you around again too mate!" Well folks, that's it for this week. Tune in again next week, same time, same station, and be ready to listen to what they're saying when... PEOPLE ARE TALKING =~=~=~= ->In This Week's Gaming Section - New Controller Reads Your Thoughts! """"""""""""""""""""""""""""" 'Patapon' A Must for PSP'ers! =~=~=~= ->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News! """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" New Game Controller Reads Your Thoughts and Acts Thinking is now doing with this week's presentation of the first brain-driven game controller. The American-Australian company Emotiv Systems demonstrated the EPOC "neuroheadset" at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Looking like the shell of a high-tech bicycle helmet, the device reads the user's thoughts for such basic commands as "drop," "push," "pull" or "rotate" and wirelessly translates them into those actions on the screen. The headset reads the mind's signals from 16 sensor points and a gyroscope orients the device to match the user's orientation. Based on noninvasive electroencephalography (EEG), which reads neuron activity in the brain, the device can also sense expressions. More than 30 expressions, such as laughing, smiling or winking, can reportedly be picked up from the electrical activity and transmitted. The company said the headset could allow a user to communicate expressions to avatars in an environment such as Second Life. Emotiv President Tan Lee told reporters that the device "allows the user to manipulate a game or virtual environment naturally and intuitively." The EPOC is expected to be available later this year for just under $300. Emotiv is also reportedly working with IBM to apply this computer interface to other applications beyond making an avatar cry or a virtual machine gun fire. The headset will come bundled with a game designed specifically for it, and the company said it will also be available for game consoles. The company has been working toward the EPOC since it was founded in 2003 by neuroscientist Professor Allan Snyder, chip designer Neil Weste, and technology entrepreneurs Tan Le and Nam Do. The vision was specifically "to introduce the immediacy of thought to the human-machine dialog." Mike Goodman, an analyst with industry research firm Yankee Group, said he saw the device some months ago at a demonstration in his office. Although it "wasn't quite ready for prime time" when he saw it, in part because of the tuning it required, he said it was "by far the coolest thing I have seen in the past year." An engineer put the device on his head and it picked up his emotions, translating them into the expressions of an avatar and pushing and lifting a block on a screen entirely by thinking. At the time, he added, "the learning curve was steep." To think about doing something, you had to act it out so you could train your brain to think about the actions, he said. After a while, Goodman said, you didn't need to act out, just think. "It's too early to tell" what the device's impact could be on game machines or other computer interactions, Goodman said. But if it works as advertised, he predicted it would first be a high-end product for the game market and could have "tremendous applications" in medical, military and other fields. "We're now definitely getting into the Buck Rogers era," Goodman said. Rhythmic 'Patapon' A Must for PSP Owners The PlayStation Portable has found its rhythm in the form of Patapon, a hypnotic adventure and arguably one of the system's best titles to date. You control the Patapons, warriors resembling walking eyeballs. Once rulers of the world, the Patapons seek a return to greatness after falling from grace. Players must guide the Patapons through deserts and other exotic landscapes in search of Earthend. Patapon sports simple yet colorful visuals. For walking eyeballs, the Patapons are quite expressive. They'll jump up and down while shouting after every victory, and furrow their brows at the sight of enemies. The game is best described as part rhythm game, part real-time strategy. Each button on the right face of the PSP serves as a different drum. Playing different commands orders the Patapons to march, attack or defend. When you play a command, the Patapons respond by singing. The longer you keep the song going, the greater your combos. Advance far enough and you'll send the Patapons into a fever, which dramatically improves their abilities on the battlefield. Patapon may feel simple at first, but stringing different beats together boosts the difficulty. During one level, the Patapons must cross a scorching desert. And the only way to survive is by incorporating a rain song during battle. You can only play the rain beat, however, if the Patapons reach fever stage, requiring extra focus in maintaining your rhythm. Not only do addictive beats make Patapon phenomenal. The depth involved in customizing your army is a pleasant surprise. In between battles, your army returns to its home base to celebrate. While in Patapolis, players can create stronger Patapons using an ingredient called Ka-Ching along with other items collected during each level. You can also bolster your forces by upgrading their weapons and armor. The standard Patapons fall into three classes: long-range Yumipon, spear-wielding Yaripon and bruising Tatepon, your first line of offense and defense. Each boasts a robust stat sheet, detailing speed, attack and defensive abilities as well as average health. If the intricacies prove to be overwhelming, you can always select optimize and let the game automatically maximize your army's strengths. Patapon is an absolute must-have if you're a PSP owner. Mesmerizing beats, alluring visuals and a palatable $19.99 price tag produce a powerful sound too tough to ignore. =~=~=~= A-ONE's Headline News The Latest in Computer Technology News Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson FCC: We'll Protect Web Neutrality A top U.S. regulator Monday said the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is ready to stop broadband providers from interfering with users' access, while a leading Internet service provider denied accusations it discriminates against users. "I think it's important to understand that the commission is ready, willing and able to step