News Common PC Linux Mac Commodore CUCUG
The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, July 19th, at 7:00 pm, at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The Linux SIG convenes, of course, 45 minutes earlier, at 6:15 pm. Directions to the FBC-CS are at the end of this newsletter.
The July 19 gathering will be one of our combined meetings. We will be treated to our own Mr. Gadget, Emil Cobb, showing us his new iPhone. Following will be Jon Bjerke showing Windows Home Server.
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We'd like to welcome back a former member of our group, joining us in the last month, Ken Walker and renewing member David Stevens.
We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Run across an interesting item or tidbit on the net? Just send the link to the editor. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.
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by Kevin Hisel
As many of you know, Insight Communications will be leaving the Champaign-Urbana area later this year. The media services once offered by Insight in this area will be taken over by Comcast, the largest cable-TV company in the US. Many people are concerned because Insight has been a pretty decent cable company and little is known about Comcast in our area.
CUCUGers are especially interested in the company's high-speed Internet offerings. An really quite informative overview of Comcast's high speed Internet (HSI) service is now available on the BroadbandReports.com web site. Here is the link to the article:
<http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Product-Spotlight-Comcast-HSI-85490>
Basically, they say that Comcast has somewhat mediocre customer service but a decent broadband product with quite a few choices. But hang on to your wallet. Comcast customers judge Comcast as one of the more high-priced providers. Chances are (unless they "grandfather" Insight's current customers in), if you are an Insight HSI customer, your Internet speeds will go down and your costs will go up when you switch to Comcast. The good news is that if you don't like Comcast HSI, there will be even more competition for your Internet dollars in the area by the time Comcast comes in.
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Published: 12th July 2007 11:07 CET
URL: <http://www.thelocal.se/7869/20070712>
A 75 year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been thrust into the IT history books - with the world's fastest internet connection.
Sigbritt Lšthberg's home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed.
But Sigbritt, who had never had a computer until now, is no ordinary 75 year old. She is the mother of Swedish internet legend Peter Lšthberg who, along with Karlstad StadsnŠt, the local council's network arm, has arranged the connection.
"This is more than just a demonstration," said network boss Hafsteinn Jonsson.
"As a network owner we're trying to persuade internet operators to invest in faster connections. And Peter Lšthberg wanted to show how you can build a low price, high capacity line over long distances," he told The Local.
Sigbritt will now be able to enjoy 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously. Or, if there is nothing worth watching there, she will be able to download a full high definition DVD in just two seconds.
The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders.
According to Karlstad StadsnŠt the distance is, in theory, unlimited - there is no data loss as long as the fibre is in place.
"I want to show that there are other methods than the old fashioned ways such as copper wires and radio, which lack the possibilities that fibre has," said Peter Lšthberg, who now works at Cisco.
Cisco contributed to the project but the point, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, is that fibre technology makes such high speed connections technically and commercially viable.
"The most difficult part of the whole project was installing Windows on Sigbritt's PC," said Jonsson.
The Local (news@thelocal.se/08 656 6518)
[Editor's Note: So, the next time Insight asks if "You're a ten" or Comcast tries to back your speed down, you might mention Sigbritt Lšthberg.]
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POSTED: 2:15 pm CDT June 30, 2007
UPDATED: 2:27 pm CDT June 30, 2007
<http://www.nbc5.com/news/13601019/detail.html>
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed a law Saturday that advocates hope will make Illinois a national leader in opening cable television markets to competition.
Under the law, new cable companies can enter the state market without negotiating separate franchise agreements with each city and town. The law clears the way for AT&T and Verizon to compete with Comcast and Insight Communications for consumers' phone, Internet and cable needs.
A statewide franchising system will replace local service agreements.
"Under this new law, consumers in Illinois will now have more providers to choose from for cable TV service, and cable companies will be required to provide more reliable and on-time service," Gov. Blagojevich said in a statement.
Some mayors had warned that stripping them of franchising power could jeopardize customer service. But supporters say the law addresses that concern with several consumer protections, requiring companies to provide prompt installation and written notice on rate increases.
According to the law, companies also must maintain toll-free customer service lines and answer 90 percent of calls within 30 seconds; cable installation must be done within seven days and outages must be repaired within 48 hours.
The law provides among the strongest consumer quality standards in the nation, said Sen. James Clayborne, D-Belleville, in the statement issued by the governor's office. Clayborne sponsored the bill with Rep. James Brosnahan (D-Oak Lawn).
Many provisions of the law go into effect immediately, with service quality standards for existing cable companies starting on Jan. 1, 2008.
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Written and produced by John Anderson (mediaminutes@freepress.net)
Audio: <http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/mm071307.mp3>
Text: <http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/mm071307.pdf >
Major phone and cable companies continue their push for statewide video franchising regulation. Moves to consolidate these negotiations at a statewide level not only diminish the power of local communities to respond to and correct service problems, but they reduce the leverage they have over phone and cable companies to support public access and other local programming channels. So far, some 15 states have approved so-called "streamlined" video franchise laws - of those 15, a dozen reside in the 22-state service area of AT&T, which has been one of the most prolific lobbyists on the issue. Not all states are buckling under the political onslaught, though - at least four this year have tabled industry-sponsored bills.
In New Jersey, where a statewide video-franchising law went into effect last year, people who've switched from their old cable TV provider to a new service provided by Verizon are finding themselves without access to public, educational, and governmental access [PEG] channels. Verizon has promised to provide such access, as required by state law, but claims that technical issues regarding the connectivity between its fiber-optic network and the cable system have delayed the carriage of PEG channels, which should be fixed by sometime this fall. The excuse does not explain, however, why this problem only seems to affect those channels devoted to community media.
Getting information out of the federal government was supposed to get easier in recent years, but new reports suggest that the opposite is the case. In late 2005 President Bush issued a directive ordering all executive agencies to clear their growing backlogs of Freedom of Information Act requests. But a study from the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government says nothing has changed; in fact, many agencies are cutting staff that deal with FOIA requests. They're also making it more expensive for journalists and ordinary citizens to file such petitions, and are blanket-rejecting more FOIA requests than ever before.
In addition, many agencies are in violation of a law passed 10 years ago that was designed to make government more electronically-transparent. Analysis by the National Security Archive finds that only one in five federal agencies post all the records they're required to on their web sites, as required by the 1997 E-FOIA law. Six percent are in compliance with the law's requirement to post the full guidelines for filing a successful Freedom of Information Act request. And three-quarters of all federal agencies don't even have an online FOIA submission form. The most egregious offenders can be found in the military and the Department of Homeland Security, while NASA and the Department of Education are the most E-FOIA friendly.
It was less than ten years ago that the U.S. Justice Department was hot on the heels of Microsoft, claiming the company was using its dominance in the personal computer operating system market to restrict competition around a variety of software applications. The company and government reached a settlement in the antitrust case in 2001, a part which required Microsoft to promise not to engineer its products in such a way as to degrade the performance of third-party applications.
Earlier this year, however, Google complained to federal and state justice departments that Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system is designed in such a way as to slow down the use of Google search tools, ostensibly in an attempt to drive Windows users to Microsoft's own search products and services. But a Department of Justice memo has dismissed this concern and instead signals that the government will not intervene to set things right. The assistant attorney general who wrote the controversial memo used to work at a law firm which represented Microsoft in several antitrust cases, though a Justice Department spokesperson denied that he ever did legal work directly for Microsoft while in private practice.
In addition, the federal government is defending Microsoft against European Union allegations that the company still leverages its operating system market power in an anti- competitive manner; the delegation overseeing this diplomatic discourse is led by a former Microsoft lobbyist, who has reportedly recused himself from the discussions.
The United Surveillance of America is beginning to expand beyond its borders. Although a large portion of international phone and most Internet traffic is shunted through switching centers in the United States, federal law enforcement agencies are not satisfied with the expanded access they've been granted to monitor all that traffic with tools like warrantless wiretapping and the installation of massive surveillance nodes directly into major Internet backbone facilities. Now, the United States government is helping to pay for a new multi-million dollar, quote, "Communications Intercept System," endquote, designed to monitor Mexican cell-phone traffic. Mexico's president says the cooperative effort is for the most part devoted to his country's war on drugs, but the implication is that any intelligence gathered as part of the system will be made freely available to U.S. national security authorities as well.
Related Links:
State Video Franchise Push Grows
Big Hang Up: Verizon Fails to Offer Users Local Access
Bush Administration FOIA Report Card Hits New Low
Freedom of Information? Uncle Sam, Get It Right!
National Security Archive: Agencies Violate Law on Online Information
Microsoft Finds Legal Defender in Justice Department
Room 641A
Mexico to Boost Tapping of Phones and E-Mail with U.S. Aid
[Editor's Note: The July 13th edition of Media Minutes is the last to be done by John Anderson. I would personally like to thank him for his incredible work and the kindness he has extended to me. He will be deeply missed. All the best in your future endeavors, John.]
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John E. Dunn, Techworld/Thu Jul 5, 11:00 AM ET/
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070705/tc_pcworld/134174;_ylt=AoftOt.zNk_GVImlWjv1vIwE1vAI>
E-mail worms, not long ago the scourge of the Internet, have declined sharply in 2007, a security company has revealed.
According to UTM security vendor Fortinet, the incidence of mass-mailing worms has declined by 5 percent each month since the start of the year, putting the once-feared worm well below other types of attack in terms of volume.
