[JackSpratts]

Bands are Getting Into Bed with Consumer Brands

As record labels lose their way, bands are getting into bed with consumer brands. Is this the way of the future?
Cliff Jones

Gabriel Hubert, horn player with Damon Albarn’s favourite street-jazz collective, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, speaks with the unashamed zeal of a convert: “Every musician needs to beat a path to independence. You’ve got to own the music you make.” An advocate of not signing your life away to a record label, he is, nevertheless, gearing up for the release of a compilation that features his band’s frenetic breed of jazz, fresh from the streets of south-side Chicago, alongside tracks by Lou Reed and Massive Attack. The lineup has all the cachet of a “major label”, but this release has the stamp of an independent boutique imprint. It has been set up by the Dutch denim brand G-Star, for release later this summer.

“Record deals don’t work for musicians like us,” Hubert says. “Being with a brand, we get to tour the world, make connections and grow our own business - without selling the rights to our music for a bowl of chicken soup and a promise.”

Hypnotic Brass are not alone in seeking the patronage of a brand. As the music business undergoes its remake/remodel, and business pages debate which one of DRM-free, subscription, pay-per-listen, embedded advertising and the 360 deal will save the balance sheets of the labels, brands are marching unrepentantly into what was once the majors’ heartland.

From boutique favourites such as Agent Provocateur and Joe Bloggs to icons of the global hyper-mall such as Diesel, Yahoo!, Audi and Coca-Cola, brands have awoken to music’s potential as a powerful communication tool, and a content gold rush is on. Under the “lifestyle” umbrella, household names are seeking out, signing and promoting music. And far from heralding a sellout, taking the corporate shilling may be the smartest career move a struggling artist can make. With unsigned MySpace hopefuls such as the singer-songwriter Tom Glynn partnering Caffè Nero for instore music and branded CDs, and big-name acts such as Madonna, Annie Lennox and Paul McCartney serving divorce proceedings on their labels as they “consider their commercial options”, brands are invading the ground left by the labels’ retreat.

“There’s no doubt we are at a crossroads,” says Steve Levine, producer of Culture Club and a spokesman for artists’ issues with the British Academy of Composers & Songwriters. Having consulted on brand-related music projects, he has seen a marked change in musicians’ attitudes: “It’s as if we’ve suddenly become aware of the truth behind the smoke and mirrors of the record deal. Most artists now understand how the business works and who their fans are. That is always going to be valuable to a brand. It’s certainly a freer, more equal relationship. Record companies have to own everything, because their whole model is based on selling records - ‘Is it a hit, will it make us our money back?’ If brands do nothing other than free musicians from the tyranny of needing a radio-friendly smash to have a career, it has to be a positive.”

It isn’t just financial necessity that is driving artists into the arms of some of our favourite household names. Joe Public’s relationship with brands has also shifted: we love them, and we don’t much care that they are colonising our lives. Marketing gurus have a term for it. According to them, we are all “cheerfully commercial” now. Yet, despite this, the dwindling budgets and the brutal roster-cleansing, the industry still appeared shocked when the dance duo Groove Armada gave into the siren call of Bacardi last month.

Their decision to leave Sony BMG and sign with the drinks giant sent a clear message to labels and brands alike that Bacardi saw a big future in taking its partnership with music beyond mere sponsorship. The one-year deal has the drinks giant releasing the band’s music through its own label and download platforms, as well as paying for a series of “parties” that GA will curate and headline.

“It feels very natural,” says Tom Findlay, one half of the dance duo. “Bacardi have a strong heritage in dance and putting on parties, and so do we. They’re offering a decent sum of money, we get to play in places we would not normally get to, and we keep the copyright in our recordings.”

What of the accusation that they have sold out? It seems everyone is too busy being “cheerfully commercial” to worry. “With sponsorship now such an essential part of the festival scene, it’s something I’m relatively comfortable with,” Findlay says.

The role of brand as benefactor and the structural changes in the music business reflect changes in how we perceive the value of music. The internet will eventually ensure that recorded music is largely free. Meanwhile, the emotional worth of music that makes up our personal soundtracks is as strong as ever. As the dust settles, managers, lawyers and producers will work with brands to bring new artists into the limelight.

Tim Parry, of Biglife, managers of the Verve, Klaxons and Badly Drawn Boy, sees the entry of brands into the fray as exciting, though yet to reach its full potential. “Anyone with a fairer, more interesting approach is going to get our attention,” he says. “But the ideas most brands have are pretty uninspiring. It’s still a buyer’s market out there, so there’s not a lot of incentive to think of creative ways for brands and artists to work together.”

To bridge this gap, a raft of specialist agencies has grown up, helping brands to play a more credible role in the music world.

Dan Dunbar, creative partner at the Sync Agency, in London, has sourced music for hundreds of well-known campaigns, including M&S and Vodafone. He is always mindful of finding a natural fit between brand and band: “Music is a powerful way of telling people what you’re about. Things are developing fast, and brands are really starting to think about how they sound and how they want to sound. Forward-looking brands must think about an approach that works in the long term – the right kind of music literally gives a brand a voice.”

Shubhankar Ray, who is G-Star’s man with the brand plan, sums up the current state of the union between brand and band.

“Brands can still be heavy-handed,” he says. “They wade in, buy up music and stick logos everywhere. It has to be more subtle if it’s going to work, because we’re all more sophisticated now.

“What they should do is take a step back and think about what they want to say and how music will help them say it.” Saying it with music, however, certainly seems to be the way of the future.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle3850368.ece





Steve Jobs Stakes Out the TV Den
David Carr

I don’t own my iPod. It owns me.

A week ago, the family was stuck on I-95 between Washington and New York for seven hours. The Meatgrinder, as it is affectionately known to us, had a little case of congestion and after five hours of quality time, we were reduced to silently hating the intermittent FM signal and the brake lights that framed our existence.

But after we hooked an Apple iPod to a doohickey that works with the radio, the car suddenly filled with an hour’s worth of storytelling from a podcast of “This American Life,” followed by some quality time with Taylor Swift, an improbably gifted teenage country star. The ability to program our temporary purgatory lifted the pall and before we knew it, we were home.

But once we went inside, we hit the halt button on Apple. There was the second season of “Friday Night Lights” on Netflix, “John Adams” from HBO on the digital video recorder and back copies of “Weeds” from Showtime, there for the plucking from the on-demand service.

While a lot of us carry a little bit of Steve Jobs around in our pocket, Apple is now after the remaining bit of life-share that it doesn’t already own, the home front.

On Thursday, the company announced deals with 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment, among others, to sell movies for download on iTunes on the same day they are released on DVD.

The “day and date” downloaded movies (as they are called in industry jargon) will play only on Apple gadgets, but that characteristic may finally give the company the toehold in the American den that it has been looking for via Apple TV.

The movie business, because it makes its living on big fat video files that are harder to share than audio files, was able to watch and learn as the music industry shrank under the weight of pirated downloads and then reluctantly embraced a 99-cent solution from Mr. Jobs. And now every song, now and forever, is worth 99 cents, a price that attains for both the red-hot duet by Madonna and Justin Timberlake “Four Minutes,” and the forgotten B-sides he made when he was in a boy band.

The music companies still owned the songs, but Apple owned everything else — pricing, format, distribution and the lucrative revenue stream of manufactured devices.

When it comes to video, Apple has competition. Microsoft, Sony and Hewlett-Packard are vying to offer Web-enabled TV, while Amazon, Blockbuster, CinemaNow and Netflix sell movies digitally. So unlike the music companies, the movie studios seemed to be holding most of the cards.

They still might have blown it.

On the surface, it looks like a great deal for the studios. Apple has agreed to sell new releases for $14.99 and rent them for $3.99 while older, “library” movies go for $9.99 and cost $2.99 to rent. It’s a reasonable price to pay the studios for electronic sell-through, especially when you consider Apple is paying more for the releases than it is charging consumers ($16, according to The Wall Street Journal). That follows Wal-Mart’s use of entertainment as a loss leader to get shoppers in the door.

Given that online movies sales are a tiny business — under $100 million — and that Apple has sold only seven million movies compared with four billion songs, it would seem like a blip. But Mr. Jobs is in the business of changing every game he plays. In spite of the fact that Apple TV — which feeds video from the Web into your television — initially tanked, this latest grab may help Apple take a huge bite out of the home entertainment environment.

Studios may own the copyright and content, but if Apple achieves anywhere near the penetration in movies that it has achieved in music, the studios could become vassals in a closed digital community, ginning up content that is controlled, priced and distributed by someone else.

The movie industry has always wanted to maintain custody of the user experience — in the theater, on home video and on television, which is why you once had to wait for Easter every year to watch “Ben Hur” on the Magnavox. But content’s claim on the crown is being challenged by the user interface that controls the experience. And nobody makes that experience easier than Apple, which came out with a 2.0 version of Apple TV in February that is a beaut, with an intuitive, practical interface and a $229 price that may have consumers taking a second look.

Recently, I downloaded “Dan in Real Life” for $14.99 on iTunes. It took 42 minutes and took up one gigabyte of precious storage space. My new movie will play on my computer and iPod, but not my television without a lot of jerry-rigging. If I had Apple TV, it would have taken up space there, begun playing almost instantaneously and been viewable on the gorgeous widescreen television in my den. (It’s actually a generic 19-inch set I bought at Costco, but you get the idea.)

That makes another Apple device sound pretty handy. But if I buy my movies from iTunes, I will be handing over custody of my film library to Mr. Jobs. (I love my iPod and all 3,000 songs I have on it, but if I had it to do over again, and now I do, I wouldn’t have entered a lifetime partnership with Apple.)

The studios may end up with a similar feeling, having helped Apple build another hardware franchise on the backs of their content. Executives from four studios I talked to said Apple’s purchase on American consumers means the folks from Cupertino will be a player no matter what and pointed out that just sitting still didn’t work out so well for the music industry, with consumers eventually just stealing what they could not buy.

Kevin Tsujihara, president of the Warner Home Entertainment Group, cautioned that the Apple deal is just one more game piece, not a game changer. Time Warner has the largest library and huge influence with it. He suggested that the deal with Apple is far less important than Time Warner’s own day-and-date video-on-demand service, announced by Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive, Wednesday.

“Apple is just one piece of the puzzle as it relates to digital distribution,” Mr. Tsujihara said. “They sell hardware and we sell software, and we had to come up with a pricing model that works for both parties and allows the consumer to legitimately access our content. The ultimate solution is coming up with a format that allows it to be played anywhere — in your car, on your PlayStation, on your computer.”

The lack of an open standard and the need for branded hardware is critical to Apple because it provides a revenue engine. If selling video online was a no-brainer, why have Amazon, Google, AOL and Wal-Mart, American marketing royalty, struggled to find a way to bring that future forward? If Apple wins, it will be driven by hardware, and regardless of what the studios do, their blockbusters and dramas will be commoditized.

It will take some time. Many homes are still not ready to share digital files; download speeds are sporadic; and the DVD remains the format of choice.

But going forward, everything is up for grabs. And when it comes to a jump ball, best to put your money on Apple.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/bu...05carr.html?hp





Why Japan Didn’t Create the iPod

At the end of last year, there were a couple of articles about Japan’s failure to be a giant in the new digital age (Newsweek on Why Apple Isn’t Japanese, and there were some interesting comments in a blog response Japan is no longer a leader in Electronics). Unfortunately, the Newsweek article completely ignores the technical background which forms the basis for Japan’s current position in the digital age. In this post, I want to explore this technical background and show why business-types such as CEO’s and Newsweek readers really do need to understand the underlying technical issues of a problem.

8-bit Computers

The real start of the digital gulf between Japan and the western world started back in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the first 8-bit home computers began to be released. One of the most important factors at this time was the complexity of the Japanese language. Put simply, an 8-bit computer with only 64k of memory simply does not have the capacity to edit Japanese. As an example, the first Japanese word processor to use the modern kana-kanji text entry system was the Toshiba JW-10. The JW-10 was a dedicated word processor with no other functionality. Released in February 1979, the JW-10 weighed 220kg and had a price tag of 6,300,000 yen (around $30,000). Here in the west, we could get similar capabilities with a $300 Commodore Vic-20 connected to a cheap 8-pin dot matrix printer. (In fact, you could argue that the Vic-20 offered better functionality). Before we continue with the history, let’s look at the technical details. (Skip this section if you don’t care).

Technical Details

There are two separate technical barriers for the Japanese language. The first is displaying the characters. For anyone who hasn’t used an Apple II, Commodore-64 or other 8-bit system, here is a screen-shot showing the cutting-edge 8×8 pixel fonts of 1982. For comparison, let’s look at a few common Japanese characters (these are ranked as the 35th, 64th, and 104th most commonly used characters, respectively):

議　選　調

It should be pretty clear that the Japanese are not getting away with 8×8 pixel characters on a 320×200 pixel screen. The NEC PC-9801 was one of the leading Japanese personal computers of the time, and offered a 640×400 display with 16×20 pixel characters. For all 6802 characters defined in the 1978 Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS C 6226-1978), we get 6802×20x16 bits = 265 kBytes of font data. (Compared to a mere 2 kBytes for 256 8×8 ASCII characters).

The second problem is the text entry process - whereby the 100 or so keys on the keyboard are used to select from the 6000 or so characters. In the days of telegraph, this was done using a 94×94 cell table written on a sheet of paper with all of the characters listed on it. The “kuten” codes were the coordinates of the characters in this table. The modern kana-kanji conversion approach involves entering characters phonetically, and converting based on dictionaries. The size of the dictionaries is directly related to how easy it is to enter text. For comparison, the conversion dictionaries on Windows XP are 36 MB. An 8-bit system is pretty much limited to the size of a disk.

Japan 1983

Back to 1983, and we can see the choices available to the Japanese consumer.1) The Nintendo Entertainment System released 1983. 14400 yen (around $70). No keyboard. Japanese text is displayed as graphics stored in the game (only the font data for displayed characters need be included).

2) 8-bit computer with “katakana” Japanese characters. (Examples include the NEC PC-8001 series. The Mark II was released in 1983 was 123,000 yen (around $600)). Katakana is a Japanese phonetic alphabet only requiring 50 characters. Before the advent of computers, katakana was never used to write entire sentences. Computers that only offered katakana had no practical value to home users over the NES, except for computer enthusiasts. Although these computers are similar to the Commodore 64/Apple II in terms of technical capabilities, they are crippled in terms of functionality from the viewpoint of home consumers.

3) 16-bit computers with special hardware for displaying kanji. The NEC PC-9801 was released in 1982 and became the number one selling home computer in Japan. The first model retailed for around 300,000 yen ($1500). The ROM chips containing the kanji font data were extra (50,000 yen - $250), and only support Level 1 characters (around half of the number in the Japanese standards). Kanji input was by kuten code (i.e. you had to type in the hexadecimal number of the characters you wanted to display). The PC-9801 featured a standard resolution of 640×400, which would not be surpassed as a standard in the west until the release of VGA and Macintosh II in 1987.

