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Can Big Brother now read your e-mail without a warrant?
2/10/2006 12:37:05 PM, by Nate Anderson
Can the US government now legally monitor your e-mail "without any evidence of criminal behavior"? That's the report coming from CNet's Declan McCullagh, who claims that a decision made by US District Judge Thomas Hogan last week authorized just such measures. The story prompted one Slashdot reader to comment, "we are losing our liberties faster than we can blink." But is it really that bad? The government is in fact involved in many worrying cases regarding surveillance ("Hello? NSA? Yes, this is the Lost and Found. We discovered your conscience on the back shelf of the janitor's closet and wondered if you'd like it back?"), but a closer look at this particular ruling suggests that it's not the dangerous precedent some folks are making it out to be.
Judge Hogan, who has degrees in classics and in literature, gave an Imperial thumbs up to a Justice Department request to monitor header information (not including subject line information or the content) in all e-mails sent by an unnamed person as part of a grand jury investigation.
He reviewed the portion of federal law dealing with "pen register" and "trap and trace" devices--terms originating in the world of telephone wiretapping--and concluded it "unambiguously" authorizes the e-mail surveillance request.
Why would the judge say this? Let's go to the law. The section of the US Code dealing with such matters gives us a pretty thorough definition of the terms "pen register" and "trap and trace," both of which are old terms used to described technology designed to intercept and record telephone numbers, though not record the contents of the call.
(3) the term "pen register" means a device or process which records or decodes dialing, routing, addressing, or signaling information transmitted by an instrument or facility from which a wire or electronic communication is transmitted, provided, however, that such information shall not include the contents of any communication, but such term does not include any device or process used by a provider or customer of a wire or electronic communication service for billing, or recording as an incident to billing, for communications services provided by such provider or any device or process used by a provider or customer of a wire communication service for cost accounting or other like purposes in the ordinary course of its business;
(4) the term "trap and trace device" means a device or process which captures the incoming electronic or other impulses which identify the originating number or other dialing, routing, addressing, and signaling information reasonably likely to identify the source of a wire or electronic communication, provided, however, that such information shall not include the contents of any communication;
The law also goes on to define the standard that ought to be used by a judge when considering whether to grant such requests. And as the judge said, the wording is unambiguous.
"the court shall enter an ex parte order authorizing the installation and use of a pen register or trap and trace device anywhere within the United States, if the court finds that the attorney for the Government has certified to the court that the information likely to be obtained by such installation and use is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation."
The judge read the law, which requires only that prosecutors tell the judge that such information is likely to be relevant to their case, and he issued the order as the law requires. It is possible to complain about the law, but the judge's interpretation seems pretty solid, and his ruling hardly sounds like a bit of legislating from the bench. Furthermore, the request comes in the context of a grand jury investigation; it is not simply a Justice Department fishing expedition.
The ruling only authorizes the Justice Department to collect basic header information such as To: and From: fields, much in the same way that records of telephone calls have long been available to investigators without a warrant. For both telephone and Internet communications, the government still needs to show probable evidence of criminal behavior in order to view or listen to the contents of such correspondence.
Bottom line: this doesn't sound like anything to worry about, and is in fact the ruling that the judge seems required to make by the law that is set before him. Pitching it as some new method for the government to spy on your private communications without a warrant is simply alarmist. The law clearly requires the government to certify that it would be of likely value to an ongoing investigation?which isn't exactly a free pass to spy on any American?and even then, it does not involve the content of the messages. This is little more than bringing the old wiretapping laws into the digital age. As we know from the story of the boy who cried wolf, setting off too many false alarms only deadens the ears of the populace to the very real dangers of a predator creeping through the sheepfold.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060210-6155.html
Who's up for a game of Patent Mad Libs? We need a proper noun representing the name of a corporation. AT&T... hmm, now we need a verb... has threatened legal action against... a major industry player. How about Apple (that's a popular company) among others over its use of the... now we need a all-encompassing patent; thank goodness there's no shortage of them... video compression used in the MPEG-4 video format.
Unfortunately, it's not just a party game. It's a recently renamed corporation flexing its patent portfolio in an attempt to squeeze royalties out of a number of hardware and software industry players. AT&T owns video compression patents which it claims are used in the MPEG-4 format. The company has already reached licensing agreements with a few companies including Nero and Pentax allowing them to support MPEG-4 in their products.
The MPEG standard is controlled by the International Standards Organization (ISO), while the MPEG Licensing Association (MPEGLA) administers the various patents utilized in both the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats. AT&T is not a participant in either the MPEGLA or the ISO committee that oversees the MPEG patent. In an attempt to keep situations like this from happening frequently, the ISO requires all committee members to agree to license their patents under "reasonable nondiscriminatory" terms. As AT&T has chosen to sit outside the umbrella of the two organizations, it gives the company the opportunity to maximize its revenue from the patents.
According to an AT&T spokesperson, the patents in question cover "a core component" of MPEG-4. In a letter sent to Apple, DivX, and other companies who have yet to license the patents from AT&T, the company said it could provide proof of the infringements and threatened them with triple damages. AT&T says it is willing to make the patents available for licensing for a small fee:
"Each of these companies has been advised that they are offering infringing products, that AT&T can provide proof of infringement, and that AT&T is offering a license under reasonable on non-discriminatory terms," [according to] Michael J. Robinson, licensing director of AT&T Intellectual Property Management
Holding a file format hostage for royalties is not unprecedented. Forgent Networks claims to hold a patent on the popular JPEG image-compression format--a patent that is currently under review by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Previously, Unisys' patenting of the GIF graphics format led not to a patent fight, but to the creation of PNG--which is freely available, unencumbered by IP issues.
AT&T's MPEG-4 patents are currently not under review, although if potential licensees decide the royalty figures quoted by the telecommunications giant are neither reasonable nor nondiscriminatory, they could attempt to have the USPTO review and possibly overturn the patents. Given the high-profile nature of some of the products involved, e.g., the iPod, that may very well happen, especially if AT&T is out for a blatant money grab. However, if it turns out that AT&T's is standing on solid IP ground with its patents, Apple, Creative, DivX, and everyone else using MPEG-4 will have to whip out their checkbooks.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060210-6154.html
Sony and Bertelsmann were once the prides of Japan and Germany. Having grown up to become world-spanning megacorporations, they spawned a reckless delinquent named Sony BMG. As children often do, the youngster is having a hard time finding its way in the world - selling music, in particular, as well as controlling the distribution of music it manages to sell. So Sony BMG resolved to turn your computer into a battleground.
The war, of course, is the struggle to control unauthorized duplication of copyrighted material. Music fans demand to make copies, and to its credit Sony tried to meet them halfway. But en route to the meeting place, the company turned down a path that leads to a dark future.
On at least 50 titles released last year, Sony BMG included software that allows users to make up to three copies. To count the number of duplicates made, the discs install programs on the user's computer. And to keep savvy customers from monkeying with the software, the company included a rootkit, secret code that makes itself and the copy-protection files invisible.
The ability to hide files is an invitation to every hacker with, well, something to hide. Miscreants use it to cloak programs designed to take control of the host computer. Players of online games use it to conceal cheats. But there was more to Sony BMG's rootkit. The code could also send information about the user's system back to the mothership.
Blogger Mark Russinovich wrote about the Sony BMG exploit in November, and music fans exploded in righteous fury. After much denial and obfuscation, Sony BMG provided an uninstall routine. It also stopped manufacturing rootkitted titles and recalled those it had shipped. But the damage had been done. More than 2 million discs were already in consumers' hands, ready to blast holes in the system of anybody unfortunate enough to pop one into a CD drive.
I'm not going to scold Sony BMG. The problem here is larger than one company's effort to own its customers' desktops and spy on their behavior. The real issue is the blurring of lines between blackhat hacking and legitimate business. It's one thing when Russian gangsters take over a few million computers to shake down online casinos. It's another when commercial enterprises adopt the same methods to protect their market. At that point, good corporate citizenship devolves into vigilantism and the implicit trust between supplier and customer unravels.