The figures come from the company's The State of Malware report for June 2007. Viruses, spyware and software exploits have remained roughly stable in volume throughout the same period, while Trojans have been climbing since February to represent the number one threat.
Much less common mobile, IM, Linux, and non-mailed Win32 worms have all shown marked declines, albeit from relatively low levels.
The company offers a variety of explanations for the marked decline. Users are now more aware of the need to mistrust e-mailed attachments, while corporates are employing better gateway security to strip e-mails of malicious code. Another possibility is that attackers might be moving from mass-mailing techniques to targeted attacks as a better avenue to profit.
This theory is backed up by separate figures from MessageLabs published earlier this week that uncovered evidence of attacks targeting named individuals in companies. Although rare by their nature, such attacks are reckoned to have a much higher chance of success than generic mass-mailing attacks.
The age of the mass-mailing worms is not about to end, however, and could simply have entered a period during which it will decline to low levels before spiking from time to time. The best recent example of this is the Storm worm of January, which presented a high point against which worm volumes were bound to decline as the year wore on.
The unique danger of worms is their ability to spread automatically in ways that can clog bandwidth before systems can react. Because worm detection systems are now so finely tuned, such malware has to do as much of its damage in possible within the first hour of spread, after which it will be filtered aggressively by security gateways. The worm's future could increasingly be as a form of malevolent political or terrorist protest rather than as a tool of criminal profit.
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Feds say computer users will notice decrease in junk e-mail following arrest
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:45 p.m. CT May 31, 2007
URL: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18955115/>
SEATTLE -- A 27-year-old man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail.
Robert Alan Soloway is accused of using networks of compromised "zombie" computers to send out millions upon millions of spam e-mails.
"He's one of the top 10 spammers in the world," said Tim Cranton, a Microsoft Corp. lawyer who is senior director of the company's Worldwide Internet Safety Programs. "He's a huge problem for our customers. This is a very good day."
(MSNBC.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)
A federal grand jury last week returned a 35-count indictment against Soloway charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.
Soloway pleaded not guilty Wednesday afternoon to all charges after a judge determined that - even with four bank accounts seized by the government - he was sufficiently well off to pay for his own lawyer.
He has been living in a ritzy apartment and drives an expensive Mercedes convertible, said prosecutor Kathryn Warma. Prosecutors are seeking to have him forfeit $773,000 they say he made from his business, Newport Internet Marketing Corp.
A public defender who represented him for Wednesday's hearing declined to comment.
Prosecutors say Soloway used computers infected with malicious code to send out millions of junk e-mails since 2003. The computers are called "zombies" because owners typically have no idea their machines have been infected.
He continued his activities even after Microsoft won a $7 million civil judgment against him in 2005 and the operator of a small Internet service provider in Oklahoma won a $10 million judgment, prosecutors said.
U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan said Wednesday that the case is the first in the country in which federal prosecutors have used identity theft statutes to prosecute a spammer for taking over someone else's Internet domain name. Soloway could face decades in prison, though prosecutors said they have not calculated what guideline sentencing range he might face.
The investigation began when the authorities began receiving hundreds of complaints about Soloway, who had been featured on a list of known spammers kept by The Spamhaus Project, an international anti-spam organization.
The Santa Barbara County, Calif., Department of Social Services said it was spending $1,000 a week to fight the spam it was receiving, and other businesses and individuals complained of having their reputations damaged when it appeared spam was originating from their computers.
"This is not just a nuisance. This is way beyond a nuisance," Warma said.
Soloway used the networks of compromised computers to send out unsolicited bulk e-mails urging people to use his Internet marketing company to advertise their products, authorities said.
People who clicked on a link in the e-mail were directed to his Web site. There, Soloway advertised his ability to send out as many as 20 million e-mail advertisements over 15 days for $495, the indictment said.
The Spamhaus Project rejoiced at his arrest.
"Soloway has been a long-term nuisance on the Internet - both in terms of the spam he sent, and the people he duped to use his spam service," organizers wrote on Spamhaus.org.
Soloway remained in federal detention pending a hearing Monday.
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Last Updated
A consumer advocacy group has expressed outrage over Apple Inc.'s battery replacement program for the iPhone, while developers and hackers are trying to figure out ways they could expand the capabilities of the hot new gadget.
The hybrid cellphone, iPod media player and wireless web-browsing device launched in the United States to much fanfare on June 29.
On the same day, the U.S. Foundation for Consumer and Taxpayer Rights fired off a letter to Apple and AT&T Inc., the cellphone's exclusive carrier, complaining that customers were being left in the dark about the procedure and cost of replacing the gadget's battery.
The iPhone's battery is apparently soldered on inside the device and cannot be swapped out by the owner like most other cellphones.
Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Hakes said Thursday the company posted the battery replacement details on its website last Friday after the product went on sale. Users would have to submit their iPhone to Apple for battery service. The service will cost users $79 US, plus $6.95 for shipping, and will take three business days.
The procedure is similar to the one it has for the company's best-selling iPod players, but because some users will not want to live without their cellphones, Apple is also offering a loaner iPhone for $29 while the gadget is under repair.
Harvey Rosenfield, founder of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based consumer watchdog group that wrote the letter last week, contends the iPhone's battery and repair costs should have been clearly disclosed earlier. The company outlined its cellular service rates and many other features of the iPhone in advance of its launch, which drew snaking lines around stores across the country.
"Some of them might be waking up now," Rosenfield said, "wondering who they got in bed with."
Apple did not have an immediate comment on the consumer group's concerns.
Rosenfield said he didn't detect the battery information, which is located under several layers of links on Apple's support website, until earlier this week. Technology blogs also started reporting their discoveries of it this week while one of the questions Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg fielded Thursday from his readers was about what happens when the iPhone battery dies.
"The cellphone industry is notorious for not being consumer-friendly while Apple has a fairly good reputation, so for Apple to stand on a technicality of a hidden disclosure that's going to cost the user as much as 20 per cent of the purchase price I think will prove to be a colossal mistake," Rosenfield said.
The iPhone costs $499 or $599, depending on the model, and requires a minimum two-year, $60-a-month service plan with AT&T.
The consumer and taxpayer organization has gone to court over these kinds of issues in the past. It is embroiled in a pending lawsuit against Cingular, now part of AT&T, over its service termination fees, and is also one of the plaintiffs in a pending lawsuit against Apple over an early model iPod Nano that was allegedly defective because it scratched easily.
In addition, Rosenfield said, replacing the iPhone battery should be free to begin with while the product is under its one-year warranty.
Apple has not disclosed how many iPhones were available at launch, though analysts have speculated the amount was 500,000 or more.
AT&T said the gadget had sold out at most of its stores on the night of the launch while many Apple stores ran out of stock by early this week. Those ordering the iPhone online through Apple's website on Thursday were being promised delivery would be in two to four weeks.
Meanwhile, software developers anxious to find ways they could introduce applications tailored for the iPhone's web browser were preparing to get together in Silicon Valley this weekend at an ad hoc conference called iPhoneDevCamp.
Also, a tech-savvy audience cheered the latest work this week of a hacker known for cracking copy-protection technology and creating workarounds of Apple products.
Jon Lech Johansen, also known as "DVD Jon," posted on his blog Tuesday a method for people to turn on the iPod and Wi-Fi features - but not the cellphone functions - of the iPhone without going through the required activation process and service fees of AT&T.
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The slick ads for Apple's "revolutionary" new iPhone promise to "put the Internet in your pocket." But the only way to get one of these gadgets is to sign on with AT&T -- which limits what you can do and where you can go on the wireless Web.
You don't have to own an iPhone to know how this works: The big mobile phone companies lock their devices so they won't work on other networks, cripple innovative applications, stifle competition in markets and restrict access to their "preferred" content.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Today [Fri, 13 Jul 2007], Free Press is launching FreetheiPhone.org -- a campaign that demands an open, competitive wireless Internet for everyone. Here's a sneak peek of the new Web site.
<http://www.freetheiphone.org/>
Please join us by signing the petition:
<http://action.freepress.net/campaign/iphonepetition/i7xnxsg4ybbwd8e?>
Phone giants make a ton of money by locking people into exclusive deals for the newest phones and levying big fees for early termination. Once you sign up, they force you to use their slower-than-dial-up networks; cripple new features like Wi-Fi, video, music and games; and make you buy content that they control.
They can get away with this because there's not real competition. You should be able to unlock your device and use it on any network. You should be able to choose from many providers, competing for your business with better service, lower prices and new innovations. And you should be able to access all content and services without interference from corporate gatekeepers like AT&T or Verizon.
That's wireless freedom. Politicians in Washington have the power to grant this freedom, but they must hear from us first.
Demand Wireless Freedom. Contact the FCC and Congress.
The FCC is about to auction off a valuable portion of the public airwaves that can carry wireless internet signals through concrete buildings and over mountains. It could connect tens of million of Americans who are now being bypassed by the phone giants:
If we open up these and all other airwaves to new competitors, protect your freedom to go where you want online, and unchain the devices -- not just the iPhone but whatever comes next -- we can create a new kind of mobile Internet in America, one that is truly open and accessible to all.
Be the first to visit FreetheiPhone.org and take action today.
Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press
<www.freepress.net>
<http://action.freepress.net/ct/9dMSTw61Xjy8/>
"Free the iPhone:" Congress Hearing
Deciphering Congress's Upcoming iPhone Hearings
Big News on Congress's iPhone Hearings
[Editor's Note: Ben Scott is from Urbana.]
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Written and produced by John Anderson (mediaminutes@freepress.net)
Audio: <http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/mm070607.mp3>
Text: <http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/mm070607.pdf >
AT&T's drive to wrest control of the Internet takes a new twist. The company has announced a new initiative to combat copyright piracy. It's working with record companies and movie studios to develop technology which will snoop on every packet of data that crosses AT&T's entire network and check to see whether or not it contains pirated information. The implications of this are huge - AT&T directly carries the majority of broadband Internet traffic in the United States, and nearly every piece of Internet traffic transits through a router owned by AT&T somewhere in the process of going from point A to point B. This mass-surveillance operation opens up a host of privacy concerns; it also enables AT&T to selectively block content it deems to be "illegal" with no legal recourse, and with the click of a mouse.
This may very well violate the conditions of the Federal Communications Commission's merger approval of AT&T and BellSouth. Signed late last year, it requires AT&T to adhere to the principle of network neutrality, which prohibits the company from discriminating between various forms of Internet traffic. This mass-surveillance and content-blocking system under development seems to wholly contradict that promise. It is not much of a surprise, though, since AT&T's been playing fast and loose with other merger conditions imposed upon it by the FCC. For example, AT&T is now supposed to offer a bargain-basement tier of broadband Internet access for a mere $10 per month. It has recently begun doing so, but it's marketing this package under the name of a product that costs twice as much. It's hard to find the discount on AT&T's own web site - it's not conveniently listed under the services the company offers, where instead you find prominent links to the $20 plan instead.
Meanwhile, as a part of its television-over-broadband initiatives, AT&T is also quietly relegating public access, educational, and government-sponsored channels to second-class status. For example, in San Antonio, Texas, AT&T requires public access channels to encode their digital program streams at a quality much worse than those afforded commercial, high-definition channels, which makes viewers more likely to flip past them.
A private report from a broadband consultancy firm touts the fact that more than half of all U.S. households subscribes to some sort of broadband internet service. According to the Leichtman Research Group, broadband services account for some 70% of all home Internet access, leading to a national penetration rate of 53%. There's a huge disparity in access involving income: households with annual incomes above $50,000 are nearly twice as likely to subscribe to a broadband connection than are homes where income falls below that figure.
However, an independent survey of more than 40,000 broadband users by PC Magazine finds there is a wide range of satisfaction about what broadband services are available depending on where you live. Even then, PC Magazine's survey considered "excellent" broadband connectivity to be just one-fifth of typical DSL and cable modem speeds, and an even smaller fraction of what other countries consider to be broadband connections.
Meanwhile, the number of people going without land-line telephones continues to grow in the United States. Research published by the Centers for Disease Control finds that some 16% of American homes no longer have land-line phones, and one out of every eight subscribes exclusively to wireless phone service. Less than three percent of the U.S. population does not have access to a telephone at all. Incidentally, the adoption of wireless over landline phone technology still skews toward the young: half of those who exclusively use wireless phones are under the age of 30.
In order to dominate the world of broadband, major phone and cable companies have been traveling to state capitols seeking laws to ban cities, towns, and other community groups from setting up their own broadband network infrastructures. These include everything from fiber-optic systems to wireless mesh networks. Many states now prohibit the establishment of broadband public utilities, and others have severely restricted the conditions under which they can be built and operated.
However, a new bill percolating in Congress would pre-empt these restrictive state laws and restore a fair playing field to public versus private competition in broadband. Virginia representative Rick Boucher says his legislation would not only allow rural communities the freedom to set up networks where the dominant phone and cable companies refuse to, but would allow any community to enter the telecom business to compete with phone and Internet service companies. A recent national survey of U.S. Internet users found that more than one-third would switch from their current private broadband provider to a public broadband utility if the option were available.
Related Links:
ToCAT&T Moves to Take Over the Internet
AT&T Plans to Block Pirated Content
AT&T Soft-Pedals Cheapest DSL
Rep Boucher's Bill Would OK Muni Services
State of the Union: Internet Speeds Across the United States
The Universe According to AT&T's U-Verse
U.S. Internet Users Primed for Municipal Wi-Fi Option
Wireless Substitution: Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, July-December 2006
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Published Wednesday 4th July 2007 01:12 GMT
URL: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/04/att_net_neutrality_study/>
A new study from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Nevada Reno says that net neutrality is a bad idea. Of course, that's what you'd expect it to say. It was paid for by AT&T.
For years, AT&T has called for a "tiered Internet," which would abandon net neutrality in favor of a system where high-bandwidth sites like YouTube are forced to pay higher fees to ISPs like, well, AT&T. Now, the telecoms giant has commissioned a study that supports its own argument. Conducted by researchers at AT&T Labs as well as Rensselaer and Nevada Reno, the study (<http://www.cse.unr.edu/~yuksem/my-papers/iwqos07.pdf>) claims that an internet where all traffic is treated equally would require much more capacity than a tiered infrastructure.
"We wanted to take one piece of the overall debate and approach it quantitatively," said principal investigator Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer. "The study makes it clear that there are substantial additional costs for the extra capacity required to operate networks in which all traffic is treated alike."
Using computer models, the study compares today's internet with a two-tiered setup that gives special treatment to high-bandwidth applications like video games and voice over IP (VoIP). According to the models, a net-neutral approach requires between 60 and 100 per cent more capacity to maintain the same level of performance.
Last December, to gain FCC approval for its merger with BellSouth, AT&T agreed to maintain "a neutral network and neutral routing in its wire-line broadband Internet access service" for at least two years. But the company continues to battle the introduction of net neutrality laws in Congress.
FCC chairman Kevin Martin has said he wants to ensure that consumers have access to all Internet content, but he isn't opposed to some sort of tiered model. "It's crucial to ensure that people are able to recoup some of the cost of their investments," he said last month, appearing via satellite at the annual NXTcomm conference in Chicago (<http://www.theregister.com/2007/06/19/fcc_chairman_broadband_for_all/>). "[Providers] should have the flexibility to offer various tiers of service."
This might involve ISPs charging consumers higher fees for faster service or specialized content. Everyone would still have access to all content - but they'd have to pay extra for it.
Related stories:
ToCFTC sides against Net Neutrality (28 June 2007)
Spluttering UK net neutrality movement gets breath of life (27 June 2007)
FCC chairman says 'broadband for all!' (19 June 2007)
A monkey hanger's guide to Net Neutrality (21 March 2007)
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/21/net_neutrality_a_monkey_hangers_guide/> Google snubs Net Neutrality debate (20 March 2007)
Will Net Neutrality kill Web 2.0? (16 March 2007)
Michael Robertson on VoIP wars and Net Neutrality (2 February 2007)
How AT&T chewed up, and spat out Net Neutrality (10 January 2007)
From TPM Cafe, June 28, 2007
By Art Brodsky
URL: <http://www.freepress.net/news/24380>
URL: <http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jun/28/how_the_ftc_mangled_net_neutrality>
You may have seen some short news stories this morning about a new report issued yesterday by the Federal Trade Commission about Net Neutrality. It was in all the papers, if not in great length.
It's a cinch that all the lobbyists for the telephone and cable companies saw it and are even now spreading it around Capitol Hill because FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras is taking a skeptical view of the issue, just as she did a year ago.
Every once in a while, it's a useful exercise to look under the hood and to see how those facile conclusions in the headlines about the FTC urging caution on Net Neutrality were derived. Just a warning - it's not pretty.
The Federal Trade Commission staff labored mightily to produce a report on Net Neutrality that restated the conclusion Majoras announced last year. In a speech Aug. 21, 2006, she said: "I urge caution in proceeding on the issue." In the report issued June 27, 2007, the staff said, "We advise proceeding with caution," a word that shows up repeatedly.
No one who favors an open, non-discriminatory Internet expected much from this report. However, it was possible to be disappointed just the same. They started with the correct premise that consumers in terms of broadband access "have revealed a strong preference for the current open access to Internet content and applications." They then proceeded to ignore that basic finding for the rest of the 165-page report. Instead, there was no original research on the state of the broadband market. Instead, there were all sorts of justifications about how discriminatory behavior can benefit telephone and cable companies.
The staff did no original research on the state of competition in the broadband market. Then they proceeded to accept the arguments from the telephone industry that competition is on the way in the broadband market, citing the emergence of Wi-FI, and looking to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for data on prices and deployment.
The staff dismissed rather abruptly the one concrete example we have of Net Neutrality language, from the AT&T-BellSouth merger. The report quoted one industry representative (Bob Pepper from Cisco) as saying it would hurt competition and noted that two FCC commissioners called the language irrelevant to the merger. End of discussion.
Buried deep in the report is the flawed analysis that led to the conclusion of caution. For example: "Even assuming discrimination against content or applications providers took place, moreover, there remains the question - also unanswerable in the abstract - whether such discrimination would be harmful, on balance, to consumer welfare." The report then goes on to posit that discrimination "may facilitate product differentiation, such as the provision of Internet access services designed specifically for certain product population segments or other audiences with specialized preferences." Coming from an agency that purports to protect consumers, that logic is astounding.