4) Specialist word processing systems (i.e. the Japanese equivalent of an electronic typewriter). The JW-1 (grandchild of the JW-10 discussed in the intro) was released in 1983 for 500,000 yen (around $2,500).

So, 6 years after the Apple II first brought computers into homes in America, the Japanese still had no reason to buy a home computer unless they wanted to type by entering hexadecimal codes. Whereas computer manufacturers in the west could advertise under the premise of Why Buy Just a Video Game?, Japanese households were faced with a choice between $1500 for a world of hexadecimal nightmare compared to $70 for the world of Mario Bros.

Appliances vs General Computers

Throughout the 1980s, western countries saw explosive growth in general-purpose computing platforms, with even games manufacturer Atari switching from a console to a general-purpose computer (Atari ST). Japan, on the other hand, was deeply immersed in an appliance mentality of computers. Companies like Nintendo, Sega, and Sony dominated the games console market. And while American developers worked on desktop operating systems such as Windows and MacOS for general purpose computers, Japanese engineers were working on embedded operating systems such as TRON and T-Kernel for running embedded devices such as fax machines and car engine control systems. (As an aside, although the name TRON is not well-known among consumers, the number of devices running TRON is on par with the install-base of Windows).

The iPod

By the time the iPod was released in 2001, Japanese mobile phones were already e-mail and internet capable. Although personal computer numbers had grown, more Japanese were accessing the Internet through their mobile phone than through a computer, and Japanese manufacturers were locked into the appliance mindset. As an example, consider the Sharp J-SH51 mobile phone released in 2002 which also offered a built-in MP3 player and digital camera. Despite being one of the most advanced mobile phones in the world at the time, the J-SH51 could not be connected to a computer. So how did you get music onto your phone? Well, you took an analog audio cable and plugged it into the aux. out plug on your CD player.

In the west, the home computer was already being viewed as the central hub of the digital age. It was obvious that devices such as digital cameras and MP3 players would need connectivity with the home computer, and that people would transfer pictures from the digital camera to their computer, or would use their computer as the central storage for music files to upload to their iPod or other music player as needed. The iPod, for example, requires a home computer. Without one, there is no way to get music on or off the device.

In Japan, however, things were different. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the Japanese market at the time is to imagine that home computers did not exist. From this perspective, the direction that the Japanese electronics industry took makes perfect sense. Everything needed to be designed as stand-alone appliance. The basis for much of this was the digital memory card, particularly the SD card. Digital cameras and camera-phones stored everything on a memory stick, and offered DPOF configuration options for configuring printing options. Color printers went on sale offering SD card slots so that these photos could be printed without a computer in the middle. MP3 players took a similar turn, offering either analog cable connectivity or SD card slots for music transfers. New stereo systems also offered an additional SD card slot. The SD card was like the new cassette. Record stores even began offering machines that sold digital music directly stored on your SD card. 3G phone handsets were released in 2001, and Japanese telecoms envisioned a world where consumers would buy and download music directly onto their mobile phones. It all makes sense if nobody owns a home computer, and when the mobile phone is the dominant form of Internet connectivity.

The flip-side of all this support for stand-alone appliances that do not require a home computer is that the Japanese electronics manufacturers offered virtually no support at all for home computers. Many devices simply could not be connected to a PC. For those that could be connected, the support software was unfriendly and extremely primitive. Let’s take the SD card as an example. SD cards offered a ‘feature’ called SD Audio whereby music was stored protected by a DRM system. However, only one manufacturer ever produced USB card readers that actually supported this scheme. Even if you did manage to track down the lone card reader that supported SD Audio, you still can’t transfer music to your SD card. In fact, you now had to purchase a special version of RealPlayer (that’s right, you had to pay for free software).

Of course, this kind of situation wasn’t going to fly in the west, where everyone had a home computer. Even in the Japanese market, this wasn’t going to fly. By the year 2000, most of the technical difficulties facing computers in Japan in the 80s and 90s had been resolved, and home computers were becoming mainstream. Japanese consumers wanted PC connectivity from their appliances, and the iPod offered a well-designed, highly functional package. So Apple created the iPod, and Japanese electronics manufacturers were left to re-evaluate a new world where the home computer is the hub for digital media.

The Future

Japanese manufacturers are finally catching on and have started to offer PC connectivity. Most mobile phones now come with USB cables and software for transferring photos and music to and from a PC. While the latest music-capable phones still come with an SD card, support has been added for Apple’s MP4 format, and files can be transferred using a generic card reader. It’s difficult to say whether the misjudgment of the Japanese electronics companies was a one-off falter, or if it is the start of a trend. The Nintendo Wii is certainly a strong indicator that all is not lost, even if it is back on the Japanese strong ground of an appliance-oriented device.
http://blog.gatunka.com/2008/05/05/w...eate-the-ipod/





Zany Inventors Show off Ideas in Geneva

Among the simplest innovations is artificial nose hair. Two little nubs of coiled pipe cleaner connected by a U-shaped wire block pollen and dust when placed in the nostrils. The "hair" can be washed and reused. "Most people do not have enough nose hair," said its inventor, Gengsheng Sun.

One techie-targeted invention is an e-mail analyzer to determine whether a person met in a chat room is a man or a woman. The computer program, developed by a Malaysian university professor, analyzes e-mails according to the number of words, exclamation marks, emotions and compliments to determine if the sender is male or female. Women tend to be more expressive than men, said Dianne Cheong Lee Mei, but she refused to go into detail about how the program unveils the gender of the unseen Internet partner.

The fair draws 65,000 visitors annually, including investors looking for a brilliant idea in need of financing. According to the fair's organizers, last year's event resulted in licensing contracts worth $40 million (€25.5 million).
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...545204,00.html





Windows XP SP3 Sows Havoc, Users Complain

The problems with XP SP3 range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.
Paul McDougall

Within hours of its release, Microsoft's Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs.

The problems with XP SP3, according to posters on Microsoft's Windows XP message board, range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.

"My external disks are having trouble starting up, which results in Windows not starting up," complained user Michael Faklis, in a post Wednesday. "After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep s**t," said 'Doug W'.

Another user said the service pack prevented him from starting his computer. "I downloaded and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals," wrote 'Paul'. "Now I can't get the computer to boot."

Dozens of other posters reported similar problems.

It's not uncommon for major operating system updates to cause problems. Typically, the glitches are due to conflicts with software, such as drivers, system files, or applications already resident on the user's PC. Microsoft has yet to indicate whether it will issue an update to address some of the problems, though it has done so with previous updates.

Microsoft released Windows XP SP3 to broad distribution on Wednesday. It's available from Microsoft's automated Windows Update service or as a file that can be pulled from the Download Center on the company's Web site.

The service pack should offer a number of enhancements over the current version of the OS, which Microsoft is phasing out after June 30th. It includes all updates issued since Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released in 2004, and some new elements.

Among them: A feature called Network Access Protection that's borrowed from the newer Windows Vista operating system. NAP automatically validates a computer's health, ensuring that it's free of bugs and viruses before allowing it access to a network.

Windows XP SP3 also includes improved "black hole" router detection -- a feature that automatically detects routers that are silently discarding packets. In XP SP3, the feature is turned on by default, according to Microsoft.

Additionally, Windows XP SP3 steals a page from Vista's product activation model, meaning that product keys for each copy of the operating system don't need to be entered during setup. The feature should prove popular with corporate IT managers, who often need to oversee hundreds or thousands of operating system installations.

Some users may balk at a feature in XP SP3 that prevents them from downgrading their browser from Internet Explorer 7 to the older IE 6 once the service pack has been installed. XP SP3 also won't install on systems running beta versions of the yet-to-be released IE 8.

Microsoft said the restrictions are designed to prevent system instabilities.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=207600950





Collusion

Microsoft to Limit Capabilities of Cheap Laptops
Agam Shah

Microsoft is launching a program to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs, one effect of which will be to limit the hardware capabilities of this type of device, IDG News Service has learned.

Microsoft plans to offer PC makers steep discounts on Windows XP Home Edition to encourage them to use that OS instead of Linux on ultra low-cost PCs (ULPCs). To be eligible, however, the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs.

The program is outlined in confidential documents that Microsoft sent to PC makers last month, and which were obtained by IDG News Service. The goal apparently is to limit the hardware capabilities of ULPCs so that they don't eat into the market for mainstream PCs running Windows Vista, something both Microsoft and the PC vendors would want to avoid.

Imposing the limitations solves a number of problems for the PC industry, said industry analyst Roger Kay, president of EndPoint Technologies Associates. "It allows PC makers to offer a low-cost alternative, and it prevents eroding of pricing and margins in the mainstream OS market," he said.

Microsoft declined to comment on the documents. "We don't speak publicly about our agreements with [PC makers]," the company said in a statement via its public relations agency.

ULPCs are an emerging class of laptops that carry low price tags -- about $250 to $500. Early examples include the Asus Eee PC and One Laptop Per Child's XO machine. The systems already have limited hardware configurations. Microsoft's program appears designed to ensure that distinction is maintained and to prevent ULPCs from cannibalizing sales of higher-end systems, Kay said.

Twenty or more other designs are expected to enter the market over the next six months, and Microsoft expects 10 million to 13 million of the devices to sell this year, according to the documents. IDC's forecast is more modest: On Thursday it said it expects ULPC sales to hit 9 million units by 2012, up from 500,00 last year.

Microsoft notes that the OSes under consideration for the devices include Windows and Linux. Some PC makers have expressed a preference for Linux because it helps them keep down the cost of the devices.

Microsoft says PC makers are keen to enter the market but want to keep ULPCs as a distinct category from "value" and mainstream PCs. The company's new program, scheduled to launch by the end of June, is designed to help make that happen.

Microsoft plans to charge PC makers US$26 for Windows XP Home Edition for ULPCs sold in emerging markets such as China and India, and $32 for those sold in developed markets, the documents show. PC makers who are eligible for its Market Development Agreement, however, can get a discount of as much as $10 off those prices, the documents say.

That's where the hardware limits come in. Besides limits on the screens and hard drives, to be eligible, the systems can have no more than 1G byte of RAM and a single-core processor running at no more than 1GHz. The program makes an allowance for some chips, including Via Technologies' C7-M processors, which run between 1.0GHz and 1.6GHz, and Intel's upcoming Atom N270.

By offering Windows XP Home Edition at bargain prices, Microsoft hopes to secure its place in the ULPC market and reduce the use of Linux, according to an official at one PC maker, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the program.

"[Low-cost PC makers] have made some good inroads with open-source, and Microsoft wants to put a stop to it," the official said.

The official did not seem opposed to the program. It should stimulate more competition between Windows and Linux in the ULPC market, and it could invigorate sales because consumers who want an easy-to-use PC are likely to prefer Windows, the official said.

Microsoft has said it plans to stop selling new Windows XP licenses after June 30, but it has made exceptions, including for the use of XP Home in ULPCs.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...p_laptops.html





More Computer Brands Chase the '$100 Laptop'

Bye bye, bulk. New lines of tiny PCs fit both in your purse and into third-world classrooms.
Gregory M. Lamb

The laptop computers most people haul around are underutilized. They hardly break a sweat to read e-mail, stream video, view photos, browse the Web, or run word-processing or spreadsheet programs. Their powerful processors are rarely tested except by heavy-duty gamers, scientific researchers, or other specialized users.

So while some PCs continue to bulk up and tout their speed and raw power, others represent a new trend: slimming down. Way down. These smaller, simpler machines are aimed at a potentially lucrative market: the next 1 billion PC users around the planet.

The market segment is so new it doesn't have a name yet or even an agreed-upon set of specifications. Intel, the chipmaker, calls the category "netbooks," recognizing that much of what people do on their laptops involves going on the Net. The new machines are also being called ultra-low-cost PCs, mininotebooks, or even mobile Internet gadgets.

In appearance, they have the familiar clamshell design, but they're smaller, with seven- to 10-inch screens. They offer full keyboards (albeit with smaller keys) and weigh less than three pounds. Perhaps most important, the majority cost less than $500 – some as little as $299.

Intel says it expects more than 50 million of these netbooks to be sold by 2011. It's introduced a tiny, low-power processor to run them called Atom, which puts 47 million transistors on a chip about the size of a penny.

Seventy to 80 percent of tasks people do on computers today are online, says Uday Marty, the marketing director for Intel's netbook products. Intel has created the Classmate PC to show the potential market for students around the world. In Brazil, they're sold under the Postivo brand. In India, Intel partners with HCL Infosystems to produce them.

The Taiwanese computermaker Asus burst out of the gate last fall with its Eee PC, priced at $299 (with the Linux operating system) and $399 (with Windows XP). Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer, and others have similar machines in the works.

"There's a lot of potential for these products," says Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at Jupiter Research in New York. Ultraportable computers have been around for more than a decade, he says. What's new is the low price, making them "attractive as perhaps a second or third computer for a household, or a primary computer for a student."

They represent the idea of the "ubiquitous computer – the computer that you can have with you at all times," he says. These micro-PCs are more likely to eat into laptop sales than threaten even-smaller hand-held devices, phones with extra features such as Web-browsing, Mr. Gartenberg says.

For one thing, the minilaptops have battery lives of only a few hours, not days, making them not yet ready to be "always on" companions.

"I really think the unknown dynamic is what happens when these $200 to $300 netbooks are unleashed in India and China and Indonesia," said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel, in a conference call to industry analysts on April 15. "And we don't [know]. There is no model for that at this point in time because you are dealing with something that's never existed before."

The tiny laptops, some roughly the size of a large paperback book, are far too large for a pants pocket, but could easily fit inside a purse. The smaller keyboards may work well for children. Many run on an operating system called Linux, favored by the technorati but little known among most computer users. Those that include Microsoft's familiar Windows usually cost a bit more. Microsoft has said it will continue to allow manufacturers to sell its older Windows XP system in the minilaptops, saving on both cost and system operating requirements over the newer Windows Vista.

The nonprofit model

These for-profit ventures follow in the footsteps of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project in Cambridge, Mass. Many were skeptical when OLPC announced several years ago that it would develop and distribute small laptops to children across the developing world for $100 each.

In recent months several top executives have stepped down from OLPC, leaving some critics to wonder if its mission is still viable.

While OLPC hasn't reached its original aim of $100 PCs, it is selling its tiny laptop, called the XO, for $189, still lower than the for-profit ventures. That price includes some special educational features and software developed by OLPC for the Linux OS.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of OLPC, says that the XO is already Windows capable and he expects it to include a version of Microsoft's operating system in the future. He hopes the new for-profit competition will spur manufacturers to develop better technologies and drive costs even lower.

About 500,000 of the rugged, kid-friendly XO laptops have been ordered so far, with the majority already built and shipped, Mr. Negroponte says.