Sony BMG isn't the only company to have mistaken malicious exploits for mainstream business practices. The British software developer First 4 Internet, which licensed the rootkit to Sony BMG, built its product on techniques developed for creating viruses, and the company's programmers left a trail of newsgroup requests for information about hacks like crippling CD drives. Ironically, First 4 Internet appropriated parts of its music player from an app known as LAME - a bald infringement of the LAME copyright.
Imagine the mayhem if this kind of attitude were to become widespread: Coca-Cola would use your desktop to propagate spam about its latest bottle-cap sweepstakes. Vonage would keep Skype offers from reaching your inbox. Samsung would make sure that, when your browser tried to load Sony.com, it reached a fake Sony site where nothing worked. Companies would compile vast archives of customer data merely because they could, hoping they'd stumble on a revenue model.
It's time for lawmakers, trade groups, and public-interest organizations to get down to the hard work of hammering out standards for what businesses can and can't do to customers' computers. Such an effort will need to be international, because the Net knows no bounds. It will need to come up with simple, understandable language for end-user licensing agreements. It will need to draw red lines around unacceptably invasive hacks and map gray areas between spying and market research.
I'm not holding my breath, though. After all, we asked for this. We didn't want to ruffle the feathers of the goose that laid the golden egg of technological progress, so we allowed manufacturers to claim more and more control over the ways we use their products and what they can do with our information. It should come as no surprise that they're using that power as a cover for bigger, possibly more lucrative schemes.
You may not be interested in the digital rights war, but that doesn't mean you'll have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines. Because the other side is very, very interested in you.
Google Copies Your Hard Drive
Google Search = BAD!
Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.
- Eff.org
February 09, 2006
Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation
Consumers Should Not Use New Google Desktop
San Francisco - Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.
"Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google's search logs, it's shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "If you use the Search Across Computers feature and don't configure Google Desktop very carefully?and most people won't?Google will have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files, and whatever other text-based documents the Desktop software can index. The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business, and in many cases you wouldn't even be notified in time to challenge it. Other litigants?your spouse, your business partners or rivals, whoever?could also try to cut out the middleman (you) and subpoena Google for your files."
The privacy problem arises because the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers?much less privacy than the legal protections for the same information when it's on your computer at home. And even that lower level of legal protection could disappear if Google uses your data for marketing purposes. Google says it is not yet scanning the files it copies from your hard drive in order to serve targeted advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility, and Google's current privacy policy appears to allow it.
"This Google product highlights a key privacy problem in the digital age," said Cindy Cohn, EFF's Legal Director. "Many Internet innovations involve storing personal files on a service provider's computer, but under outdated laws, consumers who want to use these new technologies have to surrender their privacy rights. If Google wants consumers to trust it to store copies of personal computer files, emails, search histories and chat logs, and still 'not be evil,' it should stand with EFF and demand that Congress update the privacy laws to better reflect life in the wired world."
* 18:24 10 February 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Kimm Groshong
A mix of carbon compounds filling the miniscule veins in a Martian meteorite has refuelled the debate on the possibility of life on Mars. Similarities between the carbon-rich filler and that found in fractured volcanic samples from the Earth's ocean floor dangle the possibility that life produced the Martian material, say scientists.
A team of researchers led by David McKay and Everett Gibson of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, US, raise the scenario as just one possibility after extensively analysing new samples of the Nakhla meteorite.
The UK?s Natural History Museum recently provided the team with fresh samples from the interior of the meteorite, which broke into many pieces upon landing in Egypt in 1911.
Near the tube-like veins in the rock, researchers found iddingsite ? a mineral also formed on Earth, mainly through alteration of an iron-based mineral called olivine by water. And within the cracks, they found carbon-rich material that appears dark brown or black.
"Indigenous stuff"
Astrobiologists look for carbon and water in their search for extraterrestrial life. Carbon is the building block of terrestrial life, forming the basis for organic chemistry, and water is necessary to support all forms of life on Earth.
Sceptics have cast doubt on previous claims of organic material in Nakhla, saying the carbonaceous matter was simply contamination from Earth. But Colin Pillinger, a team member from the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, says results from the new samples from the carefully protected interior of the meteorite lay those concerns to rest. "We're pretty confident this is indigenous stuff,? he says. ?We don't think it's contamination.?
The work will be presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, US, in March.
Biogenic activity
In two abstracts submitted to the conference, the team outlines possible sources of the carbon-containing components. Either a carbon-bearing impactor introduced them to Mars between 600,000 and 700,000 years ago or they are "products of biogenic activity and introduced by groundwater into the fracture features in Nakhla," the team writes.
The team cites an upcoming study by oceanographer Martin Fisk, of Oregon State University in Corvalis, US, who compared Earth features to Martian meteorites. The authors note "the close resemblance" of Nakhla's carbon-rich material to carbon Fisk noted in veins within basaltic glass from the ocean floor.
In this forthcoming paper in Astrobiology, Fisk reports that DNA is associated with the fractures, or tunnels, in rock samples from Earth's ocean floor, a mountain top in Oregon and a rainforest on the California-Oregon border. "There's not DNA distributed throughout the rock, it's very specific to the tunnels," Fisk says.
Nothing's certain
Furthermore, the size and shape of the tunnels in the Earth samples closely resemble those seen in Nakhla. And he says researchers have yet to see a non-biological explanation for the tunnels, although that does not rule out the possibility.
"We're saying here's a phenomena on Earth that we're pretty darn sure are caused by bacteria", and rocks from Mars sport similar features, Fisk says. "I'm letting people draw their own conclusions.?
Pillinger is careful to point out that the new findings do not mean the community has definitive evidence for life on Mars. "We're finding these very strange features, but we can't say anything more than that," he says. "They could have come from several processes and one of them is biological."
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Cover of latest issue of New Scientist magazine
I have a friend who does not carry cash. Apparently, it bulks up his wallet and it's flat-out unnecessary. It also does not earn him airline miles. Cash, in short, is no longer pulling its weight, and my friend has adopted a new monetary policy sure to bring smiles to Visa executives around the world: if he can't charge it, he doesn't need it. (This theory broke down, as so many things do, on the Illinois Tollway, which proved itself decidedly old school in its desire for hard currency.)
I mention this only because credit and debit cards have become the default payment mechanism for millions of Americans?even those that still carry a bit of emergency cash. But if a pair of startup companies have their way, physical plastic cards might soon become as uncool as cash.
Pay by Touch and PayWi (short for "Pay Wireless") want to eliminate the need to carry a wallet, but each has a unique approach. Pay by Touch's plan, as their name suggests, is to use biometric authentication for payment. Their system is already rolled out at several of the largest grocery store chains in the country, and it works like this: take goods to cashier, run finger over scanner, enter seven digit code, select account to use, and bam! You're done. Graphs produced by the company show that this process is faster even than using cash, and Paid by Touch takes pains to point out that the data points they collect from your fingertip scan cannot be reconstituted into a full fingerprint.
A competing system comes from PayWi, which wants to put its payment technology into your mobile phone, and the company makes no secret about what demographic it's targeting: the young and geek chic. The short "How does it work?" section of their website picthes the service as something that can aid one's sex appeal. (From the demo: "The next time you're on a date, PayWi can help you demonstrate what a good catch you are.") And they're right: this would absolutely impress every woman I know.
Unfortunately, while this may enhance your geek cred, it involves more steps than a cash or credit transaction. First, you have to run the PayWi application on your Java-supported mobile phone. Then you have to give the merchant your mobile phone number. Then the charge comes through on your mobile phone, and you need to approve it (entering a tip, if necessary). Then you need to enter your PIN number. The company claims that this helps reduce "check out time by as much as 90%." We're the tiniest bit skeptical, but are open to being convinced.
The biggest problem that both systems face is the requirement that merchants make a substantial new investment, which will certainly limit the rate of adoption, especially among smaller vendors. Consumers, of course, have little reason to use such services until they are widespread in their area of the country, since the primary benefit ("Leave your wallet at home!") won't be a reality. Both attempts at looking beyond the credit card are intriguing, but in terms of simplicity, biometrics certainly beat monkeying about with Java applications on a cell phone, and requires you to carry even less. If such systems can prove themselves to be quick, secure, and accurate, companies like Pay by Touch can expect a fat buyout offer from the credit card giants, who won't stand for being cut out of the game.