What would the benefits be? Mostly, the FTC suggests ways that the telephone and cable companies could have new ways to make money from content and applications providers. Or lower-income subscribers could be charged lower prices, subsidized by "prioritization revenues" much ad supported e-mail services now provide free email accounts. Nowhere is there discussion of what the consumer gets out of the deal.
The FTC report does suggest that if the telephone and cable companies somehow prioritize their data flow which "could lead to the intentional or passive degradation of non-prioritized data delivery over broadband networks." The staff also recognizes that data prioritization could "enable exclusive deals for priority that, if combined with inadequate delivery of non-priority data, would hinder the traditional ability of every end user to reach every content and applications provider through a single Internet access agreement."
That sounds reasonable, but what conclusion is reached from those possible conditions? The staff is "unable to determine in the abstract the net effect on consumer welfare of the various forms of data prioritization that may be pursued in the marketplace."
In addition to the dubious discussion of "prioritization," there is an equally dubious discussion of "differentiation." The report makes no distinction between "differentiation" and "discrimination." Once again taking the side of the telecom companies, the FTC staff observed: "Broadband providers that cannot differentiate their products or gain new revenue streams may have reduced incentives to upgrade their infrastructure." The providers, of course, can differentiate between products. They do that now. They shouldn't be allowed to play favorites.
The staff also argued that regulation aimed at guaranteeing a free and open Internet "could actually erect barriers to new content and applications that require higher-quality transmission." The example the staff gives is that a new entrant into streaming video "might prefer to purchase a certain quality of service from broadband providers, rather than invest in server capacity and other resources to provide good service on its own." That example has nothing to do with Net Neutrality and nothing to do with erecting barriers.
As the representatives from telephone and cable companies distributing the FTC report, and their spin, around Capitol Hill and centers of policy analysis, astute observers should take a closer look at the details before endorsing the conclusions. With this kind of twisted analysis, it's no wonder the FTC staff urged caution. Had their examination of the problem taken a more direct path, the conclusions would have been clearer.
ToC
Posted by Marguerite Reardon
July 5, 2007 10:45 AM PDT
URL: <http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9739869-7.html>
The squeaky wheel doesn't always get the grease.
At least not if the squeaky wheel is a Sprint Nextel customer. On June 29, 2007, Sprint sent letters notifying some customers that their service would be canceled by the end of July due to excessive calls to customer service.
"Our records indicate that over the past year, we have received frequent calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information," the letter reads. "While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs."
"Therefore after careful consideration, the decision has been made to terminate your wireless service agreement effective July 30, 2007."
Subscribers who have gotten letters from Sprint terminating their service won't have to pay the early termination fee. Their account balances will also be set to zero. But subscribers will have to sign up with a new wireless provider by July 30 if they want to keep their phone numbers. Otherwise, the numbers won't be available after the Sprint service ends, the letter states.
(You can take a look at one of these letters posted within this discussion stream on a Sprint users' forum.) And click here to see an image of one of the letters.
<http://www.sprintusers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=136518&page=2&pp=15>
<http://news.com.com/2300-1036_3-6195014-1.html>
<http://news.com.com/2300-1036_3-6195014-2.html?tag=ne.gall.pg>
A Sprint spokeswoman acknowledged that a group of letters had been sent out on June 29. She said that only a "small minority" of customers were impacted.
"We have to be able to quickly and efficiently serve customers," said Roni Singleton, a Sprint spokeswoman. "And when we are unable to consistently solve our customers' problems it results in a lot of frustration and longer waits for other customers. So after looking through our records, we were able to determine that there were customers who we could couldn't meet their current needs."
Singleton said it was normal business practice for Sprint to audit customer service interactions. She also said the company has always reserved the right in its terms of use to terminate the contract for whatever reason.
Posting on the Sprint users' message board, one customer who received one of these letters said the calls she made to Sprint were for errors in the company's billing. She also questioned how the company counted the number of calls.
"I absolutely didn't call as much as they say I did, but I did always have the hang up/transfer scenario--even today calling in I was hung up on twice and transferred at least five times," she said in one of her posts. "I mean I DREAD calling in and sitting on hold, why on earth would I do it unless I had to!"
Clearly, Sprint is trying to shed customers who seem to eat up too many resources. But it seems crazy that a company that's already having a hard time keeping subscribers would be willing terminate contracts.
For years, Sprint has had a reputation for poor customer service and poor network coverage, and as a result, the company is suffering. For the first quarter of 2007, it reported a loss of 220,000 post-paid monthly subscribers--customers who pay monthly. This was the third quarter in a row the company had a substantial loss of these types of customers. The company has consistently had one of the worst churn rates in the wireless industry. At the end of the first quarter of 2007, Sprint reported a churn rate of 2.7 percent.
This issue has gotten me wondering about wireless contracts in general. If you are a Sprint customer who recently received one of these letters, or you've received a similar letter from another carrier, please write me at maggie.reardon@cnet.com.
ToC
Written and produced by John Anderson (mediaminutes@freepress.net)
Audio: <http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/mm062907.mp3>
Text: <http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/mm062907.pdf >
The struggle to keep webcasting in business is moving in part to the courts. Ever since the Library of Congress' Copyright Royalty Board ruled earlier this year to impose draconian royalty rates on copyrighted content streamed online, webcasters have been living under the threat of fiscal death when those rates retroactively went into effect later this summer. An appeal to the CRB was dismissed; now several groups with a stake in webcasting, including National Public Radio, Yahoo, America Online, and several independent streamers, have filed a motion in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to have the CRB's rate structure stayed indefinitely.
This as momentum in Congress swings in favor of action toward the imposition of a revised, fairer royalty rate structure on webcasting. Currently the Internet Radio Equality Act has more than 110 sponsors in the House of Representatives and 3 in the Senate. SoundExchange, an entity that would oversee the collection of streaming royalty payments and is mostly funded by the major-label record industry, senses that the political landscape is shifting on the issue and has since expressed a willingness to negotiate on an extension of the current rate structure, which Congress imposed on the industry following a similar crisis five years ago.
At the same time, record labels have begun lobbying Congress to impose the same per-song, per-play royalty rate system for webcasting on broadcast radio, which for decades has enjoyed an exemption from recording royalties and instead pays a much lower yearly fee to music publishing companies directly. The Recording Industry Association of America sees an income stream from such a system amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars per year; the broadcast industry calls such a proposal a, quote, "performance tax."
Qwest, the number-three phone company in the United States, is having a banner year. It ended last year with $600 million in profits and a share price that continues to rise. Who gets the credit for this positive performance? According to the company's board of directors, out of Qwest's 38,000 employees, CEO Dick Notebeart (NOH-tuh-bart) is number one. That's why he made more than $30 million last year in salary, bonuses, stock options and sales, and various perks. This does not include another $17 million in stock options that he received to boot. That makes Notebeart's compensation one thousand six hundred times that of the average Qwest worker - and of every $100 the company made last year, Notebeart himself took more than $4 for himself.
Meanwhile, Qwest has slashed the health care and retirement benefits of its current and former employees, and faces a federal lawsuit for allegedly refusing to pay overtime to customer-service workers. This may be why Mr. Notebeart announced he's getting out while the getting's good: though he hasn't set an official resignation date, he says he'll be ready to leave once the company finds a qualified successor. No word yet on how opulent Notebeart's retirement package will be.
A class-action lawsuit against the nation's major phone companies runs into a dead-end in the U.S. Supreme Court. In a seven-to-two decision, the Court has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that customers were defrauded out of billions of dollars by the major phone companies, including AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest, who colluded with each other in order to carve out service territories that each company could dominate and the rates they would charge for competing service. The Supreme Court said there wasn't enough evidence made available for the lawsuit to proceed; an attorney for consumers who pressed the case says it's disturbing that the high court wouldn't even allow the suit to proceed into the discovery phase, where such evidence is most likely to be uncovered.
There's a suspicious alliance underway between the Knight Foundation, which is well-known for giving grants to support new journalism projects, and Viacom, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world. The Knight Foundation just gave a $700,000 "News Challenge" grant to Viacom-owned MTV to promote the use of cell phones as video cameras by teens during the 2008 presidential elections. The idea is that MTV viewers can record and report upon candidate stops where they live; the clips and reports will be hosted on MTV.com and a select few will actually be aired on the network itself. However, this project does not disclose what data will be collected on cell phone users and whether behavior-profiling techniques will be used on the data to target-market to MTV's phone-reporters. Such is the state of mainstream media that a not-for-profit group has to pay a wildly-profitable media conglomerate to program such public-interest initiatives, when the conglomerate itself makes more money every day than the entire Knight Foundation grant is worth.
Related Links:
ToCArtists and Labels Seek Royalties From Radio
NPR Joins Appeal of Online Music Royalties
Online Radio Royalty Fight Reaches New Pitch
Rescue Internet Radio
Angry Shareholders Confront a Bloated CEO
Qwest CEO Calls It a Day
Supreme Court Rules for Baby Bells
Why Is the Knight Foundation Giving a $700K Grant to Viacom?
Verizon clarifies treatment of POTS, old copper....
06:27PM Monday Jul 09 2007 by Karl
URL: <http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FiOS-Kills-Copper-Or-Does-It-85606>
We've frequently discussed Verizon's treatment of copper when they install fiber-optic cable to a home. Over the weekend the Associated Press penned an article about how Verizon cuts copper connectivity to the home when installing FiOS, which "traps customers" and "hampers rivals." Except so far, there's no actual evidence of such.