OLPC has seen Intel, which in January withdrew as a partner in the OLPC project, and other computer companies begin to compete for student markets in the developing world. Sometimes these companies are "dumping" their products at low prices to try to shut out OLPC, Negroponte said in late April. "Last week Asus tried that trick in Turkey," he said.

OLPC is a humanitarian effort, not a business, Negroponte says. He likens the OLPC to the World Food Program, which does not try to compete with McDonald's. "I don't want to compete with anyone," he says.

How low can prices go? OLPC is aiming for a 2.0 version of the XO that will cost only $50, Negroponte says. But don't expect that until late 2010.

Clever solution: 'dumb' computers

Meanwhile Ncomputing in Redwood City, Calif., may be the current price leader for student sales, although its product isn't a laptop. The company's device connects "dumb" terminals to a central computer. That core machine then shares its processing power with each of the networked computers.

This idea of "desktop virtualization" is not new. But what's changed is the mushrooming power of even a single PC. One bottom-of-the-line $350 desktop can act as a server for a half-dozen workstations, or more, at a cost as low as $70 per terminal, says Stephen Dukker, CEO of NComputing. And each student gets his or her own keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

Ncomputing has sold 600,000 of its devices already, says Mr. Dukker. The largest buyer has been the country of Macedonia, which bought 180,000 units for its schoolchildren. The company also has made sales in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Brazil, and a few African countries.

The "dumb" devices use only about 1 watt of power each, he says, compared with many times that much for PCs. That can be especially important in remote areas where electricity is at a premium.

The costs of maintenance and replacement are lower, too, since when a single computer is replaced or repaired it automatically upgrades or restores all the workstations attached to it.

The workstations can't be taken home by students, as with laptops, but that also means that the school's computers are less likely to be stolen or damaged, Dukker says.

"Our technology represents the beginning of the end of [cost] barriers to access to computing," he says.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0501/p13s02-stct.html





I Know What You Did Last Math Class
Jan Hoffman

ON school days at 2 p.m., Nicole Dobbins walks into her home office in Alpharetta, Ga., logs on to ParentConnect, and reads updated reports on her three children. Then she rushes up the block to meet the fourth and sixth graders’ buses.

But in the thump and tumble of backpacks and the gobbling of snacks, Mrs. Dobbins refrains from the traditional after-school interrogation: Did you cut math class? What did you get on your language arts test?

Thanks to ParentConnect, she already knows the answers. And her children know she knows. So she cuts to the chase: “Tell me about this grade,” she will say.

When her ninth grader gets home at 6 p.m., there may well be ParentConnect printouts on his bedroom desk with poor grades highlighted in yellow by his mother. She will expect an explanation. He will be braced for a punishment.

“He knows I’m going to look at ParentConnect every day and we will address it,” Mrs. Dobbins said.

A profusion of online programs that can track a student’s daily progress, including class attendance, missed assignments and grades on homework, quizzes and tests, is changing the nature of communication between parents and children, families and teachers. With names like Edline, ParentConnect, Pinnacle Internet Viewer and PowerSchool, the software is used by thousands of schools, kindergarten through 12th grade. PowerSchool alone is used by 10,100 schools in 49 states.

Although a few programs have been available for a decade, schools have been using them more in recent years as federal reporting requirements have expanded and home computers have become more common. Citing studies showing that parental involvement can have a positive effect on a child’s academic performance, educators praise the programs’ capacity to engage parents.

In rural, urban and suburban districts, they have become a new fact of life for thousands of families. At best, the programs can be the Internet’s bright light into the bottomless backpack, an antidote for freshman forgetfulness, an early warning system and a lie detector.

But sometimes there is collateral damage: exacerbated stress about daily grades and increased family tension.

“The good is very good,” said Nancy Larsen, headmaster of Fairfield Ludlowe High School in Connecticut, which uses Edline. “And the bad can become very ugly.”

At an age when teenagers increasingly want to manage their own lives, many parents use these programs to tighten the grip. College admission is so devastatingly competitive, parents say, they feel compelled to check online grades frequently. Parents hope to transform even modest dips before a child’s record is irrevocably scarred.

“I tell my son, ‘What you do as a freshman will matter to you as a senior,’ ” Mrs. Dobbins said. “ ‘It will haunt you or applaud you.’ ”

Depending on the software, parents can check pending assignments; incomplete assignments; whether a child has been late to class; discipline notices; and grades on homework, quizzes and tests as soon as they are posted. They can also receive e-mail alerts on their cellphones.

With some programs, not only is a student’s grade recalculated with every quiz, but parents can monitor the daily fluctuations of their child’s class ranking. The availability of so much up-to-the-minute information about a naturally evasive teenager can be intoxicating: one Kansas parent compared watching PowerSchool to tracking the stock market.

Kathleen DeBuys, a mother of four in Roswell, Ga., used to check her e-mail first thing in the morning: the ParentConnect alerts would fly in by 6 a.m. The subject line might read, “Claire has received a failing grade. ...”

“And I’d freak out,” said Mrs. DeBuys, speaking of her oldest child, then a high school freshman. “I’d be waking her up, shouting: ‘Claire! What did you fail? What is wrong with you?’ She’d pull the pillow over her head and say, ‘Leave me alone!’ ”

Usually the explanation was benign: there was an inputting error, or Claire had missed the class because she had been sick or pulled out for a gifted-and-talented program. But the family’s morning was already flayed.

“It was horrible,” Mrs. DeBuys said.

Many students, in fact, like the programs, which let them monitor their records. Their biggest complaint is their parents’ unfettered access. “I don’t think kids have privacy,” said Emily Tarantino, 13, a middle-school student from Farmingdale, N.Y. “It’s not like anyone asked our opinion before they gave parents the passwords.”

In thousands of Facebook postings about the programs, teenagers bitterly denounce parental access as snooping. Emily Cochran, 18, a Pittsburgh senior, writes on Facebook about Edline, “It’s like having our parents or guardians stand over us and watch us all day at school, waiting for us to slip up.”

When teachers post scores before they return tests, parents may even see the grade before the students. On Facebook, in typical Internet shorthand, a teenager writes: “I walk into my house and I don’t even get a ‘hello son, howd your day go?’ I get yelled at bcuz I failed a test.”

Paradoxically, many parents who regularly check their children’s grades online fondly recall that during their own adolescence, subterfuge was a given. “I’ll admit it,” said Chris Tarantino, Emily’s mother. “I got satisfaction in fooling my parents.”

Programs like Edline do away with that sly pleasure. But Mrs. Tarantino, a PowerSchool fan, said the stakes had changed drastically. Academic pressure a generation ago was not nearly as all-consuming.

It is difficult to demonstrate conclusively what impact these programs have on school performance, because of all the variables. Anecdotally, principals report that the programs have motivated otherwise hard-to-reach parents and students. They have helped some middle-school boys, in particular, become better organized.

“Edline opens up communication between parents and teachers,” said Ron Jones, the principal at Huth Middle School, which has a 90 percent minority student population, in Matteson, Ill., a middle-class Chicago suburb. “It helps keep the children minding their p’s and q’s.”

The software can certainly be a boon to working parents. And divorced parents can log on without having to contact each other. A few years ago, India Harris, then a single mother and an Army staff sergeant from Omaha, monitored her son’s math grades while on duty in Iraq, and got him extra help.

In Noblesville, Ind., after a survey indicated that parents felt sufficiently informed by PowerSchool and subsequent e-mail exchanges with teachers, the middle-school principal canceled parent-teacher conferences this spring and gave the time back to classes.

Districts have different rules about who has access to which information. Parents then decide how much they want to know. Katie Mazzuckelli, a mother of twin seventh graders in Alpharetta, Ga., checks ParentConnect daily. “There are two types of parents,” she said. “They either do what I do and embrace it, or they say: ‘They’re in middle school and beyond, and they need to be independent. This is an invasion of their privacy.’ ”

Mrs. Dobbins of Alpharetta, a comfortable Atlanta suburb, checks ParentConnect even on weekends. Although there is only modest data on her fourth grader, she goes through the exercise to prepare the child for the scrutiny that her older children receive. She asks the sixth grader close questions about coming assignments.

And she reminds her high school freshman, whom she describes as a bright student with a tendency to coast, “ ‘My personal philosophy is that you need to be on your own, but if you fail to do your job, I will know about it,’ ” Mrs. Dobbins said.

When he does not turn in his homework, she makes sure it is done that night even if it is too late to get credit for it. “And through ParentConnect,” she said, “I’ll e-mail the teacher, ‘Please let me know if you don’t get it within the next day because that’s part of his punishment.’ ”

MRS. DOBBINS is unapologetic about her monitoring of her children’s schoolwork. “I know,” she said, “I’m the mom with big horns. But it’s been a fabulous parenting tool. I think every school should implement it, especially in high school, when kids don’t talk to parents and parents can’t talk to each teacher.”

The software, some educators say, can be misused as a surrogate for meaningful connection between families and schools. “Some teachers love it because it takes the burden of communication off them,” said Diana Brown, a high school English literature teacher in Georgia who still sends home the occasional handwritten note. “Their attitude is: ‘The parents should know what the kid’s grade is. It’s not my job to contact them.’ ”

Many parents may be confused by the complexity of scoring. Some bemoan that few teachers include comments or context. “There’s nothing telling you that your kid loves the class but isn’t a good test taker,” said Mary Kay Flett, a mother in Roswell, Ga.

Many districts do not educate parents about how to use the programs in a measured, judicious fashion with their children. That lapse is implicit in the angry, humorous and poignant Facebook postings. “My dad checks powerschool like 3 or 4 times a day,” writes one teenager. “Yeah he even came to my school once to tell me about it.”

From another teenager: “Before, the screaming and disappointment only had to be endured four times a year. Now it can happen every night.”

And this: “ive been grounded twice for the same grade ... once when my mom found it on edline and again when I actually got the grade a week later.”

Some parents refuse to use the software, but many students check their grades to the point of obsession. Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer who consults with secondary schools, worries that these programs can aggravate student anxiety. “When the focus is on the grade so much, you’re saying to kids, ‘It’s more important to get the grade, by hook or by crook, than learn the material,’ ” she said. “And that leads to the rise in rampant cheating.”

Some school districts are experimenting with restricting what information can be seen by parents of high school students. Other districts only post grades three weeks before the end of a marking period, to give students time to turn things around.

For many districts, the grade and attendance software is but a thread in a tapestry of programs, both online and off, to engage students as well as parents. Many teachers provide lively, interactive Web sites and online hours for help with homework.

The success of the online grading programs also depends on the willingness of teachers to update them accurately and to devote time to follow-up e-mail messages. “I’ve had teachers e-mail me, ‘There’s a test coming up, make sure they study certain things, make sure they have breakfast,’ ” Mrs. Tarantino said.

“Family involvement is not about serving parents,” said Joyce Epstein, director of the National Network of Partnership Schools. “It’s about mobilizing all the resources that support student success. These technologies can hurt or help, depending on how they are done. But the interpersonal connections of teachers, parents, students and counselors really are necessary to go beyond the impersonal technologies.”

One challenge she raises is equity. “Some parents do not have access to high-tech services,” said Dr. Epstein, a professor at Johns Hopkins. “Saying that those parents can use the computers at a local library is not equitable.”

These days, Mrs. DeBuys, the mother of Claire, now a graduating senior in Roswell, calls herself a “reformed ParentConnect parent.”

It took her several years to figure out how best to use the program. “You have to connect to it on your terms,” she said.

It can be hard to resist, she said. “It speaks to all your neuroses as a parent, all this need to control, that pressure to make sure everything is perfect,” she said. “How are these kids going to learn to be responsible adults?”

She has since turned off the reminders and the alerts. But she still checks ParentConnect a few times a week. To her freshman son she may say, “ ‘I notice you have three zeros for homework grades, so you need to talk to your teacher.’ ”

She laughed. “And in a perfect world,” she added, “he would.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/fashion/04edline.html





China Mounts Cyber Attacks on Indian Sites
Indrani Bagchi

China’s cyber warfare army is marching on, and India is suffering silently. Over the past one and a half years, officials said, China has mounted almost daily attacks on Indian computer networks, both government and private, showing its intent and capability.

The sustained assault almost coincides with the history of the present political disquiet between the two countries.

According to senior government officials, these attacks are not isolated incidents of something so generic or basic as "hacking" — they are far more sophisticated and complete — and there is a method behind the madness.

Publicly, senior government officials, when questioned, take refuge under the argument that "hacking" is a routine activity and happens from many areas around the world. But privately, they acknowledge that the cyber warfare threat from China is more real than from other countries.

The core of the assault is that the Chinese are constantly scanning and mapping India’s official networks. This gives them a very good idea of not only the content but also of how to disable the networks or distract them during a conflict.

This, officials say, is China’s way of gaining "an asymmetrical advantage" over a potential adversary.

The big attacks that were sourced to China over the last few months included an attack on NIC (National Infomatics Centre), which was aimed at the National Security Council, and on the MEA.

Other government networks, said sources, are routinely targeted though they haven’t been disabled. A quiet effort is under way to set up defence mechanisms, but cyber warfare is yet to become a big component of India’s security doctrine. Dedicated teams of officials — all underpaid, of course — are involved in a daily deflection of attacks. But the real gap is that a retaliatory offensive system is yet to be created.

And it’s not difficult, said sources. Chinese networks are very porous — and India is an acknowledged IT giant!

There are three main weapons in use against Indian networks — BOTS, key loggers and mapping of networks. According to sources in the government, Chinese hackers are acknowledged experts in setting up BOTS. A BOT is a parasite program embedded in a network, which hijacks the network and makes other computers act according to its wishes, which, in turn, are controlled by "external" forces.

The controlled computers are known as "zombies" in the colourful language of cyber security, and are a key aspect in cyber warfare. According to official sources, there are close to 50,000 BOTS in India at present — and these are "operational" figures.

What is the danger? Simply put, the danger is that at the appointed time, these "external" controllers of BOTNETS will command the networks, through the zombies, to move them at will.

Exactly a year ago, Indian computer security experts got a glimpse of what could happen when a targeted attack against Estonia shut that country down — it was done by one million computers from different parts of the world — and many of them were from India! That, officials said, was executed by cyber terrorists from Russia, who are deemed to be more deadlier.

The point that officials are making is that there are internal networks in India that are controlled from outside — a sort of cyberspace fifth column. Hence, the need for a more aggressive strategy.

Key loggers is software that scans computers and their processes and data the moment you hit a key on the keyboard.

This information is immediately carried over to an external controller — so they know even when you change your password. Mapping or scanning networks is done as a prerequisite to modern cyber warfare tactics. MEA has a three-layered system of computer and network usage — only the most open communication is sent on something called "e-grams".

The more classified stuff uses old-economy methods — ironically, probably the most secure though a lot more time-consuming. The same is true of other critical areas of the government. But the real gap inside the national security establishment is one of understanding the true nature of the threat.