Major players are entering the the market as well. Motorola, for instance, is developing a new system (allegedly ready in six to nine months) called the M-Wallet which seeks to make the mobile phone into the payment device, but through a simple swipe of the phone across a scanner rather than through an applet. The idea is to replicate the success of NTT DoCoMo's mobile wallet, which premiered several years ago in Japan. Combine these announcements with the push toward wireless shown by Exxon Mobil's Speedpass system and Mastercard's PayPass card and we can see that contactless payment is here to stay. Even the venerable Illinois Tollway that tripped up my cashless friend has gone wireless, making it simple to pay your tolls while cruising along at full speed. When we at Ars ask our Magic 8-Ball whether plastic payment cards are on the way out, our trusty prognosticator tells us that "all signs point to yes."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060209-6149.html
p2p news / p2pnet: Sony Pictures is the first Hollywood studio to release pricing on its high-definition DVDs expected to be introduced early this summer," says Red Herring.
A whacking $23.45. And that's wholesale.
Blu-ray will compete with Toshiba's HD-DVD and among the flics in Sony's initial batch will be the somewhat elderly The Fifth Element, Desperado, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Legends of the Fall, and Terminator, says the story. And that's 56% more than the $14.99 it costs for a Hitch DVD from BestBuy.com. A Terminator disc goes for $9.99.
Failure of the Blu-ray and HD DVD firms to reach a unified standard, "has set the stage for a formats war akin to the VHS vs. Betamax battle of the 1980s," says Reuters. "Each side hopes to reignite the sagging $24 billion home video market with new players and discs that offer greater capacity and interactive features.
"Other film studios like Time Warner Inc's Warner Brothers declined comment, while General Electric Co's Universal was unavailable and a spokeswoman for Viacom Paramount Studios said the studio was still working out pricing with retailers."
Toshiba said it'll offer $500 and $800 HD DVD players in March, lower than a $1,000 Blu-ray player model currently under development by Samsung Corp, "a member of the Sony-led Blu-ray camp," says the story, adding:
"HD DVD plans to start rolling out hardware and titles by March and members of the Blu-ray consortium have said they will start shipping players by as early as May."
Still, anyone willing to lash out for an iPod he or she can then load with $1-a-pop DRM tunes from iTunes will probably pay it. And all to watch a movie that's more likely to be garbage than good.
Also See:
Red Herring - Blu-ray Discs Won?t Be Cheap, February 8, 2006
Reuters - Sony next-generation DVDs to cost about 20 pct more, February 9, 2006
C'T looks at Pioneer's pre-production BDR-101 Blu-ray burner
Posted by Dan Bell on 10 February 2006 - 00:50 - Source: Heise
Once again we learn from the German publication Heise, that the computer magazine C'T kicks some major butt and scores another blue laser pre-production device. This time, it's a Pioneer Blu-ray burner the BDR-101. The device is able to read and write Blue-ray discs at 2x and DVD with 8x speeds.
The pre-release drive, was just lacking the DRM system AACS. Originally, it was thought that AACS would be finished at the end of January, so Pioneer would have been able to deliver the BDR-101A to their OEM customers. However, the AACS group meeting was delayed until the end of this week, so Pioneer won't be able to deliver the burner to their OEM customers before the end of February.
Since the Pioneer BDR-101's pickup head only has a single lens, support for CDs is lacking. During tests we were able to burn a recordable BD-R from TDK for the first time. The VD-R disc has a capacity of 22.56 GB, slightly more than a rewritable BD-RE with only 22.23 GB. The remaining space is used for replacement sectors and defect management on the BD-RE.
In order to write an entire BD-R with 2x (CLV resulting in 9 MB/s), the BDR-101 needed 45:05 minutes. For this Pioneer delivered a test-PC, running a special version of Nero 7.0.5.2. The disc could also be read at 2x without problems. The average access time to a randomly chosen sector was 300 ms.
The drive was also able to write a DVD-R at 8x (ZCLV) in 10:27 minutes. The writing quality on a TDK recordable was goo with a low error rate. Reading a DVD-R the BDR-101 achieved a transfer rate of 8.2 MB/s with an average access time of 272 ms. A DVD-9 was read at 7.5 MB/s and 252 ms.
The drive's DVD error correction was excellent. It was able to read 99.9% of a badly burned test DVD-R and 100% of a badly pressed DVD-ROM ("Horror Disc").
On the back of the enclosure a small cooler blows air to the outside. It is only active if the drive gets too hot though. During tests the BDR-101 stayed surprisingly cool. The temperature on the surface of a freshly written BD-R disc was only at 32 °C (90 F). The noise level was low as well with 2.3 Sone while reading a BD-R and 1.8 Sone while reading a Video-DVD (measured from a 25 cm distance)
Summarizing it can be said that Pioneer did a great job. Technically the BDR-101 is ready for retail already. The drive recognized every disc and did not show any problems - now we only have to hope for an error free AACS implementation. Pioneer's test PC already was equipped with an nVidia graphics card with Geforce 6600GT and HDMI output. But the manufacturer was not able to give an estimated release date for this card.
The requested price for this drive is quite high however. In the USA the BDR-101A (A stands for AACS) the drive is expected to cost $975 - almost twice as much as Samsung's SH-B022. For Europe no price has been set yet. Pioneer is not going to sell the drive as retail, but only with a basic software package for burning data BD and reading BD movies as bulk, starting at the end of March. Software for authoring Blu-ray movies won't be available before the end of April according to Pioneer.
If the drive will be able to write to dual layer BD recordables with 50 GB is still unclear as these discs are not yet available. But it should be able to read double layer BD-ROM anyway.
Only the second generation of Pioneer's Blu-ray burners is supposed to read and write CDs. The BDR-102 which is already planned for this year will also be able to write Blu-ray recordables with 4x (single and dual layer). DVD-RAM will be written at 5x and DVD recordables at 16x.
Those of you that can read German and would like to view this story in it's entirety at it's source, may do so by simply following this link to Heise.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13049
Settec protection on German video DVD impairs CD/DVD writers
Posted by Dan Bell on 10 February 2006 - 20:53 - Source: Heise
RTV71 used our news submit to tell us "I guess these characters can"t learn by example." Here's some further details of the actions that can be expected if you are unlucky enough to put a Settec Alpha-DVD protected movie DVD in your PC.
This copy protection is known as Alpha-DVD. The main application receives a different name on every install, using inconspicuous names such as "win32k2.exe" and "msxhtml.exe". Its file properties characterize it as a "System PTHelper". The executable launches as a cloaked process which Process Explorer. The copy protection also loads a DLL file into memory (hadl.dll), which becomes a child process of all running executables. In the system registry, Alpha-DVD sets itself up as "SystemManager" and armors this entry in such a way that it is restored on every reboot.
With the prompting of hadl.dll, all applications begin to query the OS for ASPI and ASAPI drivers as well as a DLL supplied with various products by Slysoft, a company specializing in DVD copying and "ripping" tools. According to Kinowelt, the German distributor of the copy-protected DVD, the purpose of these sweeps is to hinder the duplication of the DVD. It's supposed to become active only when the protected DVD is found in one of the optical drives. If the protected title is located, Alpha-DVD is meant to block the execution of common ripping tools.
However, in web forums German users soon complained about irregularities. Several of them reported that after inserting the copy-protected disc, CD/DVD writing applications could no longer locate optical and virtual disk drives removed from the OS. Neither of these claims could be verified as of yet. However, c't magazine found that Alpha-DVD would not stop polling for drivers if the protected disc was removed from the drive. Even worse, the continuous sweeps seemed to have a negative impact on CD/DVD burning in general.