<http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/83801>
<http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=3357745>
The piece explains how one Long Island, NY resident, Henry Powderly II, was upset that he wasn't given the option to retain his copper or POTS service.
The only problem? Powderly wasn't actually upset at all, according to his blog.
<http://libiz.blogspot.com/2007/07/associated-press-used-me-dammit.html>
Verizon's John 'CZ' Czwartacki emails us these two retorts to the AP story over at the Verizon policy blog, where the company clarifies its position on "retiring" copper infrastructure and blasts the AP story for being inaccurate.
<http://policyblog.verizon.com/PolicyBlog/Blogs/policyblog/EricRabe9/323/AP-Gets-It-Wrong-Part-II.aspx>
<http://policyblog.verizon.com/PolicyBlog/Blogs/policyblog/CZBlogger1/322/AP-Gets-It-Wrong-Part-I-.aspx>
"We only remove copper if it is in the air, but if buried, we leave the copper in place," says Verizon's Eric Rabe. "Indeed in some places (Long Island) the policy now is to leave the copper drop from a pole too. If a customer asks, we'll leave the copper in place, and if a new resident wants or needs a copper service, we'll provide it without charge."
CLECs have been concerned that Verizon would yank copper and then be uncooperative should a homeowner downgrade back to POTs or a new homeowner wanted DSL -- probably not an unreasonable assumption for those of you familiar with the CLEC/ILEC installation dynamic in the earlier days of DSL.
However, a piece in Light Reading last week cited at least one CLEC that had no problem getting copper reconnected. As for customers, Rabe insists customers are informed several times during installation of what's happening and have multiple chances to intervene on poor old copper's behalf.
<http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=127999>
Related Links:
Definitions:
CLEC
DEFINITION - In the United States, a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) is a telephone company that competes with the already established local telephone business by providing its own network and switching. The term distinguishes new or potential competitors from established local exchange carriers (LECs) and arises from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was intended to promote competition among both long-distance and local phone service providers.
LAST UPDATED: 29 Jun 2007
ILEC
DEFINITION - An ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) is a telephone company in the U.S. that was providing local service when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was enacted. ILECs include the former Bell operating companies (BOCs) which were grouped into holding companies known collectively as the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) when the Bell System was broken up by a 1983 consent decree. ILECs are in contradistinction to CLEC (competitive local exchange carriers).
A "local exchange" is the local "central office" of an LEC. Lines from homes and businesses terminate at a local exchange. Local exchanges connect to other local exchanges within a local access and transport area (LATA) or to interexchange carriers (IXC) such as long-distance carriers AT&T, MCI, and Sprint.
LAST UPDATED: 29 Jun 2007
DSL
DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is a technology for bringing high-bandwidth information to homes and small businesses over ordinary copper telephone lines. For an extended discussion, see <http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213915,00.html>.
POTS
Traditional phone service (sometimes called POTS for "plain old telephone service") connects your home or small business to a telephone company office over copper wires that are wound around each other and called twisted pair. Traditional phone service was created to let you exchange voice information with other phone users and the type of signal used for this kind of transmission is called an analog signal.
ToC
Air Date: Week of July 6, 2007
A new computer program separates fact from opinion in texts. Ian Gray reports.
URL: <http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=07-P13-00027&segmentID=5>
[DRAGNET THEME]
GRAY: He wanted the facts. They were hard to come by ... he got his from shifty-eyed shoeshine boys in dark alleys and dingy bars. His only weakness besides two-timing blondes and a pack of smokes - he wasn't a computer. Now a virtual detective was taking over his beat on the mean streets of America. The new detective in town: a computer program!
[SCIENCE NOTE THEME]
Scientists at Cornell University are designing a computer program that will distinguish opinion from fact. The research hinges on how computers convert human language into computer language. Our words turned into 0s and 1s. The Cornell team will try to teach their computers the difference between subjects, objects and other parts of written language. Their goal is to develop algorithms that recognize key phrases of opinion like "according to" or "it is believed that..."
This type of programming, called information extraction can be used to locate specific types of information from sources like emails, blogs and other online forums. Information extraction is a growing cornerstone of the security and surveillance industry - and the Cornell study is funded by the Department of Homeland Security. But Cornell scientists say that their research is only focusing on online newspaper text. For instance, their algorithms could be used to find out what newspapers around the world are saying about the American occupation in Iraq. They can also find out how much of what online sources are saying is based on factual statements versus statements of opinion. By cross-referencing thousands of texts at once, the computers could even determine whether some media are presenting opinions as though they were facts.
That's this week's note on emerging science. I'm Ian Gray.
[Editor's Note: This story was delivered in a lighthearted, fanciful way, but buried within it is one of those classic double-edged swords of technology. Information extraction is meant to separate fact from opinion, but as we've seen from recent history, that's a slippery slope. Once you "locate" information sources, what ameliorative efforts are going be made? What happens when the "focus" widens from newspapers to "emails, blogs and other online forums?" What focal point? How wide the lens? Is this to be used as a feedback loop to see how effective propaganda efforts are working? Just food for thought.]
ToC
Paul Thurrott <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
WinInfo - InstantDoc #96442
July 2, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/96442/windowspaulthurrott_96442.html>
This one's a little convoluted, but here we go: A company called Phatbits was founded a few years back by a guy from Microsoft. When Phatbits was purchased by Google, that guy went to Google briefly and worked as a senior software engineer. However, after a short time, he became disillusioned and returned to Microsoft. And there, he penned a little missive that debunks a bunch of the feel-good myths about Google. He says that "Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not." For a look at the concerns he raises, check out his amazing blog post:
<http://no2google.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/life-at-google-the-microsoftie-perspective/>
[Editor's Note: Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with all the lawsuits flying between Google and Microsoft?]
ToC
by Paul Thurrott <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
WinInfo - InstantDoc #96514
July 11, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/96514/Windows_96514.html>
A Florida resident this week launched a long-overdue lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that the company's Xbox 360 game console is scratching game discs. Microsoft has chalked up the charge, which has been voiced by users around the world, to "user error." But I've experienced this problem myself on three different consoles and can attest that it's all too real. And as with the overheating fiasco that caused Microsoft to take a $1 billion warranty hit recently, the company should come clean on this problem as well, lest outrage over these continual troubles cause consumers to retreat entirely from its underperforming console.
"Out of the millions of Xbox consoles in use, Microsoft has not received any widespread reports of Xbox 360s scratching discs," a Microsoft spokesperson said. These comments echo earlier public statements the company made about widespread Xbox 360 failure rates, when it claimed that the failure rate was "acceptable" and in the 2 to 3 percent range. (Typical consumer electronics failure rates are 3 to 5 percent.) Today, we know that Xbox 360 failure rates could be as high as 50 percent, and Microsoft's $1 billion fix is the most expensive consumer electronics warranty fix in US history.
According to the suit, for which the plaintiff is seeking class action status, Microsoft's console caused scratches on two game discs purchased in 2006 for about $50 each. The scratches made the discs unplayable, thus rendering them useless. Microsoft says it will reimburse consumers $20 for each Microsoft game disc that is scratched, but the company will not reimburse for ruined third-party games. The plaintiff is seeking $50 million in damages.
The plaintiff notes, correctly, that Microsoft blames users for these problems. The company warns against moving the console while a disc is in the drive and the unit is on, especially moving it between a horizontal position and a vertical position. In my own experience, however, the Xbox 360 console sometimes simply scratches disks, regardless of movement, and the damage is usually accompanied by a grinding sound from the console's DVD drive. The physical marring manifests in a variety of ways, sometimes with deep scratches that run concentrically around the center of the discs.
Given the PR damage caused by Microsoft's dramatically slow ramp-up to acknowledging widespread Xbox 360 failures, the company should respond to this disc-scratching problem in a more competent, timely, and transparent fashion. If the disc scratching problem is truly not widespread, Microsoft, then just replace all the discs for free, as the costs should be minuscule. If, however, the Xbox 360 is indeed randomly scratching game discs, as I believe, it's time to do the right thing and own up to it. This is yet another embarrassment for a product that, frankly, is already costing Microsoft too much money for too little gained.
ToC
It seems like a long time since Dell introduced a brand new line to its menu of laptops and desktops, instead of adding onto the current lineup of Inspiron, Latitude, and XPS systems (the long-lived Dimension line was finally retired in June).
Dell on Tuesday revealed an entirely new family of systems, called Vostro (Latin for "yours"), aimed at small businesses with 1-25 employees who need business-level systems that don't require full-time IT people to manage.
"For too long, entrepreneurs have been forced to fit either consumer or large corporate solutions into their unique environments," Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said in a statement. In real-world terms, that means Vostro desktops and laptops won't include any of what Dell calls "trialware" (we call it "bloatware"), but will include simplified proprietary networking software and versions of the Dell PC Tune-Up and DataSafe Online programs found in the newest Inspiron systems. Vostro systems will also have a dedicated sales and support team, trained to work with small businesses.
Vostro systems available today include:
Hardware-wise, these new systems don't differ much from the current Dell lineup (but Dell expects to introduce a high-end Vostro desktop in August), and the online support and backup services are apparently only free for the first year, but in principle, we like the idea of a line that falls somewhere between consumer systems and systems aimed at larger businesses, which are expected to have at least some basic IT infrastructure.