in if necessary to correct any (unreasonable) practices that are ongoing today," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said at a hearing on Internet practices. Comcast, the second-largest U.S. Internet service provider with more than 13 million subscribers, denies impairing some applications and reiterated that it merely manages the system for the good of all users. "We don't block any Web sites or online applications, including (file sharing)," said David Cohen, Comcast's executive vice president. The dispute over so-called "network neutrality" pits open-Internet advocates against some service providers such as Comcast, who say they need to take reasonable steps to manage traffic on their networks. The FCC has been looking into complaints by consumer groups that Comcast has blocked some file-sharing services which are used to distribute large digital media files such as TV shows and movies. The hearing, which included an executive with Verizon Communications and professors from some of America's top law schools, is part of a broader FCC inquiry into what network management techniques are reasonable. Cohen said Comcast manages some peer-to-peer file uploads at some times of the day. But he said the technique is designed to have a minimal impact on users. "Don't let the rhetoric of some of the critics scare you. There's nothing wrong with network management. In fact, every broadband network is managed, and every network must be managed or no network would function," Cohen said. Cohen said such management is imperative because studies show the soaring demand for bandwidth could soon outstrip network capacity. "Neither we nor any other network provider can build our way out of this problem," he said. Martin acknowledged that broadband network operators have a legitimate need to manage the data moving over their networks. But he said that "does not mean that they can arbitrarily block access to particular applications or services." Timothy Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, said "whatever reasonable network management is, it should not include blocking of lawful applications." Martin called for "transparency" in the way the companies manage their networks, and in their prices and services. The network neutrality issue also has attracted the attention of lawmakers in Congress, who are weighing a net-neutrality bill introduced in the U.S. House last week. Critics of such an approach have argued that imposing network neutrality would hinder development of the Internet by creating uncertainty for investors and service providers. Microsoft Email Prepares Workers for Yahoo Takeover A Microsoft executive on Friday sent workers an upbeat email outlining a vision of how the software giant expects to take over Yahoo and merge the companies' cultures and resources. Yahoo spurned Microsoft's 44.6-billion-dollar bid for the veteran Internet firm on February 11. Microsoft is reportedly planning a hostile takeover bid if Yahoo's board of directors doesn't change its mind. In a message to employees, Microsoft platform and services division president Kevin Johnson shared "a perspective of the process going forward." "We look forward to a constructive dialogue with Yahoo's board, management, shareholders, and employees on the value of this combination and its strategic and financial merits," Johnson wrote. "Once Yahoo and Microsoft agree on a transaction, we can begin the integration planning process in parallel with the regulatory review." If Yahoo capitulates, the transaction would likely close in the second half of this year, according to Johnson. The email is a tactic from the playbook of Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang, whose messages urging employees and stock holders to have faith in the company and its board have gone public after being filed with US regulators. Johnson's missive comes on the same day that pension funds for Detroit city workers filed a civil suit charging Yahoo with betraying its duty to stockholders by resisting Microsoft's advances. In an effort to avoid being gobbled up by Microsoft, the struggling Internet firm has reportedly explored alliances with Google, Time Warner-owned America On Line, and social networking website MySpace owned by News Corp. Some Yahoo stock holders in California are suing the firm for not accepting an offer Microsoft made to buy Yahoo early last year, when the stock price was higher. Microsoft is currently offering a combination cash and stock deal initially valued at 31 dollars per share but which fluctuates with the price of Microsoft shares. Yahoo's board is said to believe the company is worth at least 40 dollars per share, a price that would drive up Microsoft's cost by more than 10 billion dollars. Microsoft is adamant its offer is "full and fair" and argues that the merger would create a needed and "compelling" alternative in an online search and advertising market ruled by Google. "I have personally met with top executives of the major media companies, and I know there is a desire for more competition in search and online advertising," Johnson wrote. Google has condemned Microsoft's takeover bid as an attack on the freedom of the Internet. While not promising that a merger would not result in the elimination of redundant jobs, Johnson said Microsoft wants to hold on to top talent and is so large it can absorb people in other parts of its operation. In an effort to keep Yahoo employees from bailing out in the face of a Microsoft takeover, Johnson promised "significant rewards and compensation" will be given to workers at a combined company. Johnson brushed aside speculation that Microsoft's historically stuffy corporate culture would clash with Yahoo's relaxed, playful California style. "We would have an opportunity to bring together the best of both companies," Johnson wrote. "Some aspects of the two cultures will naturally merge quickly and some will remain unique in the near-term and merge more slowly over time." Yahoo would remain in Silicon Valley, where Microsoft has a campus, according to Johnson. Microsoft's headquarters is in Redmond, Washington. Until a deal is cut, Microsoft employees should treat Yahoo workers as rivals, not budding workmates, the email urged. "It's important that Microsoft employees not speculate with Yahoo