National security adviser M K Narayanan set up the National Technology Research Organization, which is also involved in assessing cyber security threats. But the cyber security forum of the National Security Council has become defunct after the US spy incident. This has scarred the Indian establishment so badly that it’s now frozen in its indecision. This has seriously hampered India’s decision-making process in cyber warfare.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/C...ow/3010288.cms





F.B.I. Says the Military Had Bogus Computer Gear
John Markoff

Counterfeit products are a routine threat for the electronics industry. However, the more sinister specter of an electronic Trojan horse, lurking in the circuitry of a computer or a network router and allowing attackers clandestine access or control, was raised again recently by the F.B.I. and the Pentagon.

The new law enforcement and national security concerns were prompted by Operation Cisco Raider, which has led to 15 criminal cases involving counterfeit products bought in part by military agencies, military contractors and electric power companies in the United States. Over the two-year operation, 36 search warrants have been executed, resulting in the discovery of 3,500 counterfeit Cisco network components with an estimated retail value of more than $3.5 million, the F.B.I. said in a statement.

The F.B.I. is still not certain whether the ring’s actions were for profit or part of a state-sponsored intelligence effort. The potential threat, according to the F.B.I. agents who gave a briefing at the Office of Management and Budget on Jan. 11, includes the remote jamming of supposedly secure computer networks and gaining access to supposedly highly secure systems. Contents of the briefing were contained in a PowerPoint presentation leaked to a Web site, Above Top Secret.

A Cisco spokesman said that the company had investigated the counterfeit gear seized by law enforcement agencies and had not found any secret back door.

“We did not find any evidence of re-engineering in the manner that was described in the F.B.I. presentation,” said John Noh, a Cisco spokesman. He added that the company believed the counterfeiters were interested in copying high volume products to make a quick profit. “We know what these counterfeiters are about.”

An F.B.I. spokeswoman, Catherine L. Milhoan, said the agency was not suggesting that the Chinese government was involved in the counterfeiting ring. “We worked very closely with the Chinese government,” she said. Arrests have been made in China as part of the investigation, she said. “The existence of this document shows that the cyber division of the F.B.I. has growing concerns about the production and distribution of counterfeit network hardware.”

Despite Cisco’s reassurance, a number of industry executives and technologists said that the threat of secretly added circuitry intended to subvert computer and network gear is real.

“There are enormous vulnerabilities in our defense and national security infrastructure,” said Peter Levin, a former Clinton administration official who is chief executive of DAFCA, a Framingham, Mass., company that designs systems to prevent malicious tampering with computer chips. “We outsource the manufacturing of computer integrated circuits to places that can manufacture these devices cheaply.”

Last month, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency began distributing chips with hidden Trojan horse circuitry to military contractors who are participating in the agency’s Trusted Integrated Circuits program. The goal is to test forensic techniques for finding hidden electronic trap doors, which can be maddeningly elusive. The agency is not yet ready to announce the results of the test, according to Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The threat was demonstrated in April when a team of computer scientists from the University of Illinois presented a paper at a technical conference in San Francisco detailing how they had modified a Sun Microsystems SPARC microprocessor by altering the data file on a chip with nearly 1.8 million circuits used in automated manufacturing equipment.

The researchers were able to create a stealth system that would allow them to automatically log in to a computer and steal passwords. The danger of such hidden circuitry is that it could potentially undermine the strongest computer security protections by essentially giving an attacker a secret key to gain access to a network or a computer.

“It’s very difficult to detect and discover these issues,” said Ted Vucurevich, the chief technology officer of Cadence Design Systems, a company that provides design tools for chip makers. “That was one of the reasons” for the testing program.

Modern integrated circuits have billions of components, he said: “Adding a small number that do particular functions in particular cases is incredibly hard to detect.”

The potential threat of secret hardware-based backdoors or kill switches has been discussed for several decades. For example, the issue came up during the 1980s with a Swiss cryptography company, Crypto, which has been under suspicion of having installed back doors in its systems to give the National Security Agency access to encoded messages.

The issue was raised again during the first Iraq war and more recently in the Israeli bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear plant. In both cases there has been speculation that booby-trapped antiaircraft equipment had been remotely turned off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/te...y/09cisco.html





Fake Media File Snares PC Users
BBC

Almost 500,000 people have been caught out by a booby-trapped media file, says security firm McAfee.

The fake file poses as a music track, short video or movie and has been widely seeded on file-sharing networks to snare victims.

McAfee said the fake media file outbreak was the largest it had seen for about three years.

Those running the fake file get bombarded with pop-up ads and risk compromising the safety of their PC.

The fake file or trojan has been widely distributed on the eDonkey and Limewire file-sharing networks.

The file has many names and is written in different languages to trick people into downloading it.

The titles make the file appear to be music tracks, pornography and full versions of popular movies.

Anyone downloading the trojan and trying to run it is asked to install a codec that will play the supposed media.

FAKE FILE TITLES

girls aloud st trinnians.mp3
changing times earth wind .mp3
heartbroken fast t2 ft jodie.mp3
meet bambi in kings harem.mp3
paralyized by you.mp3
pull over levert.mp3

Instead of playing the media, running the file installs a bundle of adware that plagues a user with pop-ups.

Included in the bundle is an MP3 media player that will only play the tracks included with it.

McAfee said seeing such a large outbreak was rare because hi-tech criminals typically prefer to target their malicious creations to keep numbers manageable and to avoid detection.

In the last seven days McAfee said the trojan had been found on more than 500,000 of the PCs that notify the company when a malicious file is downloaded.

It added that, so far, only 10% seem to have gone as far as to install the fake codec and be plagued with pop-ups.

Other security companies have seen the trojan but not in such large numbers as McAfee.

Only those using Windows are vulnerable to the malicious program.

McAfee urged users to update their security software and to be wary when using file-sharing networks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/7389529.stm





100 E-Mail Bouncebacks? You've Been Backscattered.

E-mail users are receiving an increasing number of bounceback spam, known as backscatter, and security experts say this kind of spam is growing
Robert McMillan

The bounceback e-mail messages come in at a trickle, maybe one or two every hour. The subject lines are disquieting: "Cyails, Vygara nad Levytar," "UNSOLICITED BULK EMAIL, apparently from you."

You eye your computer screen; you're nervous. What's going on ? Have you been hacked? Are you some kind of zombie botnet spammer?

Nope, you're just getting a little backscatter -- bounceback messages from legitimate e-mail servers that have been fooled by the spammers.

Spammers like to put fake information in their e-mail messages in order to sneak them past e-mail filters. Because e-mail filters now just delete messages that come from nonexistent domains, the spammers like to make their messages look like they come from real e-mail addresses. That means, if your e-mail address has been published on the Web somewhere, you're a prime candidate for backscattering.

The spammer finds your address, or sometimes even guesses it, and then puts it in the "from" line of his messages, sending them out to hundreds of thousands of recipients. When the spam gets sent to an address that is no longer active, it can sometimes be bounced back ... to you.

Although Sophos estimates that backscatter makes up just two percent or three percent of all spam, antispam vendors say these messages are on the rise lately.

Users often think that the backscatter may be a sign that their computer has been hacked and is sending out spam messages, said Brad Bartman, a global support manager with Text 100, a public relations consultancy. "They look at it and they're like, 'Whoa, is my PC infected with a virus?'" he said.

Backscatter rarely hits more than one or two employees at the same time, so it isn't particularly disruptive. But it does worry users, he said. "It's mostly a psychological thing."

With their e-mail addresses widely circulated on press releases, Text 100's PR specialists are the ideal candidates for backscatter.

Because backscatter comes from legitimate mail servers, it can cause special problems. In fact, some security researchers believe that the spammers have been intentionally sending messages that will be bounced back as a way to sneak around spam filters. That's because some mail servers bounce back the original message as part of their notice.

Dan Wallach, like Text 100's Bartman, was hit with a flood of backscatter messages earlier this week. Wallach, an associate professor with Rice University's Department of Computer Science, said that many of the messages he received contained links to suspicious executable files hosted on different Web sites.

"I'll bet that some spammer is rationally thinking 'error messages! Maybe I can get my message through via error messages!'" Wallach said in an e-mail interview. "They don't need many responses before this sort of tactic could be considered to be a success."

At its worst the phenomenon can even wipe Internet servers off the map.

Last month, Stephen Gielda, president of Packetderm, upset a fraudster who was trying to use his anonymous Internet service. Soon his servers were inundated with a tidal wave of backscatter messages. At one point, he was being hit by 10,000 bounceback messages per second, enough to throttle the server's Internet connection.

Gielda had to take his site off-line for five days as he waited for the problem to abate. "I'm used to backscatter, but I'd never seen it at this level before," he said.

While backscatter is extremely hard to filter out, it is a problem that can be fixed.

Backscatter comes in three varieties: messages from mail servers, saying that there is no such user available; "out of office" automated reply messages; and so-called challenge-response messages, which tell the sender that his message will be delivered only once he responds to the bounceback and confirms that the e-mail is coming from a legitimate address.

Security experts say that people should simply stop using these last two types of bounceback messages.

As for "no such user" bouncebacks, that can be fixed too. There are a few e-mail standards that could help with the problem: Variable Envelope Return Path (VERP) and Bounce Address Tag Validation" target="_blank">http://mipassoc.org/batv/">Bounce Address Tag Validation (BATV), for example.

But the problem would largely disappear if server administrators configured their mail servers to immediately reject mail that is sent to nonexistent users, rather than accepting it and then bouncing it back to the faked addresses. Some ISPs (Internet service providers), AOL for example, have done this and have largely eliminated their role in the problem.

If there is spam in the backscatter message, antispam software should filter it out, but if a message has an ambiguous subject line, like "Hey" and the spam message stripped out, the backscatter will look like a legitimate bounceback and is probably going to get through, said Dmitry Samosseiko, manager of Sophos Labs Canada.

"This is a serious problem that is hard to deal with, to be honest," he said. "We can blame spammers for causing the issue in the first place, but it exists because of the mail servers that are not configured to deal with spam."
http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...16;fpid;1;pf;1





Virginia Tries to Ensure Students' Safety in Cyberspace

State-mandated classes on Internet take shape
Theresa Vargas

Alan Portillo didn't think much, if at all, about his online vulnerability. Then the 15-year-old heard technology teacher Wendy Maitland list three pieces of information an online predator would need to find him.

Birth date, she said. Alan's age was on his e-mail.

Gender. His full name was also on his e-mail and topped his MySpace page.

ZIP code. A photo on the page showed an area near his neighborhood, with "Arlington" emblazoned across one building.

"I thought it was nothing. But when I saw the examples, I started thinking, it's a big deal," the Wakefield High School freshman said. After the February lesson, he said, he deleted the photo and his last name from the page.

Virginia public schools will soon launch Internet safety lessons across all grade levels, responding to a state mandate that is the first of its kind in the nation. Even though today's students have known no life without the Internet, only a couple of states have laws that recommend schools teach online safety.

Maryland and the District both offer Internet safety education, but their programs are neither mandated nor spread across all grade levels. Sixteen technology coordinators in D.C. public schools last year received training in Internet safety education, and the District has plugged the topic in public service announcements. The Maryland State Board of Education last year adopted student technology literacy standards for elementary and middle school lessons.

In Virginia, local school systems have been rewriting policies, running pilot programs and putting final touches on lesson plans to be offered from kindergarten through 12th grade starting in September.

"One of the things we realized is there is no one-size-fits-all approach," said Tammy McGraw, the Virginia Department of Education's director of educational technology. "Ultimately what we're trying to do is ensure we have safe and responsible Internet users."

The state's goal is to integrate safety skills into the curriculum, not simply teach them in one lesson. An English lesson on truth and fiction, for example, could require a paper on what information online should be trusted.

"It's not something that we think can really be addressed by bringing children together in an assembly," McGraw said. "We think they have to think about it all the time."

One recent afternoon, two 15-year-old girls at Wakefield High discussed what they learned in a pilot Internet safety class: Misunderstood text messages can lead to hurt feelings; parents, too, can dole out too many details online about their children; and risks abound in using social networking sites.

Lily Pinner, a freshman, sets her MySpace page on private and lists her age as 99. But she said a friend's 4-year-old sister recently ventured onto the site, writing friendly messages with her name and age and noting that she lives "in a big house."

"I said, 'You don't want to tell people that.' She said, 'Why?'" Lily said, adding that it's hard because she doesn't want to scare the girl but wants to keep her safe. "I said, 'Because some people aren't nice.' "

"They still believe everyone is good and the bad guy always loses," added freshman Labiba Ahmed.

One in seven children ages 10 to 17 has been sexually solicited while online, according to the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children. Thirty-four percent of those youths also acknowledged communicating online with individuals they did not know, and more and more are posting personal information and photos on the Internet, according to the organization.

"The reality is, kids have this sense of immortality and can do some remarkably dangerous things, putting themselves at risk," said Ernie Allen, National Center for Exploited and Missing Children's chief executive.

He likened Internet safety classes to driver's education.

"Just like a lot of good things, there is a dark side," he said. "Driving an automobile is a positive thing, but there are risks."

Allen said other states should follow Virginia's "pioneering" effort. Already, he said, politicians and elected officials from other states have contacted his organization for more information. Texas and Illinois also passed laws to promote teaching of Internet safety.

"What we like about the Virginia model is when you mandate it, you can be sure it's going to be done," Allen said. "We know schools have a lot to do, but it's hard to imagine something that is more important and can have greater impact right now."

Virginia Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell (R) has said that more than half the world's Internet traffic flows through Virginia because MCI and America Online operate in the state.

Del. William H. Fralin Jr. (R-Roanoke) said he introduced the Virginia legislation, which passed in 2006, when his oldest child was 10 and had just started using the Internet. He said his wife raised the question of safety.

"She said, 'How do we know who he's talking to and what's going on?' and I said, 'I don't know,' " Fralin said.

The state initiative calls for including parents. One chapter in a state resource book covers "What Parents, Grandparents, and Caregivers Need to Know." In Arlington, some Parent-Teacher Association chapters have heard public service announcements on the subject. And on Thursday, parents met at an Alexandria elementary school to talk about Internet safety.

"I tell parents this all the time, and they are horrified, but e-mail is for old people," said Elizabeth Hoover, Alexandria's instructional technology coordinator. "We have to raise our level of awareness for our teachers and community members. We can't move forward without doing that."

Charlie Makela, library services supervisor for Arlington schools, said that people tend to think of Internet safety in terms of online predators, but that "it's much, much more than that." It's about cyber-bullying, copyright infringement, text messaging and social networking.

"I don't think many children understand that if you post a picture or information on a bulletin board, a physical bulletin board, you can take that picture down and it's gone. If I post it on the Internet, it's never gone," Makela said, adding they also don't realize Facebook owns whatever items are put on its site. "We click on the accept-the-terms-of-use agreement, but we really don't know what we're agreeing to."