Related Link:
Dell pledges SMB support with launch of new PCs
ToC
by Paul Thurrott <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/96432/96432.html>
Dell this week unveiled a line of colorful new consumer-oriented notebooks. Why is this news? For the past year, the PC giant has been pummeled by customer service disaster stories, quality control problems, lengthening PC build times, and an assortment of financial and market share issues. Once the largest PC company on earth, Dell has fallen to number two behind rival HP, and it has dramatically altered its strategy and even begun selling some PCs through retail outlets. A few months ago, Dell ousted its CEO and returned founder Michael Dell to the top decision-making role in the company.
What Mr. Dell has done so far may seem somewhat obvious, but it's working: The company has simply established a customer feedback site, asked its customers what they'd like to see changed at the company, and then implemented the most popular of those changes, one after the other. The colorful new laptops are just the latest in a long list of examples of Dell delivering what its customers have requested. And while most companies can claim to be customer-centric, Dell's moves in recent months are transparent and obvious in their zeal to meet customer needs.
The colorful new laptops are part of Dell's consumer-oriented line of Inspiron products, which typically make up only 15 percent of the company's sales. The goal here, obviously, is to increase that number, and when you combine these brightly hued machines with Dell's recent move into the feel-it-touch-it world of retail, you can see exactly where this is heading. The new Inspiron 1420 notebook comes in 3 sizes and 8 colors, including some bolder and stylish choices like hot pink and espresso brown. They should appeal to a growing audience of customers who value personal style as much as technology.
Dell's been making other changes lately, too. The company rated second in a Greenpeace quarterly report on environmentally-friendly electronics companies, tied with Lenovo but behind first-place recipient Nokia. And the company is expanding its offering of Linux-based PCs by preloading Ubuntu Linux 7.04 on an additional notebook model.
ToC
Dell customers may now decline unwanted software or 'bloatware' applications loaded on new PCs.
Ben Ames, IDG News Service
Thursday, June 21, 2007 3:00 PM PDT
URL: <http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,133297-c,companynews/article.html>
Dell Inc. is allowing its customers to decline the unwanted software applications loaded on new PCs, after hundreds of users complained about such "bloatware" on a company blog.
Many software companies pay PC vendors to install their applications on new computers, hoping to gain new customers or persuade users to upgrade to a new version. But customers say it can take a savvy user hours to remove unwanted programs, and those who are less sophisticated may never be able to reclaim the wasted memory.
On Monday, Dell agreed to give buyers of certain PC models the option to avoid what the company calls "preinstalled software." Buyers of Dimension desktops, Inspiron notebooks and XPS PCs can now click a field in Dell's online order form that will block the installation of productivity software, ISP (Internet service provider) software, and photo and music software.
"Since we launched IdeaStorm, there has never been a shortage of conversation about 'bloatware' here! Well we've recently taken action on your feedback on this topic, and we're working toward giving customers more choice in the amount and type of software that is preinstalled on their systems at the time of purchase," Dell said on the blog.
The company has also loaded an extra "uninstall utility" program on Dimension and Inspiron computers sold in the U.S., making it easier for new computer users to remove software they don't want.
However, Dell will continue to install three applications on its new computers, including trial versions of antivirus software, Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat Reader and Google Inc.'s Google Toolbar, said Michelle Pearcy, Dell's worldwide client software manager in another posting.
The company includes antivirus software because many customers expect their PCs to be protected at first boot, Acrobat because it is required to read electronic copies of system documentation, and Google Toolbar because it aids Web surfing by suggesting likely alternatives to mistyped URLs (uniform resource locators), she said.
"The end result is that customers can tailor the amount and type of software that is preinstalled on their systems to meet their specific needs at time of purchase," Pearcy said.
Many users said Dell had not gone far enough, however. Dozens of comments attached to Pearcy's blog posting pled with the company to abstain from loading any software on a new machine except for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows OS and Office tool suite.
"Would love the ability to have a clean Vista install. No AOL software, no EarthLink software, no Google software -- just a clean, original OS," said someone writing under the name "ootleman" in a Feb. 16 posting that has since received thousands of votes on Dell's site. That post helped start the idea for Dell to give users more control, since it has remained one of the most popular ideas on the company's IdeaStorm Web site since being posted on the blog's first day, Pearcy said.
Despite users' persistence, some may find it challenging to find a PC vendor that does not load extra software on new machines. Gateway Inc. did not respond to a request for comment, but Hewlett-Packard Co. said it also preinstalls software.
HP does not sell any PCs running only an OS, but it does allow individual users to remove the programs they don't like, said Melissa Stone, a spokeswoman for HP.
"HP offers third-party software with its consumer PCs in order to provide customers with programs that will enhance their computing experience," Stone said. "Not all users will have the same preferences, therefore each user has the ability to keep or remove the programs he or she finds most valuable. Current products offer a very carefully chosen set of HP, Microsoft and third-party software and services that HP believes will bring the most value to the customer."
ToC
Benign blighter
By INQUIRER newsdesk: Wednesday 20 June 2007, 12:22
URL: <http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40454>
A WORM WHICH which copies itself onto removable drives, such as USB flash drives has been unearthed.
The LiarVB-A worm hunts for removable drives such as floppy disks and USB memory sticks and then creates a hidden file called autorun.inf to ensure a copy of the worm is run the next time it is connected to a Windows PC.
Once it has infected a system, it drops an HTML file containing a message about AIDS and HIV to the user's drive.
While most malware is designed to generate income for the hackers, this worm the seems simply to spread information about AIDS instead, according to Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"Even though the hackers responsible for this worm aren't set on filling their pockets with cash, and may feel that they are spreading an important message, they are still breaking the law. In the future we might see more graffiti-style malware being written on behalf of political, religious and other groups looking for a soapbox to broadcast their opinions, he said." The worm comes laden with a message claiming it does no harm.
"This file Doesn't make harmful change to your computer. This File is NOT DANGEROUS for your Computer and FlashDisk (USB). This File Doesn't Disturb any Data or Files on your computer and FlashDisk (USB). So Dont be affraid, and Be Happy !" it reads.
ToC
Paul Thurrott <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
WinInfo: InstantDoc #96538
July 16, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/96442/windowspaulthurrott_96442.html>
Dell is on a roll. This week, the company took yet another step toward addressing customer requests by rolling out a business-oriented line of computers that can be configured with absolutely no trialware (bloatware). The notebooks and desktop PCs are being sold under the new Vostro brand and are marketed largely to small businesses. The systems can be configured with XP or Vista and feature Dell's swoopy new hardware designs. But the best bit, of course, is the no trialware option: At no cost, you can opt out of productivity, security, and Acrobat Reader. Please join me in virtually standing up and just applauding the company for this move. Nice job.
WinInfo: InstantDoc #96494
July 9, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/96494/96494.html>
Microsoft is prepping the imminent release of Windows Live OneCare 2.0, the latest version of its PC security and maintenance subscription service. The new version boasts a number of new features, but the big news this time around is x64 support: That's right, it will finally protect x64 systems. (Though it's unclear right now if it's a single 32-bit executable that happens to work on 64-bit systems, or will come in two versions. My guess is the former.) OneCare 2 also sports multiple PC management, so you can check the health status of other PCs on your network from a single location, printer sharing, and online photo backup. Is it me, or are the feature sets for OneCare 2 and Windows Home Server (WHS) edging ever closer to each other?
WinInfo: InstantDoc #96442
July 2, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/96442/windowspaulthurrott_96442.html>
Microsoft this week moved its production Web site, Microsoft.com, to Windows Server 2008, a practice known in the industry as "dog- fooding." The idea is that Microsoft has such confidence in its next server OS, even at this beta stage, that it can run its own infrastructure on the system. The company notes that Microsoft.com is the fifth-most trafficked site on the Internet (fourth in the US) and is visited by almost 290 million unique users every day. Microsoft has performed similar exercises with pre-release versions of other Windows Server versions, SQL Server, Exchange Server, and other products in the past.
WinInfo: InstantDoc #96442
July 2, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/96442/windowspaulthurrott_96442.html>
Speaking of Windows 2008, Microsoft shipped an interim version, or Community Technology Preview (CTP), of the software to testers this week. This interim build of Windows 2008 includes the previously announced Web Server role for Server Core, the low-impact version of Windows Server that's debuting in this product version. Beyond that, there aren't many obvious changes as the previous milestone, Beta 3, was pretty much "feature complete." (I use quotes there because, in this case at least, that's not technically true: Web Server in Server Core has been added since, and Microsoft has yet to ship its Windows Server Virtualization technologies as well.) The CTP offers bug fixes, performance improvements, and other minor changes, Microsoft says.
WinInfo: InstantDoc #96442
July 2, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/96442/windowspaulthurrott_96442.html>
Linux maker Red Hat said this week that it discussed a possible patent agreement with Microsoft last year but ultimately decided to pass on the deal. However, it's unclear if a deal is still on the table: When Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik was asked this week whether his company was still negotiating with Microsoft, he said "I can't answer the question," fueling speculation. Red Hat is, of course, the world's largest open source company, so a Microsoft deal would be major news. Stay tuned.