employees about the proposal or about what a deal would mean for the combined company," Johnson wrote. "Prior to the close of the transaction, we must continue to compete with Yahoo as before." Woomail Wants To Woo You Away from Spam Are you bugged by spam? Plagued by e-mail-borne viruses? Annoyed when an online merchant sells your e-mail address to e-marketers? Worried about the security of your messages? If the answer to some or all of those questions is "Yes," then you might be interested in the new paradigm that John Halloran has to offer. It's called Woomail, and Halloran promises that it will put control over online communications in the hands of users. Woomail is a Web-based e-mail client that's free for noncommercial users. From the perspective of a message sender, the interface is not that different from Gmail. But things get interesting when you send a message to someone outside the Woomail system: The recipient gets an e-mail saying, "I only read secure e-mail" and a link that takes the recipient to a reply page on the Woomail server, so that no part of the communication travels through cyberspace. John Halloran, a Puerto Rico-based precious-metals dealer, created Woomail after struggling with the huge amount of spam his brokers and office staff were dealing with. He said that his goal was to put users in charge of their communications, inbound and outbound. "The problem was that anyone in the world can send you communication from anywhere, and I can't stop them from sending it to my servers," he said. "If I can get them to come to me by typing in a URL or Woo to Woo message, then I can control communications on my server and so I can prevent fraudulent use." (A "Woo to Woo" message is one in which both parties have Woomail accounts.) Sending a message from within the site cannot be done without a challenge-and-response question, putting the kibosh on automated spammers. Halloran thinks the real benefit will be to corporate users. The enterprise version would be the Woomail platform on the company's server without any Woomail brand. The version for smaller businesses would let companies put a form on a Web site that would connect to the Woomail server for delivery. Since the form is not associated with a particular e-mail address, there's no possibility of spam. The enterprise version costs $28,000, while the smaller version is $6.95 per user inbox. Halloran said security is paramount, and every page of the Woomail site uses 256-bit encryption, with each message authenticated and encrypted. Since Woomail includes a collaboration tool, projects would have a secure space to share documents and communicate. Woomail also offers merchant keys that allow a user to assign a specific e-mail address for communication with that vendor. "When an incoming message comes in, the Woomail system would check for that vendor's domain name and check the body of the message to make sure the domain name is listed in there. If it's not, it'll give you an alert and allow you to delete that key," Halloran said. So if you buy from an online vendor and it sells your e-mail address to another company, you can easily revoke that key so future e-mails will be blocked. Those keys can be set to expire in a given amount of time. Halloran hopes big companies see the value of the new model. "The thing that corporations won't be able to resist is that in the enterprise version, I could go to a large company and tell them they're going to be able to control 100 percent of the communications on their server with zero spam and zero virus possibility. You're controlling both ends of the transaction," he said. PayPal: Steer Clear of Apple's Safari If you're using Apple's Safari browser, PayPal has some advice for you: Drop it, at least if you want to avoid online fraud. Safari doesn't make PayPal's list of recommended browsers because it doesn't have two important anti-phishing security features, according to Michael Barrett, PayPal's chief information security officer. "Apple, unfortunately, is lagging behind what they need to do, to protect their customers," Barrett said in an interview. "Our recommendation at this point, to our customers, is use Internet Explorer 7 or 8 when it comes out, or Firefox 2 or Firefox 3, or indeed Opera." Safari is the default browser on Apple's Macintosh computers and the iPhone, but it is also available for the PC. Both Firefox and Opera run on the Mac. Unlike its competitors, Safari has no built-in phishing filter to warn users when they are visiting suspicious Web sites, Barrett said. Another problem is Safari's lack of support for another anti-phishing technology, called Extended Validation (EV) certificates. This is a secure Web browsing technology that turns the address bar green when the browser is visiting a legitimate Web site. When it comes to fighting phishing, "Safari has got nothing in terms of security support, only SSL (Secure Sockets Layer encryption), that's it," he said. Apple representatives weren't immediately available to comment on this story. An emerging technology, EV certificates are already supported in Internet Explorer 7, and they've been used on PayPal's Web site for more than a year now. When IE 7 visits PayPal, the browser's address bar turns green - a sign to users that the site is legitimate. Upcoming versions of Firefox and Opera are expected to support the technology. But EV certificates have their critics. Last year, researchers at Microsoft and Stanford University published a study showing that, without training, people were unlikely to notice the green address-bar notification provided by EV certificates. Still, Barrett says data compiled on PayPal's Web site show that the EV certificates are having an effect. He says IE 7 users are more likely to sign on to PayPal's Web site than users who don't have EV certificate technology, presumably because they're confident that they're visiting a legitimate site. Over the past few months, IE 7 users have been less likely to drop out and abandon the process of signing on to PayPal, he said. "It's a several percentage-point drop in abandonment rates," he said. "That number is... measurably lower for IE 7 users." Opera, IE, and Firefox are "safer, precisely because we think they are safer for the average consumer," he added. "I'd love to say that Safari was a safer