Makela said that in pilot programs at elementary, middle and high schools, educators found the children were savvy but still had much to learn. The challenge was finding the best way to reach each group.

"A kindergarten student might be told a virus is something that can make you sick, where at middle school and upper levels, we would talk about Trojan horses," Makela said.

Linda Wilkoff, a guidance counselor at Charles Barrett Elementary School, said children were still singing songs about Internet safety weeks after a class there ended.

To make her points to the youngsters, Wilkoff drew age-appropriate analogies. Posting personal information is like a dinosaur footprint that exists forever. Or like toothpaste: Once it's squeezed out of the tube, it can't be put back in.

"One of my students said, 'You know Ms. Wilkoff, this is making me kind of worry,' " she said. "I said, 'That's good.' "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...050203831.html





Facesafe

Facebook, States Set New Safeguards
AP

Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, is adding more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.

The measures include banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users' ability to contact subscribers under 18 and participating in a task force set up earlier this year to find ways to better verify users' ages and identities.

"The agreement marks another watershed step toward social networking safety, protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate content," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who announced the agreement Thursday with his counterparts in several other states.

Officials from Washington, D.C., and 49 states have signed on.

Facebook, which has more than 70 million active users worldwide, already has enacted many of the changes and others are in the works, its officials said Thursday.

"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer. "The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."

Texas did not endorsed the agreement or a similar one reached in January between MySpace and the other states and the District of Columbia.

Texas officials say they want faster action on verifying users' ages and identities.

The attorneys general have been negotiating for months with Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook. The changes are similar to those adopted by MySpace, the world's largest online social network with 200 million users worldwide.

"Social networks that encourage kids to come to their sites have a responsibility to keep those kids safe," North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said. "We've now gotten the two largest social networking sites to agree to take significant steps to protect children from predators and pornography."

MySpace, Facebook and other online networks have created a new venue for sexual predators, who often lie about their age to lure young victims to chat, share images and sometimes meet in person. It also has spawned cyberbullies, who have sent threatening and anonymous messages to classmates, acquaintances and other users.

John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, said Thursday that research shows online bullies are far more common than sexual predators.

"It's very rare for an adult to meet a child on a social network and to do them harm, although the ones that do occur get a huge amount of attention and they are terrible," he said.

But online bullying, be it through instant-message programs or social networking Web sites, has been on the rise, he said.

The issue gained national attention after recent high-profile cases, including the 2006 suicide of a 13-year-old Missouri girl after she was victimized by an Internet ruse.

Megan Meier hanged herself after receiving nasty online comments from a MySpace friend who turned out to be fictional, invented by two acquaintances and the mother of one of those girls.

"What's going on online is not much different than bullying on the playground," Palfrey said. "It just happens to be playing out in public spaces where kids are spending a lot of time online."

Facebook and MySpace lets users block online bullies and others from contacting them. They also can conceal their "online now" status and use privacy controls to limit who can view their images and other measures.

Among other measures, Facebook agrees to:

- Ensure companies offering services on its site comply with its safety and privacy guidelines.

- Keep tobacco and alcohol ads from users too young to purchase those products.

- Remove groups whose comments or images suggest they may involve incest, pedophilia, bullying or other inappropriate content.

- Continue participating in the Harvard-based task force set up in January under the agreement with MySpace. It includes scholars, a prosecutor, businesses, state officials and child safety advocacy groups.

- Send warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an adult.

- Review users' profiles when they ask to change their age, ensuring the update is legitimate and not intended to let adults masquerade as children.

The protections included in the MySpace and Facebook pacts could be expanded to smaller services such as Friendster and Bebo, Blumenthal said.

"We're entering a new era in social networking safety," Blumenthal said. "This agreement is open-ended in envisioning advances in technology that will permit even stronger steps in the future toward protecting kids' safety."
http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_9199526





Ban 'Second Life' in Schools and Libraries, Republican Congressman Says
Anne Broache

Some politicos in the U.S. Congress may be embracing Second Life (pictured here is California Democrat George Miller's press conference in the virtual world last year). But Illinois Republican Mark Kirk says it's a danger zone for children and must be blocked, by law, on school and library computers.
(Credit: Linden Lab)

A Republican congressman who has sponsored legislation banning access to social-networking Web sites in schools and libraries has found a new target of displeasure: Second Life.

Rep. Mark Kirk, who is seeking re-election this year, staged a press conference at a library in his suburban Chicago district on Tuesday to highlight what he called the "dangers" of the virtual world to children. Flanked by local officials, he also released a letter asking Federal Trade Commission Chairman William E. Kovacic to "take action to warn parents of the similar dangers and sexually explicit content found on Second Life."

Kirk said he was appalled that Second Life has no age verification features built into its registration process, and he claimed that there are "countless locations" outside of the service's teen-designated area where virtual prostitution, drug deals, and "other wholly inappropriate activities" occur.

According to a Chicago Tribune report, Kirk recounted an aide's failed attempt to create an avatar on the site as a 10-year-old--and a subsequently successful attempt to log in as an 18-year-old.

"Sites like Second Life offer no protections to keep kids from virtual "rape rooms," brothels, and drug stores," Kirk said, according to a press release. "If sites like Second Life won't protect kids from obviously inappropriate content, the Congress will."

Second Life creator Linden Lab, for its part, released a statement, according to various local news reports, saying, "Members of the Second Life community, including Linden Lab staff, actively monitor against minors accessing the (adult portion of the) service." But Kirk said company officials have acknowledged that it's possible for teens to get into the adult portion of the service, and vice versa.

Kirk's comments were yet another attempt to drum up support for a bill, which he reintroduced last year, known as the Deleting Online Predators Act.

That proposal would require schools and libraries that receive federal subsidies through a program called E-rate to certify that they've put in place a "technology protection measure" on all of their computers that "protects against access to a commercial social-networking Web site or chat room, unless used for an educational purpose with adult supervision."

The definition of "commercial social-networking Web site," however, appears to be broad enough to sweep up blogging and online-journaling services, as well as any site that allows users to create public profiles, from Amazon.com to Slashdot to Yahoo.

The bill would also require the Federal Trade Commission to issue a "consumer alert" outlining the potential "danger" of such Web sites because they can be accessed by child predators.

Similar legislation passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives by a 410-15 vote in 2006 but died in the Senate.

Despite the overwhelmingly favorable vote two years ago, the bill is not without controversy. The American Library Association is staunchly opposed to the proposal, arguing that it ignores the value of interactive Web applications as a learning tool, could block helpful sites, and would inhibit librarians' ability to teach youngsters about how to use the Web safely.

After all, even police agencies--including the Arlington County Police Department outside of Washington, D.C., just this month--are launching MySpace.com profiles these days.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9937956-7.html





Penguin Tale Tops List of `Challenged' Books
Hillel Italie

A children's story about a family of penguins with two fathers once again tops the list of library books the public objects to the most.

"And Tango Makes Three," released in 2005 and co-written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, was the most "challenged" book in public schools and libraries for the second straight year, according to the American Library Association.

"The complaints are that young children will believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle that is acceptable. The people complaining, of course, don't agree with that," Judith Krug, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The ALA defines a "challenge" as a "formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness."

Other books on the ALA's top 10 list include Maya Angelou's memoir "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," in which the author writes of being raped as a young girl; Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," long attacked for alleged racism; and Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass," an anti-religious work in which a former nun says: "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake."

Pullman's novel, released in 1996, received new attention last year because of the film version starring Nicole Kidman.

Overall, the number of reported library challenges dropped from 546 in 2006 to 420 last year, well below the mid-1990s, when complaints topped 750. For every challenge listed, about four to five go unreported, the library association estimates.

"The atmosphere is a little better than it used to be," Krug says. "I think some of the pressure has been taken off of books by the Internet, because so much is happening on the Internet."

According to the ALA, at least 65 challenges last year led to a book being pulled.

In Louisville, Ky., a high school principal told 150 English students to drop "Beloved," Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about an ex-slave who has murdered her baby daughter. At least two parents had complained that "Beloved" includes depictions of violence, racism and sex.

In Burlingame, Calif., Mark Mathabane's "Kaffir Boy," a memoir about growing up poor and black in apartheid-era South Africa, was banned from an intermediate school after a parent complained about a two-paragraph scene in which men pay boys for sex.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080506/...allenged_books





Subject to Shill: Tech Books as Corporate Marketing
Jem Matzan

Originally this article was supposed to be a book review of the upcoming O'Reilly title Subject to Change, but I was so appalled by its content that I felt compelled to shift focus to the more important issue of ethics in publishing. This book reflects a sinister trend in the tech book publishing industry that favors vapid, tedious material that serves to advise readers without revealing the big secrets. The purpose is for the authors (usually a group of writers, and most of them high-level managers) to promote their company and its services by giving readers just enough information. If they want the advanced material, they need to buy the rest at a premium price by going straight to the company for its professional services. Meanwhile, the publisher bathes in a sea of money while the authors relentlessly promote the book on their blogs and in their conference keynotes and panel discussions. Tech books have increasingly become corporate marketing vehicles, sacrificing the exciting A-list technical material that regular tech book buyers and enthusiasts have come to expect from companies like O'Reilly Media and Pearson Education. This isn't the first book I've seen that gives readers a 20,000-word marketing pitch -- that honor belongs to Enterprise Ajax (and it's about three times longer). I'm bothered -- sickened -- to see that not only is this trend continuing unabated, but it's actually become a habit.

Subject to Change is written by four people who hold high positions at a company named Adaptive Path. You've probably heard of that company because its CEO, Jesse James Garrett, is credited with coining the term Ajax in an essay he wrote a while ago. Other than that, there isn't anything particularly remarkable about Adaptive Path, other than the fact that it seems to be a successful consulting firm. But from reading this book, you'd think that Adaptive Path was the second coming. Its logo is splattered across every cover surface, larger and more prominent even than O'Reilly's. The authors speak in the first-person (usually plural, sometimes singular) and turn nearly every subject into a plug for their company.

The book's primary content reads like a marketing pitch for Adaptive Path services. It's packed with enthusiasm but entirely devoid of substance. There are whole paragraphs that meander around non-specific subjects, one leading into another until you're pretty sure you've got the gist of what the authors are trying to say, but you have no idea how to apply it to your business. Each chapter and section contains, in no specific order: Lots of inspirational hand-waving and encouragement, vague and wide-ranging advice on what to avoid in terms of policy, quotes from CEOs and news articles, examples from the industry -- both good and bad -- that are over-generalized and removed from all necessary context, and the brilliant solutions that Adaptive Path has provided its clients to solve these nebulously stated, over-worded, general business problems. Here's an example of the latter from page 118:

At Adaptive Path, we look to the other competencies within an organization and combine design with those to generate more effective solutions.

If that isn't a (badly phrased) line destined for a television commercial or print ad with a beautiful actor leaning toward a desk to point instructively at a computer screen to show guidance to another, seated, less attractive or lower status actor, then I don't know what is. It's the sort of rubbish meant to inspire cigar-chomping pointy-haired CEOs to pick up the phone and yell, "Johnson! Get in my office! I just saw a great TV commercial and I want these 'Adopt-A-Bath' people working for us, pronto!"

And as an example of its empty, overlong, non-promotional content, from the intro to chapter 4:

Creating engaging user experiences requires a solid understanding of the people you want to serve, which inevitably means doing research. Research is a reliable way to gain insight and deal with uncertainty, but to incorporate the ideas from chapter 3 you may need to reconsider how you think about research. In our experience, a lot of research does nothing but keep research staff busy; however, well-executed research can transform your organization's understanding of its customers, and help your team create compelling experiences.

I feel like I just walked in a big circle. I see a lot of words (most of them are one word -- research), but they're all inside of diluted phrases that individually offer a tiny kernel of useful information. This literary hand-waving pervades the entire book to the point that if it were properly condensed into concise, actionable information without any self-promotion, this book's text could fit comfortably on a CD jewel case booklet.

People want to read tech books because they're excited at the prospect of expanding their technical understanding through an impassioned expert's narrative. Had Subject to Change been about Adaptive Path's company history and its business methods and corporate culture as a successful Web 2.0 company on the cutting edge of technology, that might be an interesting read. Similarly, a book that clearly taught all of Adaptive Path's A-list material -- the processes, philosophies, and practices that make it a leader in its industry -- would be successful as a niche book for those interested in industry trends and best practices. But this is neither. It pretends to be a book that teaches readers how to reshape their methods to be more innovation-friendly and client-oriented -- a compelling but not revolutionary concept -- but it offers absolutely no new thinking on the subject. The entire volume of useful information in Subject to Change can be summed up thusly: "Think outside the box, and pay attention to customer needs. And if you can't do that, hire us!" Take that to heart and save yourself the time and money wasted on this book.

Perhaps I should not be so surprised and offended at this book. It's not the first time I've seen it happen. Subject to Change is representative of a growing genre of corporate promotion books that are all wind and no sail. The people who write them are D-list Internet celebrities with successful blogs; they are people who speak at conferences and participate in panel discussions. As a result of their public speaking and presentation careers, these people make excellent book promoters and thus, excellent book authors as far as publishers are concerned. It doesn't matter if the book sucks, because it's going to be promoted as though it were the tech industry's Valley of the Dolls. It will sell regardless of the quality of its content. Having these pseudo-famous people write books is good business for publishers -- at least in the short term, while there is brand equity to burn.

From the author's point of view, such book deals are a once in a lifetime opportunity to promote his business. He doesn't care if he makes any money from book sales. It would take some kind of miracle book to eclipse his salary and stock options. Sure, royalty money is always nice, but the real money will roll in when tens of thousands of potential customers masquerading as readers flood his sales department with impassioned inquiries.

So on the one hand there are publishers that want to produce books that will sell, and having authors who can promote their own books is an added bonus. On the other hand there are potential authors who see an unprecedented opportunity to get more clients and improve their status in the industry. Mix the two together and you have a money-making machine that transfers the publisher's brand equity to the author's company. Eventually it may be that the majority of new, non-reprint technical books are corporate promotion deals -- that is, until readers wise up to this scam and start demanding quality. Maybe what we need is Tim O'Reilly 2.0 to come along and save us from this corporate promotional crap and deliver books that offer fascinating technical facts and details that inspire readers.

It makes my stomach turn to see that one of my heroes and idols -- Tim O'Reilly -- personally approved of Subject to Change and called it a "terrific book" on the inside cover. (However, there were many quotes there that were suspicious to me -- they spoke of the greatness of the general subject of the book without specifically saying why Subject to Change is its embodiment. I suspect these people never read more than a summary or a few pages.) This from the man who started a publishing company because he was upset that his employers wouldn't let him tell the truth about the products and companies he wrote about. Commercial influences, be they internal ("We can't say that about our own product!") or external ("We can't say that about an advertiser's product!") are equally destructive to the integrity of good technical writing. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. They also apply in the opposite direction -- "We MUST say that about our product!" -- and that's what we have with Subject to Change. The editorial mafia tactics that chafed Tim O'Reilly may be long gone in the book industry (even if they're a way of life for magazines and commercial media Web sites), but here he is today replacing them with company insiders who get paid thousands of dollars to write books that educate future clients, giving them a more solid path toward the authors' companies' sales departments. Self-promoting corporate brands and services, and purposefully omitting the most useful actionable information are the two primary methods of operation therein.