On two different test machines, the DVD writer kept speeding up and slowing down during the burning process. In instance, this resulted in a destroyed DVD-RW medium. The copy-protected disc was not time. c't can not confirm whether the application actually blocks DVD ripping tools since the use of copy circumvention devices is prohibited under German copyright law.
Well here we go again! More malware for the end user that thought they were just buying a movie. It's bad enough to have to put up with copy protections, but when they become this intrusive it seems that something needs to be done about it. In order to read the English article in it's entirety from the source, just visit this link at Heise. In the meantime, just say "no" to autoplay in Windows.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13052
Copy Protection on German Video DVD Impairs CD/DVD Writers
When customers insert the German Video-DVD of the movie "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" into their Windows PC, they are presented with an EULA (End User License Agreement) which explains that the disc is copy-protected. If they do not accept the EULA, the drive ejects the disk. If they click on "I agree", the DVD installs three files into the Windows system directory (system32).
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This copy protection is known as Alpha-DVD. The main application receives a different name on every install, using inconspicuous names such as "win32k2.exe" and "msxhtml.exe". Its file properties characterize it as a "System PTHelper". The executable launches as a cloaked process which Process Explorer. The copy protection also loads a DLL file into memory (hadl.dll), which becomes a child process of all running executables. In the system registry, Alpha-DVD sets itself up as "SystemManager" and armors this entry in such a way that it is restored on every reboot.
With the prompting of hadl.dll, all applications begin to query the OS for ASPI and ASAPI drivers as well as a DLL supplied with various products by Slysoft, a company specializing in DVD copying and "ripping" tools. According to Kinowelt, the German distributor of the copy-protected DVD, the purpose of these sweeps is to hinder the duplication of the DVD. It's supposed to become active only when the protected DVD is found in one of the optical drives. If the protected title is located, Alpha-DVD is meant to block the execution of common ripping tools.
However, in web forums German users soon complained about irregularities. Several of them reported that after inserting the copy-protected disc, CD/DVD writing applications could no longer locate optical and virtual disk drives removed from the OS. Neither of these claims could be verified as of yet. However, c't magazine found that Alpha-DVD would not stop polling for drivers if the protected disc was removed from the drive. Even worse, the continuous sweeps seemed to have a negative impact on CD/DVD burning in general.
On two different test machines, the DVD writer kept speeding up and slowing down during the burning process. In instance, this resulted in a destroyed DVD-RW medium. The copy-protected disc was not time. c't can not confirm whether the application actually blocks DVD ripping tools since the use of copy circumvention devices is prohibited under German copyright law.
It is, of course, possible to prevent the installation of the copy protection by disabling the DVD drive's "autostart" feature or keeping the shift key pressed after inserting the disc. This enables playback on computers, but does not permit copying of the disc, since it is protected the Content Scrambling System (CSS) and "bad sectors". The Media Center Edition of Windows XP is usually not affected by Alpha-DVD, because the media center application ignores DVD-ROM autostart applications on Video DVDs.
The Alpha-DVD copy protection is manufactured by the Korean companySettec. A former unit of LG Electronics, claims its technology "has been classified as one of the most reliable copy protection solutions". The EULA of the installer goes so far as to claim that the copy protection has been "examined and declared safe by the manufacturers of the approved systems", the systems listed being "Windows 98, 98 SE, ME, 2000, XP, 2003". This statement could not yet be verified with Microsoft.
For several weeks, Settec offered an uninstaller which could only be downloaded after entering a valid e-mail address. In return, the manufacturer would issue a 32-digit "authorization keycode" and a download link. On February 7, Settec replaced the uninstaller with a variant which does not require e-mail registration. However, both versions of the uninstaller insisted on a direct Internet connection to function. If Internet access was blocked by a firewall or a proxy server, the uninstall process failed. Due to the stealth measures mentioned above, a manual uninstall is rather difficult. Apparently in response to customer complaints, Settec is now offering a new uninstaller which removes the copy protection with no questions asked. This third iteration of the installer does no longer require an e-mail address or an internet connection.
Currently, only a few titles are affected by Alpha-DVD 1.0.3.5: the German versions of the romantic action movie "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" and the lesser-known police thriller "Edison", both issued by Kinowelt. According to the German distributor, 50,000 copies have been sold of the Edison DVD since its release in Mid-December 2005. The DVD for Mr. & Mrs. Smith was released on February 7, following a two-week "rental-only" period. An earlier version of the copy protection appears on the Korean DVD "Old Boy - Final Edition". It is currently unknown what other titles may be affected.
Asked whether they would continue to use Alpha-DVD on their titles, German video distributor Kinowelt stated that they will continue to evaluate the copy protection market and decide based on their observations. (ghi/c't)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/69361
p2p news / p2pnet: Here's something scholars of the bitter fight between music lovers and the Big Four record labels shouldn't miss.
Warner Music, Vivendi Universal, EMI and Sony BMG seek to reduce people who share music with each other to the status of fettered serfs. But online music lovers are equally determined to remain unfettered surfers.
In an exclusive interview, RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) boss, "Mitch 'Litigious Bastard' Bainwol, discussed the analog hole, and the recent controversy surrounding it," says UnNews. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
RIAA CEO discusses the analog hole
By UnNews - February, 2006
Mitch, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us, could you explain very quickly what the analog hole is and why it poses a problem to the RIAA?
Sure. The basic problem that the RIAA has in protecting it's property, is that after people have bought music, they can actually listen to it. So far we've made some very successful efforts to protect our property from our customers. However, even if we stop people from copying our property digitally, they will always be able hear it, and thus to reproduce it through analog means.
Like putting a taperecorder and a microphone next to the speaker?
Right, or by memorizing a song, and singing it to a friend who hasn't purchased the listening rights to the song. That poses a real problem for musical artists. If everybody can just sing the songs to each other, noone will ever pay for the music. That's the problem in a nutshell. Every user has it's analog hole - or a-hole as we've come to refer to it - and it's that hole that the RIAA is determined to seal. It's our intention to plug customer's a-holes.
And how do you intend to accomplish this?
That's a very good question. The intention is to prohibit, by law, any future analog recording equipment from copying analog data if we don't want it to. We'll simply insert a certain invisible and inaudible marking in the analog data, and if the recording device detects this marking, it refuses to copy the signal. Thus thuroughly plugging our customer's a-holes. It's part of a cooperative project with the MPAA and other organizations.
But surely, such a law will never get approved.
It already has.
Oh
Yeah.
Eh... ok... ehm, you were saying something about a cooperative project?
Yes, we're very excited about this. We're working together with several organizations to really get inside the a-hole. We've dubbed the project Fundamental Uncircumventable Content Control.
FUCC...
That's right, it's become quite the popular moniker around the RIAA. FUCC, or FUCCing as we sometimes call it has become synonymous with a clean, safe and wholesome experience of our content for the consumer, the way it's meant to be enjoyed. It combines technological innovations, objective ad campaigns to inform our customers that what they're doing is wrong and anti-piracy legislation, among other things. And we would like to apply this to the a-hole.
The consumer's a-hole...
Exactly, we would like to FUCC our customers a-holes. To tell you the truth, all the RIAA has been doing lately, is FUCCing our customers' a-holes. We have wanted to FUCC the American people over for some time now, and under the current administration, we are finally getting that chance.
Are consumers comfortable with this approach? It seems rather invasive.
Let me explain to you why FUCCing the a-hole is a positive thing for the consumer too. There is a natural hierarchy in society. People need to follow the law. It's as simple as that. Without law, all you get is anarchy and terrorism. If people follow the law, the entertainment industry prospers, and people get a safe and easy delivery of their content, and they'll enjoy it so much more, knowing that they are not criminals. We at the RIAA believe in the good of humanity. We know that people inherently want to be good. It may, at first, feel like we are brutally forcing our legislattion and DRM technology into people's a-holes, but their initial fear needs to be interpreted correctly. People want their a-holes FUCCed. They may be saying 'no', but they mean 'yes'.
There eh... have been... is that blood in your coffee mug? Are you drinking blood?
What makes you say that?
You have a red milk mustache.
Grapejuice.