browser, but at this point it isn't." Harvard Scholars To Explore Net Safety Leading Internet scholars at Harvard University will convene a yearlong task force to explore how children can avoid unwanted contact and content when using MySpace and other popular online hangouts. The Internet Safety Technical Task Force is the result of an agreement that MySpace reached with all state attorneys general except Texas' in January. Announced Thursday, it will be make up of leading Internet service companies and nonprofit groups, including those focused on children's safety. MySpace, a unit of News Corp., created the task force, named its members and chose Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society to run it, but the group will operate independently, said John Palfrey, Berkman's executive director. Its recommendations will be nonbinding. Although the task force grew out of concerns that attorneys general have about Internet sexual predators who target children on social-networking sites, it will also explore how to keep children safe from online bullies and pornography. Palfrey said the group would consider how technology could bring safety "without causing collateral damage." Procedures for verifying users' ages are expected to be among the topics of discussion. Many experts argue that age-verification technology won't work because kids lack driver's licenses and appear in few databases that are used to check birthdays. Still, law-enforcement officials have been calling for its use. The fears about online predators come despite research, sponsored by the government-funded National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, showing fewer youths receiving sexual solicitations over the Internet as they become smarter about where they hang out and with whom they communicate. The Berkman Center has long been exploring the intersection of technology, policy and culture and recently organized a Federal Communications Commission hearing on allegations of Internet traffic discrimination by Comcast Corp. "The Berkman Center's impressive research on the challenges and opportunities offered by the Internet makes them the ideal leader for the task force," Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer, said in a statement. Tools identified by the task force would be available industrywide, including MySpace's rivals, Nigam said. Palfrey will head the effort with two Berkman scholars: Danah Boyd, a University of California, Berkeley, graduate student who is among the leading researchers on social-networking sites, and Dena Sacco, a former federal prosecutor in child-exploitation cases. Besides MySpace and Berkman, task force members include social-networking sites Facebook and Bebo; Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL; Internet service providers Comcast, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. and child-safety groups such as the missing children's center, WiredSafety.org and Enough is Enough. "This task force is virtually a who's who of the Internet, a powerfully impressive list of players who can achieve real progress in social-networking safety," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement. Palfrey said the group would likely hold four to six public meetings in the Washington, D.C., area, possibly with limited closed sessions to hear from families of victimized children and companies with proprietary information. Quarterly reports will be sent to the attorneys general, with a final, public report expected in about a year. Prolific Spammer's Conviction Upheld A divided Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the nation's first felony conviction for illegal spamming on Friday, ruling that Virginia's anti-spamming law does not violate free-speech rights. Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the world's top 10 spammers in 2003, was convicted of massive distribution of junk e-mail and sentenced to nine years in prison. Almost all 50 states have anti-spamming laws. In the 4-3 ruling, the court rejected Jaynes' claim that the state law violates both the First Amendment and the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. "This is a historic victory in the fight against online crime," state Attorney General Bob McDonnell said in a written statement. "Spam not only clogs e-mail inboxes and destroys productivity; it also defrauds citizens and threatens the online revolution that is so critical to Virginia's economic prosperity." Justice Elizabeth Lacy wrote in a dissent that the law is "unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mail including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution." Jaynes allegedly used aliases and false Internet addresses to bombard Web users with junk e-mails peddling sham products and services. The court's majority said misleading commercial speech is not entitled to First Amendment protection. "Unfortunately, the state that gave birth to the First Amendment has, with this ruling, diminished that freedom for all of us," Jaynes' lawyer, Thomas M. Wolf, said in a written statement. "As three justices pointed out in dissent, the majority's decision will have far reaching consequences. The statute criminalizes sending bulk anonymous e-mail, even for the purpose of petitioning the government or promoting religion." Prosecutors presented evidence of 53,000 illegal e-mails Jaynes sent over three days in July 2003. But authorities believe he was responsible for spewing 10 million e-mails a day in an enterprise that grossed up to $750,000 per month. Jaynes was charged in Virginia because the e-mails went through an AOL server in Loudoun County, where America Online is based. The court rejected Jaynes' claim that Virginia's law violates the interstate commerce clause because it regulates activity outside Virginia. Justice Steven Agee wrote that "the effects of this statute on interstate commerce are incidental and do not impose an undue burden." Online Auction Listings Down 13% in Boycott of eBay The biggest boycott by eBay sellers concludes Monday, capping a week of acrimony after the online-auction site raised fees and changed its feedback policy. Auction listings on eBay.com dropped some 13% since the strike started Feb. 18 to about 13 million items, according to third-party tracking sites such as