So we readers can hope that Tim O'Reilly 2.0 comes along and displaces Tim O'Reilly 1.0, who is likely a big part of the problem here. Subject to Change represents a perfect storm scenario at O'Reilly Media, partially for the above-mentioned reasons, and partially because of a change in the founder's attitude. These days, Tim O'Reilly appears to be more concerned with finding or exposing the next revolutionary technology or business idea than he is about finding the next revolutionary tech book. I wonder when he last sat in on an editorial meeting. I would be willing to bet that this book was his own idea, not because it makes a good book, but because it (badly, probably unbeknownst to him) covers a topic he's in love with and would like to promote. This formula created a situation that supported runaway corporate greed and poor-quality writing; it is why Adaptive Path was so successful at slathering its logo all over the cover and relentlessly promoting its services throughout Subject to Change without regard for readability or reader attention span. No company would be allowed to do that without a Chernobyl-like disregard for ethical safety controls at O'Reilly. What editor would stand in the way of the very publisher himself when it comes to mitigating author demands? No one had the guts to reign in the authors or tell the boss that he was wrong, so now it's up to readers like you and me to vote with our wallets.

As for me, I haven't decided if I should be more selective in the books I agree to write about, or if I should continue to call it like it is, naming-and-shaming the literary turds in the technology book pool. That is, if O'Reilly and Pearson aren't too offended at this article to continue sending me review copies. Frankly, it wouldn't break my heart if that happened -- reading bad books makes me miserable.
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/395/





Publisher Tested the Waters Online, Then Dove In
Steve Lohr

It may be a niche publisher, but the International Data Group has been working out the answers to some big mainstream questions. The biggest one: Can print media survive the transition to the Internet?

The question has taken on new urgency lately. A faltering economy is heightening the pressure on newspapers and magazines to find a sustaining future online, as the flight of readers and advertisers to the Web accelerates.

Just last week, The Capital Times, a 90-year-old daily newspaper in Madison, Wis., ended its print version and began publishing only online.

The journey beyond print is uncertain and perilous, but the experience of I.D.G., the world’s largest publisher of technology newspapers and magazines, suggests that it can be done. A privately held company, whose magazines include Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World, Macworld and CIO, it appears to have made a profitable migration to the Internet, with revenue from online ads now surpassing print revenue.

Advertisers and readers of high-tech publications have moved online more swiftly than other audiences, so I.D.G. may offer a glimpse of the future of publishing. Yet the transition at I.D.G. came only after years of investment, upheaval and changes in its practice of journalism.

“The excellent thing, and good news, for publishers is that there is life after print — in fact, a better life after print,” said Patrick J. McGovern, the founder and chairman of I.D.G.

The biggest single step in the company’s online shift came on April 2, 2007, when the last print edition of InfoWorld appeared and it became a Web-only publication. InfoWorld, a weekly, started out as Intelligent Machines Journal in 1978; I.D.G. bought it a year later, and it has long been one of the company’s flagship magazines.

There were nervous months after the switch as the company awaited the reaction from advertisers and readers, but before long InfoWorld’s Web audience was growing and its business improved. Today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.

Across the company, the remaining print publications still typically play a vital role, but a lesser one — physically smaller and financially diminished. In 2002, 86 percent of the revenue from I.D.G.’s publications came from print and 14 percent online. These days, 52 percent of the revenue is from online ads, while 48 percent is from the print side.

Last year, print and online publications accounted for 70 percent of I.D.G.’s $3 billion in revenue, with the rest coming from its conference business and its technology research firm, I.D.C.

The giant technology publisher has not just stabilized its business, Mr. McGovern said, but is also now growing at about 10 percent a year — though a severe recession would surely dim its growth prospects this year.

Throughout its far-flung network of 300 print publications and 450 Web sites in 85 countries, I.D.G. has converted smaller magazines to online only, but InfoWorld was the big one. More will come, company executives say, as print magazines slip into the red and are left behind. But they emphasize that the print versions of some publications like CIO, a glossy twice-monthly magazine, are likely to be around for many years.

CIO (for chief information officer) is distributed free to senior technology managers. It is solidly profitable and runs long articles that detail the use of technology in corporations and government institutions. A recent issue included a nine-page article on the effort to use computerized records to improve health care in California’s prison system, under a court-ordered program.

Yet even CIO has adopted what its managers call an “online first” business model. Three years ago, the editorial staff was divided into three people who worked on the Web site only and the rest only on print. Today, there are no print and Web barriers. The total staff size, at 23, is one fewer than in 2005, but now most of them spend 80 percent of their time on the Web, while a handful of writers spend 80 percent of their time on the long centerpiece articles in the print magazine.

But everyone writes for the Web these days. “It’s only fair to people for their career development,” said Michael Friedenberg, the president of CIO. “How can you say to anyone, in this environment, that they can only write in print and not online?”

The most striking change, though, has occurred at more news-oriented publications like InfoWorld, the former weekly, given the Internet’s ability to deliver news instantly to readers and deliver narrowly defined audiences to advertisers.

When Robert Carrigan, the executive in charge of I.D.G. media properties, met with the senior business managers of InfoWorld in February last year, the only thing left to decide was the death date for the print edition. With a controlled circulation of 180,000 copies, the print edition was losing money, while investment and resources had shifted to the InfoWorld Web site. “We were eager to evolve the business and prove what we felt deep down, that we could move beyond print,” Mr. Carrigan said.

There was little surprise in the editorial ranks either. By then, the editorial staff was down to its current level of 17 people, about half the number in 2002, and way below the peak of nearly 100 during the technology spending boom of the late 1990s. The separation of the print and online staffs had ended long before.

Steve Fox, the editor in chief of InfoWorld at the time, said that the most fundamental difference between print and online was the ability to measure precisely how many readers view a particular article on the Web — and how those results influence editorial decisions on what to write about.

The link to the business is direct. When a person views a Web page, ads are automatically presented on the page and the publisher collects a payment.

“It’s wonderful to have the feedback that you get online, but you need enlightened ownership so that you are not a slave to page views,” said Mr. Fox, who left amicably last October to join a social networking start-up.

At InfoWorld, page views are important, said Eric Knorr, the current editor in chief, but as a guide rather than a substitute for editorial judgment. Predictably, he added, certain topics that stir strong opinions among technology readers produce spikes in traffic. “If we were chasing page views, all we’d ever write about is H1-B visas for tech workers, Macs and how bad Microsoft is,” Mr. Knorr said.

Yet as a Web-only publication, InfoWorld is very different from the bygone print edition. Gone, Mr. Knorr says, are the long pieces of more than 3,000 words, with anecdotes and narrative, examining how technology had transformed some company or industry. Instead, he said, the key online is packaging information into “digestible chunks,” typically of no more than a page of text or so, sometimes in lists of “10 things to do” to solve some technology problem in companies.

The Web, Mr. Knorr said, also opens the door to offerings that are impossible in print. He pointed to short animations that explain complex technologies, and an online petition urging Microsoft to keep selling the aging Windows XP operating system beyond its June cutoff date, which has collected 160,000 names.

Without the physical limitations of print, Mr. Knorr said, it becomes easier to explore topics more deeply. InfoWorld presents a stable of bloggers, including 19 freelance writers, who are authorities in niches including data protection, green technology, open source software and cloud computing.

The goal, with reporting and blogging, Mr. Knorr said, is to create “thought leadership and depth” in several subject areas online, and also set up InfoWorld conferences around those topics.

The approach, it seems, resonates with the advertising industry. “Print brands are going to continue to live, but the distribution channels are certainly changing and so is the content,” said Latha Sundaram, a senior vice president at Starcom Worldwide, an advertising buyer. “InfoWorld has focused on the depth of information in technology that is best presented in an online format.”

Stewart Alsop, a journalist turned venture capitalist, was the editor in chief of InfoWorld in the 1990s, when it was thick with ads and its editorial staff was at its peak. “Technology publishing just happens to be at the point of this whole transformation of media,” Mr. Alsop said. “What’s happening at I.D.G. is a fairly accurate map for every other publishing organization. Get over it, it’s going to happen.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/bu...dia/05idg.html





Mobile TV Spreading in Europe and to the U.S.
Kevin J. O’Brien

Every day in Switzerland, 40,000 people watch a 100-second television news broadcast on their cellphones. In Italy, a million people pay as much as 19 euros each ($29) a month to watch up to a dozen mobile TV channels.

Tiny TV, the kind that is watched on a cellphone, is spreading beyond Japan and South Korea, where it has been available for about three years. Mobile operators across Europe and the United States are investing in new broadcasting towers, mobile devices, and television programming and promotions, even though it is not yet clear that profit will follow.

On Sunday, AT&T Wireless, with 71.4 million phone customers, started AT&T Mobile TV in the United States. The 10-channel service, costing $15 a month, includes Pix, a channel with movies from Sony Pictures. AT&T will sell cellphones made by LG Electronics and Samsung that can receive the TV broadcasts.

Britain is auctioning wireless spectrum this month that could be used for mobile TV. France plans to award a license for a 13-channel mobile video service in June. In Germany, Mobile 3.0, an investor group led by a South African-based media company, Naspers, plans to start a video service this year.

These services join a handful of other mobile TV offerings like those in Switzerland and Italy, all beamed from special transmission towers to tiny receivers in the mobile phones.

Until the mobile broadcasting technology appeared three years ago, cellphone operators had to send video as prepackaged clips to individual customers over high-speed, third-generation phone networks. That proved costly to both operators and viewers, and the large video packets slowed other voice and data traffic on those networks. Direct mobile broadcasting does not tax the so-called 3G networks.

Japan is the leader in direct mobile television, with 20 million cellphones equipped with TV receivers, followed by South Korea with 8.2 million, according to In-Stat, a research and consulting firm in Scottsdale, Ariz. In-Stat estimated that there were 29.7 million mobile TV viewers worldwide at the end of 2007. That is expected to almost double, to 56.9 million, at the end of 2008, driven by growth in Japan.

Italy has been an early leader in Europe, with service beginning in 2006. The largest mobile TV broadcaster on the Continent is 3 Italia, a cellular operator owned by Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong, with 800,000 customers, about 10 percent of its total phone clients. The million Italian viewers watch up to a dozen channels.

Swisscom offers a 20-channel viewing lineup, which costs 13 Swiss francs ($12.50) a month.

For some operators, mobile TV remains a niche service. In the United States, Verizon Wireless has offered mobile TV since March 2007, but In-Stat estimated that it had fewer than 100,000 paying viewers.

Robert Briel, publisher of Mobile Broadband News in Amsterdam, an online information service for mobile operators and equipment makers, said he was skeptical about the prospects for mobile TV. People prefer to watch television on larger screens and most adults do not have the time or the need to watch it on a phone, he said.

The European video broadcasts use a standard called DVB-H, short for Digital Video Broadcasting for Hand-helds, which was developed by the DVB Project, a group of 275 media , entertainment and telecommunications companies based in Geneva.

Last July, the European Commission recommended that nations in the European Union use the DVB-H standard for mobile video, but the recommendation was not binding. In the United States, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless use a rival technology called MediaFlo, which was developed by Qualcomm. Japan, South Korea and China use other standards.

All of these technologies let mobile network operators control television broadcasts by selling receiver-equipped cellphones and programming packages.

“It is fair to say that no single global standard has emerged as dominant yet,” said Lars Felber, product marketing manager at Elgato, a company in Munich that makes U.S.B.-stick TV receivers for Apple computers. “What appears to be emerging is a collection of different, complementary technologies.”

While it is unclear which standard will prevail, equipment makers like Telegent Systems, of Sunnyvale, Calif., produce chips for all the standards.

“This is really a phenomenon that is going to change viewing habits around the world,” said Weijie Yun, a founder and chief executive of Telegent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/bu.../05mobile.html





Erosion in Young Audience Shows Cracks in 'Idol' Future
David Bauder

The fevered response to the latest loopy Paula Abdul episode, where she judged a phantom performance, just goes to show how "American Idol" continues to dominate television in its seventh season.

Yet while "Idol" is still a hit, it's no longer necessarily hip.

You can hear it in the lack of enthusiasm in 14-year-old Katharine Bohrs' voice.

"Last year I was really into it, and the year before that," said the high school freshman from Brookline, Mass. "This year in the beginning I was, but then track started up and I have a lot of homework. It's two hours long and I don't have the time."

She used to watch regularly with a friend. Now her friend records it and watches only occasionally, Bohrs said.

Statistics back up the anecdote. Audience declines for "American Idol" are steepest among youthful viewers, the people who set the pop culture agenda and are most likely to buy music made by the show's winners. These are not the people you want to turn off.

Make no mistake, "American Idol" is still the biggest thing on television. It is the reason why Fox will end the TV season later this month as the nation's most-watched network for the first time in history.

The show is averaging 28.7 million viewers this year, according to Nielsen Media Research. That's down 7 percent from the nearly 31 million viewers who watched last year. It's also typical -- maybe better than typical: in this writers strike-marred season, "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" has shed 19 percent of its viewers, "Grey's Anatomy" is down 20 percent and "Survivor" is off 9 percent from last spring's edition.

"We're not in denial that the ratings are down," said Preston Beckman, Fox's chief scheduling executive. "There are things that we can control and there are things that we can't control. I defy anyone to show you a hit show that has been on for seven seasons that is at the level this one is on relative to where it started."

Among women aged 18 to 34, the "American Idol" audience has slipped 18 percent this year. Isolate teenagers 12-to-17, and the drop is 12 percent.

The median age of an "American Idol" viewer, once in the mid-30s, is now up to 42, Nielsen said.

And -- horror of horrors -- viewership is actually UP this season among people aged 50 and over. Those are the folks many television tastemakers pretend don't exist.

At the beginning of "American Idol," contestants like winner Kelly Clarkson seemed more sincere and devoted to their singing, said Chrissy Will, 16, a resident of California's suburban Orange County. Now they seem more focused on publicity and fame, she said.

"It's completely repetitive," Will said. "It's the same thing as the year before."

Her friend, Tina Oram, 17, said "Idol" now seems boring and over-promoted. She's more interested in watching dance contests (ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" is up in the ratings this season.)

"You can't not put your heart into dancing," she said.
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_9167822





Iraq Vet, Talk Show Pioneer Pair For Anti - War Film

Phil Donahue met thousands of intriguing people during three decades as a top TV talk show host, but it was an inert Iraq war veteran in a hospital bed that led him to the most compelling story in his life.