Oh. There have been increasing claims that the RIAA and MPAA are meddling too much with the liberties of consumers, limiting their ability to use their own property. What do you say to these allegations?
Once again, it's a matter of interpreting signals. People may be saying they want us to go away and 'stop bothering them', but meanwhile they're leaving their a-holes exposed. We're just responding to signals that people are sendingout. FUCCing these a-holes is the only way to put a halt to the moral decline that is corrupting America.
And on that note, I'd like to conclude the interview. Thank you for your time. I really need a shower.
My pleasure. And remember, don't sing any songs in the shower unless you own the cd's.
p2p special / p2pnet: On June 25, 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America declared all-out war on users of p2p networks and began suing people for file sharing:
?Starting tomorrow, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will begin gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally offering to "share" substantial amounts of copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks.?
Notice the very specific language of the RIAA, and Cary Sherman, its president: ?The law is clear and the message to those who are distributing substantial quantities of music online should be equally clear --- this activity is illegal.?
I completely agree with Mr Sherman; distributing substantial quantities of music online should be illegal, but that's not what p2p networks users are doing. They're sharing files and sharing is what the RIAA is technically suing them for, except it calls sharing ?distributing?.
In its own world, ?The RIAA expects to use the data it collects as the basis for filing what could ultimately be thousands of lawsuits charging individual peer-to-peer music distributors with copyright infringement.? Ray Beckerman, an attorney for several of the victims, says it's inaccurate to call these downloading or uploading cases because the ?complaints do not refer to any known acts of copying.? There's a big semantic and volitional difference between simply ?sharing? music and actually ?distributing illegal copies?, but the RIAA wants to convince the courts that these two actions are one and the same.
Based on the evidence he's seen, Beckerman prefers to term the cases 'peer to peer file sharing' cases, since that is what they are, at most.
This article is written as a general guide to help you understand what the RIAA is doing and how to use p2p software responsibly.
For p2pnet readers, a lot of this may be old hat.
So far, about 18,000 people have been sued, with more lawsuits on the way. In press releases, interviews, and the mainstream media, RIAA officials continue to paint file sharers with a broad stroke, taking every opportunity to brand users as ?pirates? and ?criminals? who are breaking the law, actively ?stealing their property?, and collectively ?decimating the music industry?.
The RIAA repeatedly cites irrelevant sales figures and blames industry losses on p2p users instead of acknowledging changing market conditions, questioning bad leadership, and examining their failing business strategies.
Firstly, the phenomenal success of Apple?s iTunes store clearly shows people do want to buy music, just not the way the RIAA wants them to -- on an $18 piece of plastic. And buying music they are! Opened at the end of April 2003, the iTunes store is rapidly approaching its 1 billionth download and iPod sales continue to skyrocket, with no let up in sight - Apple sold 14 million iPods in the last 3 months of 2005 alone.
Secondly, when you treat your customers with open contempt as Sony and Thomas Hesse have done with their idiotic XCP rootkit scheme, customers are going to get angry and stop buying CD?s. The record companies, rather than embracing the enormous business potential of p2p systems and adapting to new technologies, are clinging to curmudgeonly thinking and antiquated business models and doing what greedy corporations do best when faced with a threat to their hegemony: sue the living daylights out of people.
But it doesn?t have to be this way. I strongly believe file sharing can benefit the record companies a great deal, allowing them to promote many more artists, take risks, and offer a much wider selection of music to their customers than they can now with their ?all the eggs in one basket? megastar approach.
Smaller bands and independent artists will be the first to benefit from the increased exposure, and even many big name artists see the potential of p2p technology.
The distribution system is cheap and an already-existing army of users stands ready to essentially do the work of promoting the music for free. All this translates to lower costs for the labels and ultimately, cheaper and more interesting music for the fans. It could be a win-win situation for fans and record companies alike. But this argument is mostly academic. The RIAA doesn?t care to give p2p a chance, and I?m not going to give them free business advice. In their opinion, if you?re sharing music online, you?re a ?criminal? and you?re going to get sued.
The RIAA doesn't have the business intelligence, or even the common sense, to realize this strategy is not only ineffective, it's counterproductive. Instead of creating brand loyalty among music fans and nurturing a cooperative environment with sensible file sharing rules, the RIAA is going after individuals who make up the customer base of the Boig Four record labels and young people who'll grow up to become lifelong music purchasers.
Even more un-kosher is the fact they're deliberately targeting young children, single moms, and grandparents, a tactic which should make you wonder about the moral character of the RIAA. Do you really want to do business with people who knowingly sue 12 year-old girls and grandmas? And as shown by a number of highly-publicized blunders, their investigative techniques are unforgivably sloppy, resulting in a lot of people being wrongly accused - people who've never shared a file in their lives, or even owned a computer, have been sued. They even tried to sue a dead woman.
The RIAA fails to realize that suing people for thousands of dollars not only turns them off to the idea of buying music from RIAA companies ever again, but that these 18,000 people have friends. And their friends have friends. Better yet, they have email, personal web sites, message boards, and blogs. Word is spreading fast and pretty soon, the RIAA will have an evewn worse public relations nightmare on its hands than it has already.
In the RIAA?s wrong-headed view, merely having files sitting in your shared folder is enough to get you in trouble for copyright infringement. It doesn?t matter that you legally purchased the music and intend it only for personal use. The fact they're in your shared directory makes you liable. Here, then, are some ways for you to avoid being mistakenly identified and becoming their next victim.
* First, if you?re using Kazaa, uninstall it immediately! Not only is it full of spyware, adware, and all kinds of hidden programs that slow down your computer, it's one of the programs the RIAA is actively targeting.
* Remember, as long as you share music RIAA companies own the copyrights to, you're in danger. So the first step is to stop sharing RIAA copyrighted files. Share only music that's copyright-free, or that the artists have given permission to share.
* Most, if not all, p2p programs perform a search of your entire hard drive for files to share when you first install and run them. Many people unknowingly, or out of convenience, shared their entire ?My Documents? folder. This folder may contain a lot of personal files or music that you never intended to share. Make sure you designate a special directory for shared files and only share that directory.
* The RIAA seems to be targeting users who share ?substantial quantities? of files: 1,000 songs or more. If you have a lot of files shared, the agents hired by the RIAA to monitor p2p networks likely won?t know or care what these songs actually are (if you?ve bought them, if they?re public domain, non-copyrighted, etc). Keep the number of songs you share low, although this is no guarantee that you won?t get targeted. There's no telling who the RIAA will sue next.
* The RIAA also seems to be targeting users who are supernodes/ultrapeers, so turn off the supernode/ultrapeer option. If you?re not sharing any files that are copyrighted, then you have nothing to worry about, even if you are a supernode/ultrapeer. In that case, by all means, leave this option on.
* Scrub your mp3?s of all comment tags with a utility like TagScanner. The metadata is one thing RIAA lawyers zero in on to try to prove you're downloading files. Most CD ripping software puts comments suich as, ?Made with Real Jukebox? or ?encoded with xxxx program?. Also, remove any comments or personal notes like ?wow, this song is great!? or ?for Judy?s birthday party?. The RIAA, looking at your metadata, might think you got these files from somebody else.
There's no guarantee you won?t be sued for sharing files, so do so at your own risk.
If you disagree with what the record companies are doing, don?t support them. Let them know you mean business by not purchasing their products and telling your friends to do the same.
Buy music from sharing-friendly bands and companies, and if you really must buy CD?s from RIAA labels, buy them used from second-hand record shops, flea markets, or eBay.
The RIAA doesn?t get a cent of your money from secondary market sales.
P2p software gives power to the people and to individual artists, and the RIAA is afraid because it erodes their control over the music industry.
Send this message to the record companies loud and clear:
We are not your enemies, so stop suing us. Work with us, not against us.
If you fight us, we will fight back. Join, or Die!
Zi Mei
[Mei says he's a one-man design and technology consulting shop. Just as important, he's working hard to rip apart spurious RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) claims that it can reliably pin-point copyright infringers.]