dealscart.com and medved.net. The boycott, amid slowing growth and intensifying competition from Amazon and Google, could presage a challenging year for John Donahoe, eBay's incoming CEO, say analysts. Like dozens of other boycotts against eBay the past few years, this protest is largely over pricing changes. Though many previous boycotts have fizzled after a few days, the most recent gained more attention through protest-related actions on YouTube and MySpace. "If (eBay's listings total) falls below 12 million, we've made a pretty good impact," said Nancy Baughman, an eBay PowerSeller who deals antiques and collectibles. She is also co-author of a book on online auctions. Jim Griffith, dean of eBay Education, declined to comment on third-party statistics, and said that the site's internal statistics show the boycott "has had no impact on our listings." EBay does not publicly release its listings totals. Fluctuations in eBay's listings can be hard to interpret due to seasonal swings. Complicating matters, eBay ran a one-day promotion Feb. 13 offering steep discounts of fees, which pushed listings up more than 20%. Still, the impact of the boycott is evident, says David Steiner, president of AuctionBytes.com, a publication for online merchants. "The protestors made a loud statement." Donahoe, who becomes eBay's CEO in March, recently announced changes to the fees eBay charges. The cost to list items will be cut 25% to 50%, but the commission that eBay charges for completed sales increased, starting last Wednesday. As of May, sellers will no longer be able to leave negative feedback comments for buyers. "When I heard the changes, I thought it was April Fool's Day," Valerie Lennert, one of the boycott organizers, says, referring to the changes in fees and feedback. She sells doll clothes on eBay. Lennert has spread her message with an anti-eBay video on YouTube. The video has been viewed 140,000 times. The protestors also created a MySpace page. Despite the protest, eBay is not considering altering or postponing its policies, Griffith says. "A lot of deliberation went into these decisions," he says. EU Fines Microsoft Record $1.35 Billion Microsoft was fined a record 899 million euros ($1.35 billion) by the European Commission on Wednesday for using high prices to discourage software competition in the latest sanction in their long-running battle. The executive arm of the European Union said the U.S. software group defied a 2004 order from Brussels to provide the information on reasonable terms. Microsoft has now been fined a total of 1.68 billion euros by the EU for abusing its 95 percent dominance of PC operating systems through Windows. Its latest fine far exceeded the original and was the biggest ever imposed on a company. "Microsoft was the first company in 50 years of EU competition policy that the Commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision," Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement. For years after the decision Microsoft said it was making every effort to comply with the Commission's orders. "Talk is cheap, flouting the rules is expensive," Kroes said. "We don't want talk and promises. We want compliance." Microsoft said in a statement the fines concerned "past issues" and it was now looking to the future. The Commission said in a landmark 2004 ruling, upheld by an EU court last year, that Microsoft had withheld needed interoperability information for "work group server" software. Rival makers of work group servers, which operate printers and sign-ons for small office groups, saw their markets shrivel because Microsoft stopped providing information they needed to hook up to Windows office machines. Even after the 2004 decision and a 497-million euro fine Microsoft dragged its feet, giving incomplete documentation and charging high royalties, the Commission said. "I hope that today's decision closes a dark chapter in Microsoft's record of non-compliance with the Commission's March 2004 decision," Kroes said. The latest decision picks up from where a 280.5 million euro fine for non-compliance left off, covering the period from June 21, 2006 until October 21, 2007. After losing a major court decision in September 2007, Microsoft capitulated. Last week it promised to publish critical information so rival programs worked better with Windows. That came as the company was facing this week's fine and perhaps even more important, two new formal Commission investigations opened in January. "As we demonstrated last week with our new interoperability principles and specific actions to increase the openness of our products, we are focusing on steps that will improve things for the future," Microsoft said on Wednesday. The new Commission investigations relate to the issues of the 2004 case but with different products. The Commission said in 2004 that Microsoft tied its Windows Media Player to Windows. Opera, maker of a Web browser, said Microsoft has done the same with Internet Explorer. The new interoperability question concerns Microsoft Office and the difficulty for documents from rival systems to interoperate with Word and other Office products. Kroes took a wait-and-see attitude about Microsoft's announcement of last week, noting it had promised change on four other occasions without results. "A press release, such as that issued by Microsoft last week on interoperability principles, does not necessarily equal a change in a business practice," she said. EBay Settles 7-Year Dispute Over Patents Online auctioneer eBay settled a seven-year patent dispute Thursday with tech firm MercExchange, ending a legal entanglement that prompted a Supreme Court ruling on intellectual property. EBay says it agreed to buy three MercExchange patents it has been accused of violating. EBay did not disclose financial terms of the settlement. MercExchange sued eBay in 2001, claiming eBay infringed on its patents. A jury ruled in MercExchange's favor in 2003. A judge in December upheld the $30 million judgment, which eBay appealed. The appeal was dropped as part of the settlement, eBay says. EBay says it does not expect the settlement to affect financial results. It reports first-quarter results in April. The settlement comes amid significant changes at eBay. John Donahoe succeeds longtime CEO Meg Whitman on March 31 as the company