WinInfo: InstantDoc #96442
July 2, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/96442/windowspaulthurrott_96442.html>
I think we all understood that when Microsoft made claims about Windows Vista being more secure than Linux or Mac OS X this week that the open source community, in particular, would take umbrage. Well, that's happened, yes, but one of the complainers has an interesting charge: Kristian Hermansen of Full Disclosure claims that Microsoft actually stacked the deck in Vista's favor by "silently" fixing numerous vulnerabilities in Vista and then not disclosing that it did so. But here's the problem: He never provides any examples of these silently fixed bugs, although he goes to great pains to explain why the numbers Microsoft used are suspect. If you're in a fighting mood, you can read more on Insecure.org.
<http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2007/Jun/0528.html>
Related Links:
Microsoft: Windows Vista More Secure than OS X, Linux
Jeff Jones, Microsoft Strategy Director, Vista 6-month vulnerability report
WinInfo: InstantDoc #96379
June 25, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/96442/windowspaulthurrott_96442.html>
Well, duh. And anyone who disagrees with this hasn't been paying attention. Microsoft on Thursday released data showing that Windows users were at risk from security flaws for less time than users of Apple Mac OS X or Linux over the past few years because the company responds to flaws more quickly. According to the company, Windows users were at risk an average of less than 29 days last year, compared with 46 days for OS X and 74-107 days for various Linux distributions. Hey, that's great, really. But on the flip side, Windows is hacked more than all those systems combined, so it's unclear whether this data makes much difference. Let's flip it around again: In 2006, Windows also had the fewest actual security flaws, with 90 for Windows XP, compared with 129 for OS X and 232-301 for various Linux versions. In the end, security is a tough one: Although it's very easy to protect a Windows system against electronic attack, it's equally true that Windows is the target of most actual attacks, even if it has the fewest actual flaws or shortest length of time before flaws are fixed.
ToC
URL: <http://winbeta.org/comments.php?id=8341&catid=1>
Microsoft's threat research and response center is now available to the public over at <http://www.microsoft. com/security/portal/>. You can get detailed analysis of various threats, query their extensive library and even download definition updates out of band for Defender or Forefront in both x86 and x64 format.
Features include:
You can even submit files that are suspected of containing malware or potentially unwanted software to Microsoft using their online form.
ToC
by Paul Thurrott <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
WinInfo - InstantDoc #96357
June 20, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/96357/96357.html>
In a surprising move, Microsoft has bowed to Internet rival Google and will change the design of Vista so that Google's desktop search product can more closely integrate with the OS. Microsoft also used this event to quietly change the shipping schedule for Vista SP1. According to Microsoft, Vista SP1 will appear in beta form by the end of 2007. Vista SP1 was originally scheduled to be released by the end of 2007. Apparently this desktop search change will delay that release.
"Microsoft has reached an agreement with the States and the DOJ to address a complaint filed by Google regarding desktop search in Windows Vista," a Microsoft representative told me late Tuesday evening. Brad Smith, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel, says the company is "pleased to reach an agreement with all the States and the Justice Department that addresses their concerns so that everyone can move forward." Previously, Microsoft had described Google's complaint as "baseless."
Here's what Microsoft has agreed to do:
Microsoft also provided a final version of its 27-page joint status report detailing its ongoing compliance with its 2004 US antitrust settlement. The report includes several other details, including that Microsoft plans to implement these desktop search changes as part of Vista SP1, and the company says a beta version of that update will ship by the end of 2007. Microsoft also noted that Google's complaint that Vista was slowing Google desktop search was somewhat spurious: Contrary to Google's complaint, Vista doesn't slow down Google's product. Instead, the existence of two competing desktop search products, each running simultaneously and generating their own indices, slows down the PC.
I have more information about this startling and unnecessary change on the SuperSite for Windows:
<http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_google_changes.asp>
Related link:
ToCMicrosoft Will Modify Vista Search
by Paul Thurrott <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
WinInfo - InstantDoc #96401
June 26, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/96401/96401.html>
Internet search giant Google has escalated its antitrust battle with Microsoft, revealing that it has been petitioning the US government to extend its oversight of Microsoft's business practices past the November 2007 expiration of that oversight. Google says that the software giant continues to abuse its monopoly and violate the terms of its consent decree. Furthermore, Microsoft's recent revelation about changes to the Instant Search feature in Windows Vista simply doesn't go far enough, Google says.
"Microsoft's hardwiring of its own desktop search product into Windows Vista violates the final judgment [in the company's US antitrust case]," Google wrote in its latest complaint, which was filed as a friend-of-the-court document with Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. "It appears that more may need to be done to provide a truly unbiased choice of desktop search products in Vista and achieve compliance."
The timing of this complaint is important: It arrived just one day before representatives from Microsoft, the US Department of Justice (DOJ), and various US states were to meet for a regularly scheduled consent decree status meeting. Typically, these meetings have been uneventful, and Microsoft has generally been found to have been meeting its requirements. With this Google complaint, that likely won't be the case this time around.
At issue is Microsoft's lackluster response toward meeting Google's demands. Google has alleged that the inclusion of Instant Search in Vista makes its own desktop search product, Google Desktop Search, run more slowly. Microsoft has made some concessions to Google Desktop Search and other third-party desktop search solutions, but it refuses to allow them to disable Instant Search. "It appears that Microsoft will continue to show its own desktop search results when users run searches from prominent shortcuts and menu entries throughout the operating system," the Google complaint reads. "Users will now be given a mechanism to request results from their chosen desktop search product by taking a second step after they have first viewed results from Microsoft's product."
Microsoft has said that the US government supports the changes it's making and that it went "the extra mile" in meeting Google's demands. But then that's the problem with meeting competitors half-way like this: They always want more. Microsoft would have been better served fighting Google's demands rather than giving in so quickly. Now the argument is about how many concessions Microsoft can make rather than the merit of the original complaint. Also problematic for the software giant is that Google might convince the courts to extend their oversight of its business practices past November.
ToC
Paul Thurrott <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
WinInfo - InstantDoc #96413
June 27, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/96413/96413.html>
After all the furor in recent days over Google's ongoing complaints that the Instant Search feature in Windows Vista is anticompetitive, the US District Court judge overseeing Microsoft's consent-decree compliance has chosen to ignore those complaints. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Tuesday said that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and various US states that allied in the prosecution of Microsoft half a decade ago represent consumers, not Google. And from what she can see, the DOJ and states back the steps Microsoft has already taken to address Google's concerns.
"Google is not a party in this suit," she said yesterday, during a regularly scheduled hearing to address Microsoft compliance. "As far as I'm concerned, [the DOJ and states] stand in the shoes of consumers."
Google had complained that Microsoft hardwired Instant Search into Windows Vista, making it impossible for third-party desktop search products, such as Google Desktop Search, to integrate into the new system efficiently. After initially downplaying these concerns, Microsoft surprised many by making partial concessions to Google: Vista SP1, due in beta form by the end of 2007, will allow third-party desktop search applications to work somewhat more effectively in Vista. However, Google complained that Microsoft's changes were not enough. At yesterday's hearing, Kollar-Kotelly revealed she's not interested in arbitrating that complaint.
Google says it's not surprised by the judge's decision and noted that the changes Microsoft has already agreed to will at least offer consumers more choice. Meanwhile, Microsoft says that the current version of Instant Search doesn't violate its consent agreement. However, it made concessions to Google "in the spirit of cooperation."
ToC
Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ July 8th, 2007, 12:31 pm
URL: <http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=559>
It's official: We are now in the under-promise and over-deliver era at Microsoft.
Just when Microsoft had customers, partners and competitors all believing that it was going to delay the first service pack for Vista - not releasing a first beta of it until just before year-end - the company is set to deliver Beta 1 of Vista SP1 in mid-July.
Word (from various sources who asked not to be named) is Microsoft is gearing up to drop Vista SP1 some time the week of July 16. And despite what Microsoft seemingly led Google, the U.S. Department of Justice and other company watchers to believe, the final version of Vista SP1 is sounding like November 2007.
(November 2007 is also the release-to-manufacturing target for Windows Server 2008, sources say. Microsoft won't provide an RTM date for Windows Server 2008, other than to say it is still on track to RTM before the end of 2007.)
If Vista SP1 is released in November, the Windows client team will be sticking to a schedule company officials outlined a year ago, when the official plan of record was to release Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn Server) simultaneously.
Another observation: If Microsoft releases Vista SP1 in November, it will have been in beta for an unusually short four months. In the past, Microsoft Windows service packs could be in beta for a year or longer.
Microsoft officials have been wavering over what to say about SP1 for the past year. Throughout that time, a number of company execs wouldn't even admit they were planning to release a service pack for Vista at all.
Microsoft's Windows client team, under Director of Windows Engineering Steven Sinofsky, has adopted a much more restrictive information-flow policy. Instead of over-promising and under-delivering, Sinofsky wants the client team to do the opposite. To achieve this, the client team is attempting to institute Apple-like secrecy over anything pertaining to future Windows client directions.
There was a tiny chink in the Windows organization's armor in June, when Microsoft agreed to Google's demand that it alter its desktop-search functionality, seemingly to head off another potential antitrust suit. In late June, the Redmondians said they'd have a Beta 1 version of SP1 (which would include alterations to Vista's search) before the end of calendar 2007. They declined to provide a date for the final Vista SP1 release.
History aside, what's on tap to be part of Vista SP1?