REDMOND, Wash.--Microsoft and its hardware partners will continue to develop new digital media devices aimed at challenging the dominance of Apple Computer's ubiquitous iPod music player, Chairman Bill Gates said on Friday.
"I don't think what's out on the market today is the final answer," Gates said, speaking to a group of minority students. "Between us and our partners, you can expect some pretty hot products coming out over the next few years."
The Microsoft founder praised Apple's iTunes music store and said the software giant was talking with hardware partners to create media devices that can be less expensive and easier to connect and can handle pictures and video better.
Gates said the market share for digital music players compatible with Microsoft software is around 20 percent, a figure that is lower than he would like.
Microsoft's strategy has been to allow various device manufacturers to create players that would be compatible with its software, arguing that it offered consumers more options.
However, BusinessWeek reported last week that Microsoft is mulling its own media device in an effort to cut into Apple's nearly 70 percent U.S. market share. The company declined to comment on the article at the time.
What Will Vista Mean to You?
..To me.The opportunity to build a new machine.To most other folks out there...spending a hell of a lot more money to use Microsofts latest and yet to be seen greatest..
Listening to the hype surrounding the upcoming release of Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista, people could be forgiven for thinking that the new OS will revolutionize the home-computing experience.
Full story Yahoo News
What Will Vista Mean to You?
Walaika K. Haskins, newsfactor.com Fri Feb 10, 6:35 PM ET
Listening to the hype surrounding the upcoming release of Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista, people could be forgiven for thinking that the new OS will revolutionize the home-computing experience.
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During his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show held in January in Las Vegas, Microsoft Chairman
Bill Gates cast Vista as an integral part of what he called "the decade of digital lifestyles."
"Technology has revolutionized how we listen to music, watch TV, play games, communicate, and manage and share personal information," Gates said. "In years ahead, further exciting innovations will unify the software, hardware, and services in people's lives, offering them even richer, more-engaging, and deeply connected experiences."
But while executives at Microsoft are hopeful that consumers will embrace Vista as just such a unifying innovation, some industry experts said it might take awhile to convince people that the new OS is, indeed, a key to a richer life.
"I've yet to see evidence of either significant performance increases or truly new applications which will make consumers regret not having Vista," said Paul Jackson, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, a consulting and research firm focused on technology.
Microsoft's Challenge
Jackson and Ted Schadler, a vice president at Forrester, wrote a report released in June of last year in which they argued that Microsoft would alienate customers if the company focused too much on security, search, and reliability when touting the features of its new OS, which is due to be released at some point in 2006.
Instead, people need to feel as if Vista was built just for them to handle their "personal scenarios," such as communications, music, photos, home video, TV, games, and life management, Jackson and Schadler wrote in "Microsoft's Longhorn: Making Consumers Care." (Longhorn was the original name given to Vista during its years in development.)
The report outlined the challenges Microsoft faces in marketing its new OS to mainstream consumers, 42 percent of whom feel intimidated by technology, according to Forrester. Many people also lack awareness and understanding of the features available to them in tech products, the report said. For example, in a survey cited by the authors, 57 percent of online households said that they see no reason to have a home network.
"Microsoft, as an engineering firm, has this problem in spades," said the authors, "touting features like 'autocomplete' and 'secure by default' that leave consumers wondering why they should care."
View from Vista
It appears that Microsoft got the message, as Vista contains several enhancements designed to make it more inviting and easier to use than
Windows XP, the current OS.
"Microsoft is targeting more 'lifestyle' activities, and [Vista's user interface] looks considerably nicer than XP, especially on those large plasma displays which early-adopting consumers will increasingly hook their media-center PCs up to," Jackson said.
Vista will feature Aero, which Microsoft is calling its "glass" user interface because it can render open windows translucently, making it easier to see what is happening on the desktop at all times.
Using a feature called Quick Search, people can type in any word, name, or phrase and find all items stored on the computer that relate to it. Another new feature, Search Folder, works as a kind of "always on" search. Typing in search criteria, such as "dogs," for example, and the OS will create a folder into which any new files on dogs will be inserted automatically.
Windows Flip was designed for easier transitioning between applications. The technology will enable users to flip through open windows using the Alt+Tab key combination to view a live thumbnail of each window. Flip 3D moves the applications into a "3D space," through which people can sort through windows using the arrow keys or the scroll wheel on a mouse.
Other enhancements include a new version of the Microsoft Web browser, Internet Explorer 7, with built-in, user-account protection, support for RSS news feeds, and "gadgets" -- mini-applications that offer an array of possible uses, such as weather forecasts, news updates, Internet radio streams, and online photo slideshows.
Other Elements
Microsoft's aim is to integrate computers more deeply into consumers' lives, according to Jim Allchin, Microsoft Group vice president of platforms. The problem has been getting consumers to view their PCs as machines that run as smoothly, consistently, and error-free as other household appliances, such as a television.
In order to provide that kind of responsiveness, Microsoft has made changes in how Vista transitions between power states. Users will be able to switch the computer to sleep or turn it off with just the click of a button, just as with TVs and other electronic devices. With the new fast-off button, the shutdown, sleep, or restart will occur "quickly and gracefully."
Vista also promises a much faster load time for applications and files. A new feature called SuperFetch aims to eliminate the often erratic and sluggish response time when booting up a machine, switching between users, or returning from sleep mode. The technology tracks the applications accessed most frequently by users and preloads them in the system's memory.
In terms of security, Allchin said that with the release of Vista, Microsoft would greatly reduce the security problems associated with its operating systems "by building a top-to-bottom security architecture, checking code quality with tools developed by Microsoft Research, and designing [Vista] to be primarily an Internet-connected -- rather than standalone -- operating system."
Windows Defender, the resulting security software, will sport a simplified and redesigned interface to make scanning for and removal of malware easier. Engineers also have included new technologies such as a warning system that will deliver alert escalations on the basis of the severity of the incoming threat.
Parental controls will enable people to limit when and for how long their children can use the computer. Parents also will be able to restrict access to games on the basis of title, content, or ESRB rating. And just to make certain they are in step with their children's computer use, parents will have the option to run a detailed report on each child's computer comings and goings.
Watershed or Treading Water?
Jackson said that, even with all of these new, consumer-friendly features, the key to adoption will be the price of the software and the ease of the upgrade. "In general, consumers tend not to upgrade their PC OS," Jackson said, "mainly because they think this software is free when they get their new PC and are shocked that an upgrade costs $95."
Microsoft has other questions to answer, Jackson said. How many versions of Vista will be available to consumers? Will there be media and professional editions? How well will the new translucency and 3D desktop effects work on PCs that are less than top-of-the-line?
Both Jackson and Nitin Gupta, an analyst at the research firm Yankee Group, said they did not expect Vista to be the catalyst that alters the way PCs are used in the home -- yet. Both agreed, rather, that Vista is better seen as a step forward in the PC's evolution to a living-room appliance akin to a television or stereo.
"Does [Vista] signal the point in time when we will look back and say, 'Yes, that's when the PC became living-room friendly'?" Jackson said. "Not really -- at least not on its own. It's the back-room 'glue,' after all. It will be the final piece of the puzzle in creating a holistic PC-based entertainment hub."
Any shift likely will occur only when people become more comfortable with adopting the PC as a media center, and, most important, Gupta said, as more and more movie and television content becomes available to download to new entertainment devices.
"Vista will provide content owners with a more secure platform to deliver their premium content. However, it will take more than an operating system to turn the PC into a media hub," said Gupta. "Creating innovative consumer experiences around premium content will help expand the market for content delivery via the PC. Vista is not the key component."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20060210/tc_nf/41505
weazel200
read this,as i hope this answers ye question
was posted on my site.
july 21, 2005 7:00 PM PDT
Longhorn to be renamed Windows Vista?
Rumor has it that Microsoft plans to use Vista as the official name for the next version of Windows, which has been known by its codename, Longhorn.
In addition to the rumors on various Microsoft enthusiast sites, the company has also registered the domain name windowsvista.us, as noted by Windows watcher bink.nu.
The company won't comment, but it is expected to make some sort of Longhorn-related announcement Friday morning.