jousts with market rival Amazon.com. The announcement was made before markets closed. EBay shares dipped 1% to $27.27 Thursday. "It seemed like the right time to put it behind us," Thomas Woolston, MercExchange's founder and inventor, said in a telephone interview. MercExchange claimed in a lawsuit that eBay's "Buy It Now" option, which lets sellers make items available at set prices, infringed on MercExchange patents. The lawsuit led to a Supreme Court ruling in 2006 that judges do not necessarily have to block a technology from being used when a jury finds a patent violation. Suit Against Microsoft Over Vista OK'd A federal judge said Friday that consumers may go ahead with a class action lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. over the way it advertised computers loaded with Windows XP as capable of running the Vista operating system. The lawsuit said Microsoft's labeling of some PCs as "Windows Vista Capable" was misleading because many of those computers were not powerful enough to run all of Vista's features, including the much-touted "Aero" user interface. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman certified the class action suit but whittled down its scope to focus primarily on whether Microsoft's "Vista Capable" labels created artificial demand for computers during the 2006 holiday shopping season, and inflated prices for computers that couldn't be upgraded to the full-featured version of Vista, which was released at the end of January 2007. Neither of the two people who filed the original lawsuit participated in a program Microsoft devised to help people who bought new computers before Vista's launch upgrade later to the new operating system, but they argued nonetheless that people who bought "Vista Capable" computers were harmed because they could only run a basic version of Vista. The judge said if they added a named plaintiff who did take part in Microsoft's "Express Upgrade" program, they could pursue that claim as well. Microsoft said it was reviewing the ruling. YouTube Outage Might Have Been Caused by Pakistan Pakistani Internet service providers may have inadvertently blocked the popular YouTube Web site across the world at the weekend when they restricted local access to the site, a telecommunications official said. YouTube said on Monday that many users around the world could not access the site for about two hours because traffic had been routed according to erroneous Internet protocols. The source of the problem was a network in Pakistan, YouTube said in a statement. Pakistan ordered local Internet service providers to block access to the site because it was running material insulting to Islam, a Pakistani industry official said on Sunday. A government telecommunications official said the initial order to restrict local access might have mistakenly affected users around the world. "The blocking of the Web site within the country might have mistakenly affected its worldwide service, briefly," said the official, who declined to be identified. But there had been no intention to block the site worldwide, he said. Attempts to access YouTube in Islamabad on Sunday were met with a generic error message saying the site was unavailable. A spokesman for the state telecommunications regulator, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, said on Tuesday the order had been lifted after Youtube removed the content deemed insulting to Islam. "YouTube had been asked to remove the link, which they did, and we have subsequently ordered the unblocking of the site," the spokesman said. The authority had earlier justified its order to block access in Pakistan saying it was necessary to avoid unrest in the overwhelming Muslim country of 160 million people. "It has the potential to cause more unrest and possible loss of life and property across the country," the authority said in a statement on Monday, referring to the material. Publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad published in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked widespread anger and deadly protests in several Muslim countries, including Pakistan. Protests have been held in recent weeks in Pakistan after the republication of one of the cartoons. On Tuesday, about 150 students staged a rally in the eastern city of Multan city and burned Danish and U.S. flags to express anger over the reprinting of the cartoon. Pakistan Lifts Curbs on YouTube Pakistan's telecommunications regulator said Tuesday that it had lifted restrictions imposed on YouTube over an anti-Islamic video clip, but rejected blame for a cut in access to the Web site in many countries over the weekend. The authority told Pakistani Internet service providers to restore access to the site on Tuesday afternoon after the removal of a video featuring a Dutch lawmaker who has said he plans to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals. Officials here have described the YouTube clip as "very blasphemous" and warned that it could fan religious fanaticism and hatred of the West in Pakistan, where the government already faces a growing Islamic insurgency. But Pakistan says it did not want to interfere with access to YouTube outside Pakistan. "We are not hackers. Why would we do that?" Shahzada Alam Malik, head of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, told AP Television News. YouTube's wider problem were likely caused by a "malfunction" elsewhere, he said. The lawmaker said his film criticizing the Quran will be completed this week and criticized Pakistan for its moves to block the clip. "It's far from a true democracy," the lawmaker, Geert Wilders, told The Associated Press. "A real democracy must be able to bear some criticism." He said in a telephone interview with that his short film is in the final stages of editing. Telecommunication Authority spokeswoman Nabiha Mahmood said attempts to access the offending clip on Tuesday afternoon brought up only a message explaining that it had been removed on ethical grounds. She said the telecom regulator had posted a complaint through the Web site - a facility open to any registered user - but had not been in contact with the administrators of YouTube.com, which is owned by Google, Inc. The authority wanted to restrict the site only in Pakistan but the move inadvertently cut access for