"I met Tomas at Walter Reed and he wasn't communicating anything," Donahue remembers of his visit to the Washington DC military hospital. "He didn't meet me, I met him. He was totally medicated. As I stood next to his bed, his mother explained the gravity of his injuries."

U.S. Army soldier Tomas Young was paralyzed from the chest down at 25 years of age after a bullet pierced his spine in his first week serving in Iraq. Donahue, now 72, couldn't get Young out of his head and set the wheels in motion to make his first documentary, "Body of War," now showing in U.S. theaters.

Donahue and filmmaker Ellen Spiro tell in graphic detail the challenges of the young man in his wheelchair -- his pain, frustration and difficulties managing bodily functions. One scene shows his mother inserting a catheter so he can urinate on a road trip.

But Donahue and Spiro don't stop at the physical aspects of Young's life. They follow the veteran's conversion into an anti-war activist as he goes on the TV news magazine "60 Minutes" and addresses church and veterans groups across the United States.

Even when he could hardly finish sentences, Young quipped "Soldiers voting for President Bush is like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders." With statements like that, Donahue and Spiro knew they had a star.

"This is a huge sacrifice," Donahue told Reuters ahead of the Los Angeles premiere. "This man can't walk. You know, prime of life and we don't see this. And I just think it is wrong. If you are going to send people, we have the responsibility to show the sacrifice that is being made."

'How Did This Happen?'

But Donahue wanted to go further than simply illustrating the hardships endured by Young to drive home his own opposition to the war, which has killed over 4,000 U.S. troops and injured 29,000 in five years.

"I didn't just want a film of this young man struggling," Donahue said. "We wanted people to see how we got here. How did this happen?"

He decided "Body of War" should have a parallel track showing the U.S. Congress voting in October 2002 to give President Bush authorization to go to war against Iraq.

Donahue reviewed more than 100 hours of debate in Congress on the vote and noticed a pro-war script taking hold with phrases like: "Inaction is worse than action" and "A smoking gun will become a mushroom cloud."

The star of the political storyline is then octogenarian Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, the longest serving member in the history of the Senate and opponent of the war who calls the 2002 vote the most important in his career.

"Byrd makes the case that if you scare the people, they will always come along and do the bidding of the leaders," said Donahue, his blue eyes bulging with anger over the proceedings.

When Donahue met Young a few years later, he started thinking about the old Byrd and the youngster Young getting together to talk, and he makes that happen, providing one of the most poignant scenes in the film in which they review the historic Senate vote.

Throughout his long career on TV, Donahue hosted over 7,000 one-hour daily shows and pioneered a talk show format that thrives today, but he never had designs on documentaries and is surprised how much his first film moved him.

"It has been a singular experience of my lifetime," he said. "I have never been this close to something this real, this challenging, this complicated, this political."

(Reporting by Mary Milliken; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

(For multimedia click on http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/iraqveterans)
http://www.reuters.com/article/lates.../idUSN02366750





Indiana Jones and the Savior of a Lost Art
Terrence Rafferty

“THIS is a recreational activity for me” is surely among the last things you’d expect to hear from the director of a huge, costly, dauntingly complex summer action movie as it nears completion, with its release date just a few weeks away.

But that is what Steven Spielberg said not long ago, speaking by phone from a dub stage where he was supervising the sound mixing of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (opening May 22), the first new installment in 19 years of the crowd-pleasing adventure-movie franchise that began in 1981 with “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” “In 1989,” Mr. Spielberg said, referring to the year “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” came out, “I thought the curtain was lowering on the series, which is why I had all the characters literally ride off into the sunset at the end. But ever since then the most common question I get asked, all over the world, is, ‘When are you going to make another Indiana Jones?’ ”

It’s a fair guess that theater operators and executives at Paramount Pictures have asked that question at least as frequently as the ticket-buying public has, and perhaps with a shade more urgency: the three Indy pictures — “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984) was the one in the middle — have raked in well over a billion dollars worldwide from their theatrical releases alone. The anticipation, on the part of both the fans and the suits, falls somewhere between keen and breathless. And for most filmmakers that level of expectation might appear in their clammier dreams as a giant boulder bearing down on them and picking up speed.

“I’m having a great time,” Mr. Spielberg said. And, unlikely though this may seem, you can’t help believing him; he certainly sounds excited, and the secret of the Indiana Jones movies’ success has always been their free-spirited inventiveness, a what-the-hell quality that can’t (or shouldn’t) be faked, even on a gigantic budget.

Weirdly, authenticity — not faking it — is very much on his mind when he makes one of these unabashedly preposterous movies, whose hero (still played by Harrison Ford) is a two-fisted, bullwhip-wielding academic archaeologist zipping around the globe in search of rare mystical artifacts and in the process running afoul of Nazis, creepy human-sacrifice cults and other exemplars of unambiguous, unadulterated evil.

Even by the extremely flexible standards of high-adventure pulp, the Indy pictures are a pretty stern test of the audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief. (At times you feel as if it were hanging, as the hero periodically does, over a mass of writhing, fang-baring snakes, or a river full of famished crocodiles.) The authenticity Mr. Spielberg is concerned with here is something other than the historical realism of, say, “Schindler’s List” or “Munich”; what he wanted to talk about was the physical integrity of the action, of which there is, in an Indiana Jones movie, plenty.

The tone and style of the films derive from the movie serials of the 1930s and ’40s, which Mr. Spielberg, growing up in the ’50s, used to see on Saturday mornings at a revival theater in Scottsdale, Ariz.

“They made a great impression on me, both because of how exciting they were and because of how cheesy they were,” he said. “I’d kind of be involved in the stories and be ridiculing them at the same time. One week they’d give us a cliffhanger with the good guy going off the cliff, the car crashing on the rocks below and blowing up, and then the next week he’s fine. They forgot to show us the cut of the guy jumping out of the car? That we weren’t going to do in the Indiana Jones series.”

In fact, Mr. Spielberg said, he tries to cut as little as possible in these movies’ action sequences, because “every time the camera changes dynamic angles, you feel there’s something wrong, that there’s some cheating going on.” So his goal is “to do the shots the way Chaplin or Keaton would, everything happening before the eyes of the audience, without a cut.”

Warming to the subject, he went on: “The idea is, there’s no illusion; what you see is what you get. My movies have never been frenetically cut, the way a lot of action is done today. That’s not a put-down; some of that quick cutting, like in ‘The Bourne Ultimatum,’ is fantastic, just takes my breath away. But to get the comedy I want in the Indy films, you have to be old-fashioned. I’ve studied a lot of the old movies that made me laugh, and you’ve got to stage things in full shots and let the audience be the editor. It’s like every shot is a circus act.”

And in 1981, in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” that approach was so old-fashioned it looked new. (It’s difficult to remember now just how stodgy and joyless the action genre had become; even the James Bond movies, reliably sprightly in the ’60s, turned into slow-footed, campy behemoths in the ’70s with entries like “Moonraker.”)

In the 27 years since, practically every action filmmaker has tried to drink from the grail of Indiana Jones, to tap into the movie’s quasi-mystical kinetic (and commercial) power: the pace had to be blindingly fast; the stunts insanely elaborate, the villainy extra-villainous; the hero’s attitude blithe, insouciant, almost sociopathically cool. Mr. Spielberg and George Lucas — who produces the movies and who dreamed up the basic idea of the series — have a lot to answer for.

The sad truth is that the enormous influence of the Indiana Jones films has been a distinctly mixed blessing. Action movies are, over all, a good deal snappier than they were 30 years ago, but they also tend to be a good deal less intelligible. They skimp on the exposition and go straight for sensation, as if cutting to the chase were not a metaphor but literally the cardinal rule of filmmaking. And that’s true not only of the most egregious Indiana Jones knockoffs — the “Mummy,” “National Treasure” and “Lara Croft” movies spring, unwelcomely, to mind — but of nearly every studio picture that features more action than, say, “My Dinner With André.” It’s no accident that movies of this sort, ubiquitous in summertime, are so often blurbed as “thrill rides”: they can be that exhausting, and that pointless.

Pointlessness is, however, in the eye of the beholder. When asked what kind of films he enjoyed most as a boy, Mr. Spielberg replied, simply, “Anything with a lot of movement,” and quite a few of us would say the same. Swift, thrilling motion is the hook that pulls young imaginations into movies, and although your taste might get a tad more refined over the years, vivid, intricate, ingeniously choreographed action can still give you that Saturday-matinee charge of pleasure.

The perilously long and complicated opening sequence of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” for example — in which a song-and-dance number (“Anything Goes,” sung in Mandarin) turns into a wild slapstick action scene involving a diamond, a poisoned drink and an elusive vial of antidote, and ends with Indy and his companions jumping out of a plane in a rubber raft — delivers that sort of giddy, mildly deranging stimulation. The staging and the cutting have the “can you top this?” audacity of a silent comedy, and the timing is slyly impeccable: it’s about the length of a Keaton two-reeler.

It hardly matters that the “Anything Goes” set piece was originally planned for “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The big action scenes in the Indiana Jones movies are almost risibly inorganic to the narratives that contain them. This kind of randomness is risky — not to be tried at home, or by any filmmaker less prodigiously gifted than Mr. Spielberg. You need a rigorous imagination for visual comedy to make movies as exhilaratingly ridiculous as these.

“John Williams and I have a word we use when we have something we think the audience will love,” Mr. Spielberg said, referring to the composer who has scored all the Indiana Jones movies. “Maybe it’ll be a little over the top, and we ask each other, ‘Are we being too shameless?’ In a way I think we’ve both grown kind of proud of being shameless.”

When the jokes are good, as they frequently are in the Indy pictures, there’s every reason for pride. These goofy movies tell you as much about Steven Spielberg as his more serious work does. Movies truly are a form of recreation for him, and he’s the kind of artist who reveals himself fully in the intensity of his play. In the Indiana Jones movies he revives the spirit of silent comedy in the adventures of an intellectual with a bullwhip. And that’s a feat that, whether you think it’s worth doing or not, at least deserves high marks for degree of difficulty. If only everybody else in Hollywood hadn’t tried to imitate him, he’d have nothing to be ashamed of at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/mo...al/04raff.html





Indiana Jones Is Battling the Long Knives of the Internet
Michael Cieply

Now comes the part where Indiana Jones dangles over the snake pit of public opinion.

Actually, a handful of Web reviewers have already struck at the film “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” despite an intense effort by the director Steven Spielberg, the executive producer George Lucas and Paramount Pictures to keep this highly anticipated sequel out of sight until Sunday, May 18.

On that day, this fourth Indiana Jones movie is scheduled to make its debut at the Cannes Film Festival with an afternoon press screening, and another one at night.

At about the same time, the picture, which opens in theaters on the following Thursday, is expected to be screened for the news media and industry insiders at multiple showings in Manhattan and Los Angeles, while other screenings are scheduled around the world.

Mr. Spielberg is unusually fastidious when it comes to protecting his films from advance word that can diminish excitement or muddy a message planted by months of carefully orchestrated publicity and expensive promotions (including, in this case, a February cover article in Vanity Fair, complete with Annie Leibovitz photos of the cast, and leather bullwhips delivered weeks ago to newsrooms).

Mr. Spielberg customarily avoids leaky test screenings. Even Marvin Levy, his publicist of more than 30 years, said he had not yet seen the new movie.

Still, there it was, at 6:42 a.m. on Thursday: a harshly critical review on aintitcoolnews.com, from a poster who identified himself as “ShogunMaster.” Rife with details from the film, the review said, “This is the Indiana Movie that you were dreading.”

By that afternoon two other less critical, but less than sparkling, reviews also appeared on the Web site.

The man who posted as ShogunMaster, reached via the Web site, said he is a theater executive who saw the film at an exhibitors’ screening this week. He spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal from the studio.

Paramount had shown the film to a handful of theater company executives at its Los Angeles lot and elsewhere.

Movie studios increasingly tend to protect their biggest bets from advance showings. Two years ago, for instance, Sony Pictures screened “The Da Vinci Code” for critics at the Cannes Film Festival only two days before its opening in the United States. But exhibitors’ screenings can open a window for determined reviewers.

Such screenings are required in about two dozen states that have laws against blind-bidding, a practice in which theater owners were once asked to bid on films they had not seen.

As a practical matter, there is little or no actual bidding in the contemporary theater business, which relies instead on negotiations between distributors and theater owners. But distributors continue to hold screenings for theater company executives in the weeks before a film’s release, whether as a courtesy or as a way to avoid conflict with a patchwork of state laws.

Theater executives may have an incentive to play down a movie’s prospects after such a screening, to get better terms. In any case, many fans will most likely flock to “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” if only to make their own judgments about Mr. Spielberg’s decision to revisit the franchise fully 19 years after its last installment. Still, bad notices could keep the more ambivalent moviegoers from attending and thwart a truly huge box office haul.

According to Mr. Levy, who spoke by telephone on Thursday, Mr. Spielberg has kept a watchful eye on virtually every aspect of the film’s marketing campaign. “He gets involved with everything,” Mr. Levy said. “Every TV spot, every line in every ad, every advertising concept.” (Among the marketing tie-ins were Indiana Jones fedoras, available at Blockbuster stores.)

The current campaign has been engineered to create excitement around the opening date, May 22 — some billboards feature the date, in flame-colored letters, and little else — without telling too much about the film. Last year the movie’s producers went so far as to file a lawsuit against a bit player who had publicly discussed the film’s plot, which involves the exploits of an aging archaeological adventurer, still played by Harrison Ford, now 65.

The campaign has been effective so far. Fandango, which sells film tickets online, said this week that it was “seeing brisk advance ticket sales” to “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” identified as the summer’s most anticipated film in a poll Fandango conducted of moviegoers.

But a better gauge of success is likely to be the extent of online sales in the few days after the film screens at Cannes — and after many reviewers have weighed in.

Tim Ryan, a senior editor at Rottentomatoes.com, which compiles film reviews, said he expected those of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” to surface “maybe an hour or two” after the Sunday afternoon press screening in France. His company will have someone on hand to post them immediately, Mr. Ryan said.

As rated by Rottentomatoes, the earlier “Indiana Jones” films enjoyed strong reviews. The worst-reviewed of the three — the second, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” released in 1984 — was still the third-most-popular movie of the year.

Mr. Spielberg, Mr. Levy said, may not be the first to know if the aging Indy manages to wriggle past any negative early notices to score another hit. “When a movie opens, he usually disappears,” Mr. Levy said. “He usually doesn’t want to know all the details about how it’s doing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/movies/10indy.html





A Man of Steel With Feet of Clay
Michael Cieply

TWICE in the last month visits to the Sony Pictures lot here went much the same way.

The normally efficient guards at the gate struggled with their computers. They were unable, on the first trip, to find a trace of the writer-producer Akiva Goldsman or, on the second, of the actor and director Peter Berg.