Microsoft gives the next version of Windows an official name and promises beta 1 by August 3.
Yardena Arar, PC World
Friday, July 22, 2005
It's not Longhorn anymore. Microsoft today announced that Windows Vista will be the official name of the next version of its flagship operating system, and that beta 1 of the OS will arrive by August 3.
The announcement was made Thursday afternoon at a briefing in Atlanta to some 10,000 Microsoft sales and service employees and then revealed this morning via a video posted on Microsoft's Web site.
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"So there's no more Longhorn, we're now officially Windows Vista," Brian Valentine, senior vice president of Windows Core Operating System told the cheering crowd.
What's in a Name?
Why Windows Vista? Greg Sullivan, group product manager in the Windows client division, said Microsoft had received good feedback when it abandoned numeric names based, first, on release numbers (e.g., Windows 3.1) and then release dates such as Windows 95 in favor of Windows XP, "a moniker that tried to express something about the product itself."
The key goal of Longhorn, Sullivan added, was to deal with a world in which "there's just more and more stuff. We really turn to our PCs to help manage this 'more,' and we need a system that helps bring clarity to us."
"That's what Windows Vista is about, bringing clarity to the world so you can focus on what matters to you."
Microsoft today also put up a Web site, explaining Windows Vista and reminding readers that the final version of the operating system isn't expected until 2006.
Sullivan noted that beta 1, when it arrives in the next couple of weeks, will only be distributed in the development and IT community and not to the public at large.
"Beta 1 is almost exclusively a plumbing release. Our view that the end user functionality is not in beta 1, it's in beta 2. The true essence of the product that's going to reflect the name as well is going to be in beta 2," Sullivan said.
The first beta will include only some of Vista's promised functionality, such as virtual folders and a new desktop search engine, but will not include much of the graphical user interface (GUI) enhancements of the finished product, Sullivan said, adding that those features will be available in beta 2. He did not disclose a time frame for that release, saying that depends on the feedback Microsoft receives about beta 1.
Microsoft is also widely expected to release more Vista bits to developers at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles in mid-September, but Sullivan said it has not been decided whether or not this will occur. "There will certainly be more disclosure on features that will be added post-beta 1 [at the PDC]," he said.
Podmaxx DVD->iPod copying software may conflict with DMCA
Posted by Seán Byrne on 12 February 2006 - 01:28 - Source: Red Herring
Despite several companies that made DVD backup/copy software facing legal issues for getting around a DVD's CSS copy protection, this has not stopped Bing Software from releasing Podmaxx, which claims to be able to transfer the contents of any DVD to an Apple Video iPod. The software can also convert QuickTime movies for transfer to an iPod or for iTunes compatibility.
While iTunes already offers video downloads for the iPod such as TV episodes, music videos and so on, so far Apple does not offer any full length movies at this time. The marketing manager, Chris Kennedy at Bling also mentioned that there is no issue with the DRM aspects when it comes to transferring movies from DVDs to the iPod since it is designed for one's personal use and cannot be used for mass distribution.
According to an intellectual property attorney and a professor at North-western University Law School, they reckon that the software would be considered legal by the courts for personal use since they predict that the courts would find it acceptable that consumers can purchase a DVD to transfer to their iPod for their own personal use. Another thing the software allows is the ability to back up an iPod's contents, unlike iTunes where music can only be transferred to an iPod, but not vice versa.
Chris Kennedy, marketing manager at Bling, said there were no problems dealing with the digital rights management (DRM) aspects of transferring movies from DVDs. ?It?s designed for your personal use,? he said. ?It?s not something that can be broken for mass distribution.?
The Motion Picture Association of America, which has been aggressively pursuing anti-piracy efforts, had no immediate comment, nor did Apple. Apple is rumored to be developing a new video iPod that does not require a click wheel as well as a wireless iPod.
Mr. Kennedy said the video capability in his company?s software was like blank tape. He pointed out that numerous DVD transfer software packages are widely available for sale.
?It?s all been fully vetted in terms of the DRM rules,? he said.
As this software claims to be able to transfer any DVD, it will be interesting to see how long they run before some legal issues takes place (assuming something does happen). For example, 321 studios was faced with lawsuits and lost their case for breaching the DMCA, even though they claimed their software was strictly for personal use and backing up DVDs only. So far, the majority of DVD backup and copying software either work on unprotected DVDs or rely on a 3rd party tool to get around the Content Scrambling System copy protection used on most DVDs.
Distance record for aircraft broken despite Mayday
* 21:43 11 February 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* David Chandler
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Despite tense last moments when Steve Fossett's GlobalFlyer lost all electrical power and declared a Mayday during final descent, the world distance record for any aircraft has been broken. Both pilot and plane ended up safely on the ground - after bursting two tires during touchdown.
The power failure forced Fossett to land at Bournemouth, in England, about 270 kilometres (162 miles) short of the intended landing at Kent International Airport in Manston. The flight covered an unofficial distance of 42,469.5 kilometres (26,389.3 miles) in 76 hours and 45 minutes.
After the Mayday signal, indicating a serious emergency situation, he manoeuvred the plane to a landing with no power for the instruments or radio. He also has to contend with a cockpit window that iced up severely reducing visibility.
The failure apparently was caused by a generator that had overheated. Steve Ridgeway, chief executive of sponsors Virgin Atlantic, said: "If we didn't get him down in 15 minutes, he would have had to have ditched the plane."
The last leg of the trip was fraught even before the power failure as fuel was running low as he crossing the Atlantic for the second time. That was the result of weak tailwinds early in the journey and a fuel loss of 34 kilograms (750 pounds) during takeoff.
Carbon-fibre composite
There were also frightening moments earlier in the flight. Just under halfway, as he passed over Bhopal, India, on Thursday, Fossett said he was afraid GlobalFlyer was going to break up due to turbulence: ?It was a scary time and I had my parachute on and I was prepared to bail out in case a wing broke."
Fossett did not reveal the scary episode to mission controllers in England until several hours later, but Virgin chairman Richard Branson, who had been talking to Fossett by radio, said it sounded like the plane was taking "a real battering."
The jet-powered plane is built entirely of carbon-fibre composite by Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, US. This reduces weight to maximize its range but makes it far more vulnerable to turbulence than a commercial jet.
The flight set a new record for total distance travelled by any kind of aircraft without landing or refuelling. It eclipsed the previous record held by the Breitling Orbiter balloon, piloted by Bertrand Piccard, as well as the distance record for an airplane, set in Voyager by Dick Rutan and Jenna Yeager in 1986, and Steve Fossett's own record set in 2005 for the longest solo flight.
After landing, the plane was found to have just 200 pounds of fuel left on board.
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Four tech experts battle over which is the best browser -- Internet Explorer 7, FireFox, Opera, or Maxthon. We take you on a visual tour of each, then let you make the call.
By Ed Bott, Scot Finnie, Dennis Fowler, and Ron White InternetWeek
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Are you an Internet Explorer traditionalist? An old-time Opera booster? A fervent FireFox enthusiast? Or an advocate of possible Next-Big-Thing Maxthon?
Now that Microsoft has come out with the public preview of its upcoming Internet Explorer 7 for XP, it is time to explore exactly why IE is still top dog, whether it deserves to bear that title, and which browsers may be closing in on its tail.
Getting Passionate About Browsers
Challenging IE is not an easy task ? when a browser ships along with your operating system, and is the default for which most site owners design their pages, it's hard to challenge its primacy. And Microsoft knew this ? for a long time, IE seemed to be resting on its laurels, ignoring such popular features as RSS readers and tabbed browsing.
However, in the browser race, if you stall, you fall, and some IE users were lured away by competitors' features. While FireFox still has nowhere near IE's numbers, and may have even stalled a bit recently, Mozilla's browser has made headlines by attracting a growing and incredibly loyal user base.
And FireFox is not the only alternative out there. At one time, the role of David to IE's Goliath was acted by Opera, a feature-filled independent browser that was one of the original havens for those who wanted to avoid any entanglement with Microsoft. Other users who are less devout in their distaste for any software coming out of Redmond are trying out alternatives based on the IE engine, such as up-and-comer Maxthon.