most of the world's Internet users for up to two hours on Sunday, highlighting the vulnerability of the Internet. Spokesman Ricardo Reyes said YouTube was pleased to confirm that the site was again accessible in Pakistan. YouTube said Monday that the cut was caused by a network in Pakistan. Reyes would not comment further on the cause of the global outage, but said the company is continuing to look at ways to prevent recurrences. Todd Underwood, a senior manager at Renesys Corp, a U.S. company that tracks the pathways of the Internet, said a Pakistani telecommunications company complied with the block by directing requests for YouTube videos to a "black hole." The problem was that the company accidentally identified itself to Internet computers as the world's fastest route to YouTube, leading requests from across the Internet to same dead end, Underwood said. "This I would say could be an accident, or could be some technical defect or malfunction," Malik said. "We never wanted to do that and I don't think our technical people have done it." Pakistani officials want to prevent a repeat of the violent anti-Western protests in early 2006 after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad regarded by many Muslims as offensive. The upper house of Pakistan's parliament on Tuesday passed a resolution condemning the reprinting of the cartoons this month in Danish newspapers. On Tuesday, some 300 students rallied at a university in the central city of Multan, carrying banners denouncing Denmark, the United States and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf - the latest in a series of small protests held by Islamic students in Pakistan. While a raft of other videos featuring Wilders would remain visible to Pakistani Internet surfers, Mahmood said the one which was removed had been "totally anti-Quranic ... very blasphemous." She said it promoted Wilders' upcoming movie, but provided no detail of its content. Abdullah Riar, Pakistan's minister for information technology and telecommunications, said authorities worried that Islamic hard-liners would seize on the clip. He said the cause of protecting free speech in Pakistan was better served by preventing confrontation between Muslims and the West than allowing the clip to be shown, despite the publicity generated by the temporary ban. "We are already in the spotlight on the issue of intolerance and extremism and terrorism and this is something that somebody is doing by design to excite and insinuate Islamic sentiments," Riar said. He said the unintended effects were "very unfortunate. We have nothing against the YouTube site itself." Google Unveils Personal Medical Record Service Google Inc has unveiled a plan to help U.S. patients gain control of their medical records and is working with doctors' groups, pharmacies and labs to help them securely share sensitive health data. The long-rumored entry by Google into the highly sensitive field of health information came when Chief Executive Eric Schmidt introduced on Thursday a service it calls Google Health at a health care industry conference in Orlando, Florida. Google said it has signed deals with a range of companies, including medical tester Quest Diagnostics Inc, health insurer Aetna Inc, Walgreens and Walmart Stores Inc pharmacies, as well as several hospitals. Google Health is a password-protected Web service where health records are stored on Google computers. It has a directory of outside medical services that lets users import doctors' records, drug histories and medical test results. Google aims to foster sharing of information between these services, but keep control in patients' hands, allowing them to schedule appointments or refill prescriptions, for example. "We don't know how to suck it out of the brains of doctors, but we know how to suck it out of the computer systems of doctors," Schmidt said in an interview after his speech. A week ago, Google said it was teaming up with leading academic medical researcher Cleveland Clinic to test a data exchange that puts patients in charge of records. Schmidt said it would be a few months before Google Health is offered more widely. For decades progress has been slow converting paper records often scrawled in illegible doctors' script and stored in conflicting filing systems into centrally held digital records. IBM, Oracle Corp and Siemens AG, among many others, have worked on such digitization. Few hospitals and primary care physicians use electronic records, and those that do suffer from conflicting formats. Google's biggest rival, Microsoft Corp, has introduced HealthVault, which gives users control over who sees what. Among start-ups active in the field are Revolution Health, a company backed by former AOL Chairman Steve Case. Such personal health record services are based on the idea that individuals retain control of their data. "The information in your health record is yours and it doesn't get shared with anyone else without your permission," Schmidt said. Electronic record-keeping have been held back by a lack of focus on consumer needs, not vague privacy fears, he said. "Any end-user system has to have portability as its main principle and it has to be 'normal-person' designed, not doctor designed," Schmidt said in the interview. While medical providers are covered by U.S. privacy laws, there is little in the way of established privacy, security and data usage standards for electronic personal health records. Google is prepared to resist fishing expeditions by lawyers seeking to subpoena personal medical records stored on Google Health. Last year, it went to court to defeat an effort by the U.S. Justice Department to request some Google search records. "We've taken a pretty aggressive position in a pro-consumer way in the U.S., but I do want to assure you we are subject to U.S. law," Schmidt said. Google generates virtually all of its revenue from online advertising sales, but has no plans to sell ads on Google Health. Instead, it can make money indirectly when health record users search for other types of medical information. Google, whose none-too-humble corporate mission "is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," sees solving the complex privacy issues around health information as part of this broad undertaking. By tackling medical privacy, Google