Microsoft is expected to emphasize that SP1 is more about fixes than new features. Most of the elements of SP1 are expected to enhance or supplement features that are already part of Vista, sources said.
In addition to desktop-search modifications, here's a list of other fixes likely to make it in:
I asked Microsoft officials for a response on Vista SP1's timing and feature set. I did not hear back before posting this blog entry. (If and when I do get a response, I will add it here.)
Update: Here's the response I got from a Windows client spokesman late in the day on July 9: "The Windows Vista team is working hard on the service pack, and our current expectation is that a beta will be made available sometime this year."
There may be more in Vista SP1 than what's on this list. That's all I've heard so far. Anything you're hoping makes it in that's not listed here?
Related Links:
ToCVista SP1 Definitely on the Way
"Vista SP1 Preview and Information Center", a site unaffiliated with Microsoft that claims to have a list of more than 100 fixes that are coming in SP1.
A blog posted a picture taken at the recent Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) purportedly of a machine with a build of SP1 on it.
Paul Thurrott <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/96498/96498.html>
Facing an ongoing antitrust complaint from Internet search giant Google, Microsoft has reportedly reversed course and will now apparently fast track the first service pack for Vista so that it can meet its original internal shipping schedules. Previously, Microsoft had said that making the Instant Search changes required by the Google complaint would force the company to ship a beta version of Vista SP1 by late 2007. Now, apparently, the company is going to ship the beta this month and the final version by the end of the year.
ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reported this morning that unnamed sources have confirmed that Microsoft will ship Vista SP1 alongside Windows Server 2008, which the company should release to manufacturing (RTM) in November 2007. This matches the original shipping schedule for Vista SP1, which Microsoft disclosed to me in a briefing last year. (Curiously, since then, the company repeatedly issued public statements disavowing any SP1 schedule.)
If these rumors turn out to be true, it appears that Microsoft is fast tracking SP1 to prevent Google's complaint from turning into a never-ending series of feature set compromises. Microsoft has already agreed to make some changes to the Instant Search feature in Vista SP1, but Google says these changes don't go far enough. Last week, Google petitioned Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who is overseeing Microsoft's consent decree compliance, for permission to provide more information about Microsoft's behavior.
In addition to the Instant Search changes Microsoft has announced, and the obvious collection of previously released bug fixes, Vista SP1 will include kernel changes related to security features at the heart of complaints by companies such as Symantec and McAfee. Microsoft told me last year that SP1 would include a major kernel update that will bring the Vista kernel up-to-date with the kernel version in Windows 2008. Foley has reported several other "likely fixes" in SP1, including file copy and shutdown performance tweaks, various BitLocker improvements, and Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) boot support for x64-based systems. I can't confirm any of those changes, however.
ToC
Windows XP Service Pack 3 lives!
By: Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor
URL: <http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-XP-Service-Pack-3-Leaked-Details-57825.shtml>
Not only is Windows XP Service Pack 3 alive and kicking, but Microsoft also managed to leak details about what the refresh will contain. The Redmond Company's policy when it comes down to future releases of the Windows platform is to gag all details. Windows XP SP3 is old news for Microsoft. And with the general availability of Windows Vista it was pushed to the background. But in all fairness, Microsoft never confirmed the cancellation of the third service pack for Windows XP. The company only scrapped it out of sight and under the rug with repeated delays.
The availability date for the first beta of Windows Vista SP1 was revealed by a U.S. Justice Department legal filing. Microsoft plans to deliver Vista SP1 beta by the end of 2007, but the date is of course nothing more than an estimation. By comparison, SP3 for Windows XP is currently planned for the first half of 2008. But Microsoft initially planned to deliver the third service pack for Windows XP in 2006, only to postpone the release to 2007 and then again to 2008.
Windows XP SP3, despite its collection of delays, will make it to the market, and Microsoft plans in integrate changes to Internet Explorer and to Windows Media Player into the refresh. "Microsoft has agreed to make changes to Windows XP, two Middleware Products, and Windows Live Messenger. The Windows Live Messenger changes have been delivered in the Windows Live Messenger 8.5 beta and will be included in the public release. Changes for Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player will be made available to users in August 2007 and Microsoft is discussing with the TC the delivery mechanism for those changes. The Windows XP changes will be incorporated into Service Pack 3 for Windows XP," revealed the U.S. Justice department in its filing.
ToC
Paul Thurrott <thurrott@windowsitpro.com>
WinInfo - InstantDoc #96412
June 27, 2007
URL: <http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/print.cfm?articleid=96412>
Microsoft rolled out early private beta versions of two new Windows Live offerings today, one of which is an improved version of the Windows Photo Gallery application from Windows Vista, and the other is a Web-based file storage service. But the big news this week is that Microsoft is finally clarifying its plans for Windows Live going forward and will offer concentrated suites of Windows Live products that run on Windows PCs, Windows Mobile devices, and the Web.
Both new offerings are in private beta right now, but Microsoft plans to ship public betas later this year. Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta is a replacement and superset of Windows Live Photo Gallery, but unlike its predecessor, it will be offered to Windows XP users as well as those on Vista. The application provides photo acquisition, editing, and sharing capabilities, and this new version integrates with Windows Live services. For example, you can now post photos directly to Windows Live Spaces or Hotmail-based email from within the application via a new Share toolbar button. Windows Live Photo Gallery also includes other unique features, such as the ability to seamlessly stitch photos together into a panorama.
The long-rumored Windows Live Folders Beta (name subject to change, I was told) provides 512MB of free Web-based storage and allows 50MB uploads. Microsoft will be offering increased storage capacity at additional charges but will announce those offerings as testing progresses. The service sports a simple UI, with three main options-- personal folders, shared folders, and public folders--offering access to storage folders with different permissions settings. Unique to this service is the ability for customers to provide shared folder access to others even if the others don't have Windows Live ID (formerly Passport) accounts.
With the introduction of these two Windows Live offerings, Microsoft is beginning to communicate how it views the Windows Live service going forward. And with this next generation version of Windows Live, which will be rolled out over the course of the year, Microsoft will bring together its previously piecemeal approach with a common look and feel, better integration across local applications and Web-based services, and anytime/anywhere access from Windows PCs, mobile devices, and the Web. I'll have a write-up about Microsoft's evolving strategy with Windows Live in the near future on the SuperSite for Windows.
<http://www.winsupersite.com/>
ToC
By Ken Fisher | Published: June 24, 2007 - 11:39PM CT
URL: <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070624-microsofts-anti-virtualization-stance-forget-drm-think-apple.html>
This weekend Eric Lai of Computerworld attempted to describe the possible relationship between Vista's DRM and Microsoft's licensing restrictions against virtualization. The view that Microsoft's prohibition stems from fears that users will circumvent DRM isn't new, but the article comes at an opportune time: Microsoft came within an inch of reversing their position last week, but then backed off. The time is ripe for more speculation as to just why Microsoft says "no" to the virtualization of those two OSes, yet allows virtualization of other editions of Vista. I think Lai's contribution to the discussion is interesting, but I'm not convinced that DRM has much to do with the issue. In fact, I'm fairly certain there's a bigger concern at Redmond, and it has nothing to do with DRM, and everything to do with the long-term fate of Windows. More on that in a minute.
Lai says that Microsoft might have got cold feet over virtualization because it can be used to circumvent DRM. Recall that Vista provides end-to-end "protection" for DRMed content, from the files themselves all the way to encrypted pathways to output devices. A virtual machine (VM) could ultimately allow for uninhibited copying since the entire machine and user environment is copied and virtualized to such an extent that the protected media paths and their adjacent parts would all "look" like the original authorized machines to DRMed content. You could thus make identical copies of the content by copying the entire virtualized environment.
There are three major problems with this thesis. The first is the most obvious, which is that trading multi-gigabyte virtual machines with friends so that they can access, say, video tied to a specific machine is a little onerous. "Pirates" aren't idiots. They're not going to be swapping VMs when they can get unencrypted content online, anyway. Swapping any amount of secondary material (VMs, keys, etc.) is more work than USENET or BitTorrent, that's for sure.
Reason number two is just as obvious: since when do "pirates" care about what a EULA says? Remember that the prohibition against the virtualization of Home Basic and Premium is a prohibition only in words: there is no technical measure preventing Joe Pirate from virtualizing them. Thirdly, even if there were such a mechanism, Joe Pirate would just "pirate" Vista Ultimate or Business, both of which allow virtualization in the license. A EULA can't stop piracy any more than it can stop malware.
So, to briefly recap, the prohibition is only a prohibition to "law obeying citizens," and the payoff for circumventing DRM in this manner is unimpressive. It's hard to take this seriously as a "threat," even if we imagine a bloodthirsty entertainment industry lurking in the shadows.
If it's not the DRM, then what is it? The most simple explanation is to be found in accounting for why Microsoft would make what is clearly an arbitrary decision to allow the virtualization of Vista Ultimate and Business while disallowing it for Home Basic and Premium. The only truly significant differences between the two groups as relates their core features for would-be virtualization users is pricing: Home Basic is $199; Home Premium, $239; Business, $299; Vista Ultimate, $399. As you can see, the two "lower cost" SKUs happen to be the two that are prohibited.
As you may know, so-called original equipment manufacturers have the right to purchase these full versions of the OS at greatly reduced prices. In such a scenario, Home