Having realized its mistake, Microsoft decided not to wait until its upcoming Vista operating system premiered in 2007 to debut a new version of IE. Redmond previewed the first public beta of Internet Explorer 7 for XP on January 31, 2006. It's not the only browser that's busily upgrading, though. The final version of FireFox 1.5 hit the Web on November 29, 2005; Opera has just announced (but, as of this writing, not yet released) a technical preview of its latest 9.0 release, while Maxthon offered a major upgrade to 1.5.0 last September, and a tweaked version 1.5.2 at the end of December.
In an effort to attract users, these new browsers include (or are capable of including) everything but the kitchen sink -- and we wouldn't be surprised if at least one actually offered hot and cold running water. Tabbing, a choice of search engines, and RSS readers have become expected features. You can also start looking for thumbnails of tabbed pages (IE7 and Opera 9), BitTorrent downloads (Opera 9), hundreds of extensions (Firefox), and a "Collection Bin" for saving text and graphics (Maxthon).
Battling For The Best
So which is the best? We've asked four of our best and most opinionated writers to review the latest version of their favorite browser, and try to convince the rest of us to use it as well. We've got Ed Bott supporting Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview For Windows XP, Scot Finnie advocating for FireFox 1.5, Dennis Fowler pushing Opera 8.5, and Ron White cheerleading for Maxthon 1.5.
However, just telling you about these four browsers isn't enough ? we've decided to both show and tell, by including a visual tour of each browser and a side-by-side comparison of four of the most popular features: tabs, RSS readers, search engines, and extensions/add-ons. At the end of it all, we'll ask you to vote which one you think is best.
So fire up your own browser and prepare to be convinced to either switch or stay.
Microsoft Anti-Spyware Deleting Norton Anti-Virus
...Talk about something to get one p.o.'d...
Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it.
Full story Hack In The Box
Microsoft Anti-Spyware Deleting Norton Anti-Virus
Posted by l33tdawg on Sunday, February 12, 2006 - 01:40 AM (Reads: 341)
Source: Washington Post
L33tdawg: This reminds me of the days when Back Orifice and other 'remote administration tools' were tagged as trojans by antivirus companies simply because such software were given out for free and had 'stealth mechanisms' built in. Yet commericial software which had VERY SIMILAR features *cough* PCAnywhere *cough* would never be called a TROJAN simply because you paid money for it... What a bunch of bull...
Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it. According to several different support threads over at Microsoft's user groups forum, the latest definitions file from Microsoft "(version 5805, 5807) detects Symantec Antivirus files as PWS.Bancos.A (Password Stealer)." When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec's product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user's machine. The Norton user then has to go through the Windows registry and delete multiple entries (registry editing is always a dicey affair that can quickly hose a system if the user doesn't know what he or she is doing) so that the program can be completely removed and re-installed.
Microsoft Anti-Spyware Deleting Norton Anti-Virus
Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it.
According to several different support threads over at Microsoft's user groups forum, the latest definitions file from Microsoft "(version 5805, 5807) detects Symantec Antivirus files as PWS.Bancos.A (Password Stealer)."
When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec's product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user's machine. The Norton user then has to go through the Windows registry and delete multiple entries (registry editing is always a dicey affair that can quickly hose a system if the user doesn't know what he or she is doing) so that the program can be completely removed and re-installed.
I put in calls to Microsoft and to Symantec on this issue, but am still waiting to hear back from both companies.
Microsoft said it is shipping updates that fix this problem, but judging from the growing number of other threads on this in that forum, this is shaping up to be a pretty big issue for companies that have deployed Microsoft's free anti-spyware product inside their networks. It's a good idea to keep in mind that Microsoft's Anti-Spyware product is in beta mode: The company's product page explicitly says that Microsoft Anti-Spyware should not be deployed in production systems. I'm not apologizing for Redmond in any way; it just seems like too many people ignore warnings about beta products.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/02/microsoft_anti...
Fine Line Revealed Between Creativity and Insanity By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 07 September 2005
03:09 pm ET
History suggests that the line between creativity and madness is a fine one, but a small group of people known as schizotypes are able to walk it with few problems and even benefit from it.
A new study confirms that their enhanced creativity may come from using more of the right side of the brain than the rest of us.
In the spectrum between normal and insane, schizotypes generally fall somewhere in the middle. While they do not suffer many of the symptoms affecting schizophrenics, including paranoia, hallucinations and incoherent thoughts, schizotypes often exhibit their own eccentricities.
"They may dress or carry themselves in a strange way," says Bradley Folley, a graduate student in clinical psychology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and the lead author of the study. "They?re not abnormal, they live normal lives but they often have idiosyncratic ways of thinking. Certain things may have special meaning for them or they may be more spiritually attuned."
Problem solving
The link between creativity and psychosis has largely been based on anecdotal evidence and correlation studies. The Vanderbilt study is the first to investigate the creative process experimentally using brain-imaging techniques.
The researchers defined creativity as the ability to generate something new and useful from existing products or ideas.
"Creativity at its base is associative," Folley told LiveScience. "It?s taking things that you might see and pass by everyday and using them in a novel way to solve a new problem."
The researchers conducted two experiments to compare the creative thinking processes of schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal control subjects.
In the first experiment, subjects were shown a variety of household objects and asked to come up with new functions for them.
For example, all three groups would be asked to come up with possible uses for a needle and thread. While the normal and schizophrenic controls came up with pretty typical responses like sewing or stitching, one schizotype said that if a person was poor but wanted to get engaged, he could use the thread to make a ring and use the needle to write "I Love You," in the sand.
Picture this
In the second experiment, the three groups were again asked to come up with creative uses for everyday objects, but this time their brains were monitored using a brain-imaging technique called near-infrared optical spectroscopy.
The scans showed that both sides of the brain in all three groups were active when making novel associations. However, in the brains of schizotypes, the activation of the right hemisphere was much higher compared to brains of the control subjects.
Folley speculates that what may be happening is that schizotypes may either have more access to the right hemisphere than the average population or there may be more efficient communication between the two hemispheres.
The finding is detailed online in the journal Schizophrenia Research.
What's a Brain Worth? About $1,500 and a Fight
By The Associated Press
posted: 07 January 2005
04:12 pm ET
BETHESDA, Md. (AP) _ A company that collects brains for medical research says it did nothing wrong in paying a six-figure sum to a onetime Maine state employee who supplied dozens of specimens.
But at least one couple has sued and authorities have launched an investigation.
"The institute firmly believes that it's always acted ethically and in good faith in all instances,'' lawyer Byrne Decker, who represents the Stanley Medical Research Institute, told The (Baltimore) Sun in a Friday story.
Federal law prohibits selling human bodies or organs, but fees often are paid for costs incurred by funeral homes and coroners who provide specimens.
The institute, in Bethesda, paid Matthew Cyr about $150,000 between 1999 and 2003 when he supplied 99 brains for the institute. At the time, Cyr worked as a funeral home inspector and had a contract to handle after-hours calls for the medical examiner's office.
Officials launched an investigation after Lorraine and Frank Gagnon brought a lawsuit last April alleging that the entire brain of their 28-year-old son, A.J., was taken when he died in April 2003 of a drug overdose. Lorraine Gagnon said she had consented only to the removal of a small sample of brain tissue.
The Maine Sunday Telegram of Portland has since reported that 31 of the 99 cases in which brains were provided lacked written consent forms to prove that family members authorized the donations.
Cyr, 35, who has left his funeral home inspector job and now works as a police officer in Bucksport, Maine, has declined to comment on his work.
Maine officials have cited privacy rights and state law in not identifying people whose brains were sent to the Maryland institute.
The Gagnons agreed this week to settle their lawsuit against the institute. Lawyers have identified two other families who plan to file similar lawsuits.
The Stanley Institute says it has the world's largest collection of brain tissue from people with schizophrenia and manic depressive illnesses.
Its brain bank has distributed specimens free to more than 60 research laboratories worldwide.