also stands to benefit in finance and other areas where sensitive data is stored. Over 50 Percent of Companies Fire Workers for E-mail, Net Abuse Think you can get away with using e-mail and the Internet in violation of company policy? Think again. A new survey found that more than a quarter of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail, and one third have fired workers for misusing the Internet on the job. The study, conducted by the American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute, surveyed 304 U.S. companies of all sizes. The vast majority of bosses who fired workers for Internet misuse, 84 percent, said the employee was accessing porn or other inappropriate content. While looking at inappropriate content is an obvious no-no on company time, simply surfing the Web led to a surprising number of firings. As many as 34 percent of managers in the study said they let go of workers for excessive personal use of the Internet, according to the survey. Among managers who fired workers for e-mail misuse, 64 percent did so because the employee violated company policy and 62 percent said the workers' e-mail contained inappropriate or offensive language. More than a quarter of bosses said they fired workers for excessive personal use of e-mail and 22 percent said their workers were fired for breaching confidentiality rules in e-mail. Companies are worried about the inappropriate use of the Internet, and so 66 percent of those in the study said they monitor Internet connections. As many as 65 percent of them use software to block inappropriate Web sites. Eighteen percent of the companies block URLs to prevent workers from visiting external blogs. Companies use different methods to monitor workers' computers, with 45 percent of those participating in the survey tracking content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard. An additional 43 percent store and review computer files. Twelve percent monitor blogs to track content about the company, and 10 percent monitor social-networking sites. Companies are keen to track employee e-mail and Internet behavior in part due to legal fears. According to research done by the AMA and ePolicy in 2006, 24 percent of companies in the study had e-mail subpoenaed by courts, and another 15 percent have faced lawsuits based on employee e-mails. The researchers found that even though only two states require companies to notify their workers that they're monitoring them, most tell employees of their monitoring activities. Of the companies that monitor workers in the survey, 83 percent said they tell employees that they are monitoring content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard. As many as 84 percent tell employees that they review computer activity, and 71 percent alert workers that they monitor their e-mails. Microsoft Gets Another Shot At Open XML Standard Microsoft Corp ramped up its fight to have its Office Open XML document format made into an international standard on Monday as delegates from 37 countries met to reconsider the proposal. Their meeting hosted by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in Geneva is meant to help broker consensus after a preliminary vote on the standard failed six months ago. There will be no ballot during the week-long talks, but the 87 national standards bodies who previously voted will have until March 29 to adjust their positions, giving the world's largest software maker another shot at the two-thirds majority it needs for approval. "The ISO/IEC members who voted on the draft in September will have 30 days to change their votes if they wish," said Roger Frost, a spokesman for the Geneva-based agency. Microsoft won only 53 percent support in September. Standardisation of Open XML, which is the default file-saving format in Microsoft Office 2007, would allow other companies to build products using the file format and simplify file exchange between different software suites. Opponents of the proposed ISO/IEC standard DIS 29500 argue there is no need for a rival to the widely used Open Document Format (ODF) that is already an international standard. They say that the Microsoft product's 6,000 pages of code, compared with ODF's 860 pages, make it artificially complicated and untranslatable. The productivity software suite OpenOffice uses ODF, which is supported by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Sun Microsystems Inc. "Microsoft could easily provide full support for ODF," said Rishab Ghosh, senior researcher at the United Nations University in Maastricht. Ghosh said Microsoft's drive for a competing standard was part of its broader strategy to encourage consumers to use only Microsoft products, as has been alleged in anti-trust cases in Europe and elsewhere. "Because their software is used by so many people, you don't switch to anyone else's software because you are worried that your files are going to be lost," he told Reuters by telephone. "If you can save by default in ODF using a Microsoft product, that means your documents will be easily readable by users of a competing software. And when your documents are easily readable by others, maybe you can consider switching to a different software," he said. Microsoft says multiple standards are normal in software and other industries, that competition makes for better products, and that its format has higher specifications and is more useful than ODF. The company has collaborated with Novell to develop a tool to translate Open XML documents into ODF and vice versa, though critics believe the tool cannot provide a complete translation due to the complexity of the Microsoft product. XML, short for Extensible Markup Language, is a standard for describing data in a way that allows it to be shared across various systems and applications. Microsoft has handed over control of Open XML to the standards-making body Ecma, which would make it available even in the event of its demise. Delegates submitted about 4,200 suggested modifications to the Microsoft documents in the lead-up to last year's ballot. Those have been whittled down to 1,100 comments for consideration during this week's meeting, the ISO said. =~=~=~= Atari Online News, Etc. is a weekly publication covering the entire Atari community. 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