“Why aren’t these people in the system?” snapped an exasperated young man in the booth on the second visit.

Actually, both Mr. Goldsman and Mr. Berg are in the system. Sort of.

Lately the two men are fixtures at Sony, where they have spent the breezy spring weeks in meeting rooms and darkened stages, wrangling the last round of work on a film, “Hancock,” that will occupy thousands of America’s movie screens over the July 4 weekend.

In a larger sense, however, the two are exactly what they seemed during those hang-ups at the studio gate: consummate insiders with just enough of the outsider about them to keep the Hollywood system on edge.

Both make big movies for big companies. “Hancock,” with Will Smith — by some accounts the most valuable star in the world right now — will cost roughly $150 million to produce, and a similarly large amount to market worldwide.

Yet neither can resist the kind of movie that nudges a studio one step beyond its safety zone. “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” of which Mr. Goldsman was a producer, was a tale of love-struck assassins trying to kill each other; “The Kingdom,” directed by Mr. Berg, was an unlikely action caper set in Saudi Arabia.

“Hancock” is probably two steps past safe. This time Mr. Smith, who shares a penchant for pushing the envelope (think of “Ali,” undertaken when he was still an action-comedy star), plays a superhero who swills bourbon, hates his job and looks unnervingly like Mr. Berg, who was considerably bedraggled in the final weeks of work on his film. (According to Mr. Goldsman, Mr. Smith, on meeting Mr. Berg in one of his work-worn states, said: “Oh. Oh. He is Hancock.”)

Along with, among others, Michael Mann, one of the producers of “Hancock,” and James Lassiter, Mr. Smith’s longtime producing partner, the two belong to what Mr. Goldsman likes to call a loose collective of like-minded filmmakers. By their own account they keep pushing an increasingly corporate entertainment industry to do what scares it a little — and not just stick to a summerful of sequels and animated sure shots.

“It is more difficult, and more necessary, at the same time,” Mr. Mann said recently, speaking of the ticklish art of making movies that keep the system from boring itself, and the audience along with it.

So “Hancock,” whether it succeeds or fails, will most likely be remembered for having forced Hollywood to reach a bit farther than it likes to go. That has happened in the past with unconventional hits like “Star Wars,” “Titanic” and “The Sixth Sense,” and with dozens of flops like “Last Action Hero” and “Heaven’s Gate.”

Eleven weeks before the release of “Hancock” Mr. Berg and company were still testing the creative boundaries. Their picture has a spot on the schedule filled last year by Paramount’s toy-driven crowd-pleaser, “Transformers.” As of mid-April, however, it had been twice to the ratings board and tagged each time with an R, not acceptable for a movie that must ultimately be rated PG-13 to reach its intended broad audience.

“We had statutory rape up until three weeks ago,” Mr. Berg said, describing just one of the elements that has turned “Hancock” into an exercise in brinkmanship.

Sipping coffee in a studio kitchenette, having finally been allowed through the gate, three-day growth and worn Macalester Scots T-shirt notwithstanding, he spoke with a candor usually reserved for the retrospective DVD commentary.

The film, he said, remained surprisingly sexual, violent and true in spirit to an original script that was viewed as brilliant but unmakable when its creator, Vincent Ngo, first circulated it more than a decade ago under the title “Tonight, He Comes.”

Keeping it that way became what Mr. Berg called “an epic game of chicken.” The filmmakers, for instance, long ago conceded that their hero should not get drunk with a 12-year-old. But their concession was a bargaining chip, aimed at keeping a similar situation with a 17-year-old in the final version, which was still weeks from being locked as Mr. Berg spoke in April. Another touchy area, Mr. Berg said, involved flying, never mind driving, under the influence.

Asked about the process, Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairwoman, took a chipper view. “Will Smith playing a superhero in a movie that’s funny and has tons of action, that’s not so hard,” she said in a telephone interview.

Pressed a bit, however, Ms. Pascal acknowledged that “Hancock” does break some ground. “It’s scary in that it goes farther than we’ve gone before,” she said.

By Mr. Berg’s lights the executives became comfortable with the film only recently. That occurred when they settled on a marketing approach that played down drama in favor of action and humor. In one of the trailer’s highlights Mr. Smith heaves a beached whale out to sea and smashes a sailboat.

“The ad campaign for this movie is much friendlier than the film,” Mr. Berg noted.

That Sony would stake its summer on an unusually alienated superhero — even the Batman of “The Dark Knight” does not sleep on a bus bench — owes much to its enduring relationship with Mr. Smith. Beginning with “Bad Boys” in 1995, he has made seven films with the studio, all of them successes. “Will Smith in anything makes it even better,” Ms. Pascal said.

That Mr. Smith in turn would stake his platinum persona on such an unlikable (by design) character owes a great deal to Mr. Goldsman, who has made a career out of movies that are just subversive enough to let the biggest star feel he is sneaking past the studio gate.

The best of those films can look like sure bets in retrospect, but at the time they often were not. “A Beautiful Mind” had taxed Universal with its story of a schizophrenic mathematician. Yet Russell Crowe rode the role to an Academy Award nomination in 2002, and the movie won the Oscar for best picture and a writing Oscar for Mr. Goldsman.

Warner Brothers proved similarly skittish over its smash horror hit “I Am Legend,” a movie that starred Mr. Smith, with Mr. Goldsman as both a writer and a producer.

“It’s a silent movie, Will doesn’t make a single joke, we kill a dog and then kill” the hero, Mr. Goldsman said, describing studio reservations about his version of the “Legend” script.

Almost as dapper as Mr. Berg is grizzled, Mr. Goldsman is at ease in a sport coat and delights in playing the cheerful provocateur. Over a Cobb salad in Sony’s commissary, he recalled offering Mr. Ngo’s far more difficult screenplay to Warner executives, who were then busy trying to revive their Superman franchise. As he remembered it, they said: “No. No. No, no, no.”

Later he persuaded a college friend, Richard Saperstein, to acquire an option on the script for an independent company, Artisan Entertainment, where Mr. Saperstein was an executive. Mr. Mann, another friend, agreed to direct it, but at a crucial moment chose to do “Miami Vice” for Universal instead, though he remained a producer.

Artisan disappeared in a corporate shuffle. Vince Gilligan (the “X-Files” television series and the AMC series “Breaking Bad”) and John August (“Big Fish”) eventually did rewrites. First Jonathan Mostow (“Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”) and then Gabriele Muccino (“The Pursuit of Happyness”) were expected to direct, before Mr. Berg finally took over.

(Mr. Ngo declined to be interviewed for this article. His agent said that Mr. Ngo, who was born in Vietnam, intends to build a school in that country with his money from “Hancock.”)

Along the way Mr. Goldsman persuaded Mr. Smith to play the role and took the project once more to Warner — which again passed, allowing Ms. Pascal and Sony to step in.

“This is about why Superman can’t get a date,” Mr. Goldsman said, speaking of Warner’s reluctance to make a movie that dares to parody one of its most enduring characters. Hancock, he explained, cannot spend the night with a woman he meets at a party. “The physical impracticalities of this, this is what we play with,” he said.

The material is sufficiently risqué that Mr. Goldsman said he now believes the system — executives, agents, leery handlers — might have warned Mr. Smith away from it, had Mr. Goldsman not traded directly on a working friendship rooted in his earlier involvement with both “I Am Legend” and “I, Robot.” (Mr. Smith did not respond to requests, through his publicist, to be interviewed for this article.)

It also helped that Mr. Goldsman is no stranger to Sony, confusion at the guard stand aside. He has adapted both “The Da Vinci Code” and its sequel, “Angels & Demons,” for the studio and Imagine Entertainment.

Still, executives must be mindful of the risks into which Mr. Goldsman and his associates have drawn the company. It has its own superhero franchise to protect, in “Spider-Man,” and a star who has made Sony a fortune when he has been inspirational, as in “The Pursuit of Happyness” in 2006, or lovable, as in “Hitch” a year earlier.

But the best ones are always a bit intimidating. “So was Jack Nicholson in ‘As Good as It Gets,’ ” a Sony film for which he won an Oscar, Ms. Pascal said.

And, as Mr. Goldsman noted, the business still yearns, in its wary way, for life on the edge.

“Everybody knows that you want to break the box,” he said. “It’s just that the act of breaking the box is really frightening.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/mo...al/04ciep.html





Uma Thurman’s Pursuer Is Found Guilty of Stalking
Anemona Hartocollis and John Eligon

Jack Jordan, a University of Chicago graduate turned drifter who lived in his car, was found guilty on Tuesday of stalking the actress Uma Thurman, the star of edgy, violent movies like “Kill Bill” and “Pulp Fiction.”

He was also found guilty of one count of second-degree aggravated harassment, but was acquitted of two additional counts of second-degree aggravated harassment.

During the jury trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Jordan testified in his own defense, describing his elaborate visions — which he called the daydreams of an artistic soul — that he was predestined to meet Ms. Thurman and live a happy life with her and her two children.

The trial attracted widespread attention because Ms. Thurman testified, along with her mother, Birgitte, a former Ford model known to friends as Nena, her father, Robert, a professor of Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University, and her brother, Dechen.

Mr. Jordan testified for about five hours with the calm, neutral demeanor of someone at a college or job interview. His father, a nuclear physicist, and brother attended some of the trial, his lawyer said. Mr. Jordan carried an overstuffed hiking backpack to court every day, and was photographed sleeping on a street in Chelsea during the trial.

Mr. Jordan faced one count of stalking Ms. Thurman from 2005 to 2007, with a hiatus of about a year in 2006, and three counts of aggravated harassment by sending her and people around her notes and letters.

Both charges are misdemeanors, and he faces up to 90 days in jail on the stalking charge, with possibly more time for the aggravated harassment. His lawyer said that Mr. Jordan had turned down a prosecution offer to plead guilty to aggravated harassment in return for a sentence of 18 months in inpatient psychiatric treatment, which would be reduced to a violation once completed.

Under the legal definition of stalking and aggravated harassment, whether he was convicted depended a great deal on the jury’s assessment of Mr. Jordan’s and Ms. Thurman’s states of mind — whether he intended to scare her, and whether she, in turn, was reacting in a natural and predictable way by being scared of him.

Mr. Jordan testified that he never thought of himself as a stalker. He said he was engaged “in a game of cat and mouse,” with Ms. Thurman, and that he sometimes thought of her as the cat, “courting” him. He said he had seen coincidences between what happened to her characters in her movies and his own life.

He said he continued to pursue Ms. Thurman because he thought she might want to meet him, but was being prevented by an “infrastructure” of assistants and security around her. He said he never realized that she might feel threatened by the cards he sent her. “I see it now,” he said. “I’ve been shocked at how everyone responded.”

His defense lawyer, George Vomvolakis, portrayed him as a social misfit with a strange sense of humor who was meek and harmless.

Mr. Vomvolakis suggested that the jury could identify with Mr. Jordan, if they tried. “Think about your lives and what you have done in your lives in the name of love,” he urged. “Think about the stupid things you have done.”

Mr. Vomvolakis said his client was being prosecuted because the district attorney’s office was protecting a celebrity, and that Mr. Jordan’s would not have led to such charges if he had become fixated on an ordinary woman.

He urged the jury to set aside their layman’s idea of a stalker — someone who was fixated, obsessed, infatuated — essentially conceding that Mr. Jordan fit that profile. They should focus, he said, on whether Mr. Jordan had broken the law by being knowingly threatening to Ms. Thurman.

The prosecution portrayed him as a calculating, manipulative liar, who knew he was making Ms. Thurman fear for her life and that of her children.

“He wanted to be with Uma Thurman and he would not take no for an answer,” Ms. Taub said. “I mean, really, the manipulation here, you have to see it.”

Mr. Jordan, 37, one of the younger of eight children, grew up in Maryland and graduated from the University of Chicago with a literature degree in 1994. He testified that he developed a crush on Ms. Thurman, 38, after seeing her in “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” while he was in high school.

After college, he co-founded a hiking and study abroad nonprofit organization called Go Trek, although he seemed to drift away from it, focusing on bureaucratic duties like fund-raising while holding what he described as healthy jobs where he could clear his mind, like pool-cleaning.

In the fall of 2004, he heard Robert Thurman being interviewed on public radio about his book, “Circling the Sacred Mountain.” He testified that he “took an instant liking” to Professor Thurman, and began writing to him, asking if he would become a board member of Go Trek.

Professor Thurman politely rebuffed Mr. Jordan’s e-mail messages, and testified that “air-raid sirens” went off in his head as Mr. Jordan wrote e-mail messages saying, for instance, that Ms. Thurman’s two children were illusions.

Mr. Jordan testified that by “illusion,” he was making a literary observation, because Ms. Thurman’s daughter, Maya’s name literally meant an illusion and her son’s name, Levon, spelled backward was “novel.”

During the time he was writing to Professor Thurman, he said, he saw Ms. Thurman’s movie, “Kill Bill.”

“I was overcome by a strong feeling of affection for her,” he testified. “To me it had sort of an esoteric feeling. It was unexplainable. I had never experienced that before in my life.”

By the following May, Mr. Jordan began focusing his attention on Ms. Thurman, trying to contact her through her father, mother and brothers. Nena Thurman testified that Mr. Jordan threatened to commit suicide if they did not help him contact Ms. Thurman. They were alarmed and tried to talk him out of it, they said, and Dechen Thurman even talked to Mr. Jordan’s mother.

In his testimony, Mr. Jordan said that he had looked up the telephone number of the Thurman family house in Woodstock, N.Y., on 411.com. He said he had been reluctant to talk about his feelings, because he thought they might be interpreted as psychosis, but trusted Nena Thurman because he knew she had psychoanalytic training, and thought she might help him. He said he told her that he “suspected that Uma might be waiting to meet me.”

In November 2005, Mr. Jordan tracked the actress to the set of a movie, “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” that she was making in SoHo. He delivered, through her entourage, a package of notes, including a child’s confirmation card and a drawing of himself, as a stick figure, walking across an Acme razor blade with Ms. Thurman, another stick figure, waiting below near an open grave.

He testified that the messages had intricate layers of meaning. They were sly references to, among other things, the Acme warehouse in Loony Tunes cartoons and the violence in her movies, which he thought would amuse Ms. Thurman and endear himself to her through his wit.

A picture of a headless bride was both a reference to her being shot in a movie and, he said, “possibly artistically in a way I didn’t understand at the time reflected a sense of my own anonymity.”

He also sent Ms. Thurman a card with tiny words written on it in a spiral pattern. Most of the words were crossed out, and those remaining were what he in his testimony called “raunchy” words like “butter,” “chocolate,” “mouth,” and the phrase, “My hands should be on your body.”

The inked-out words in the spiral note, he said, were like the marks of a censor preventing him from meeting his true love.

During cross-examination, the lead prosecutor, Jessica Taub, asked Mr. Jordan how he would feel about such a message if he were a woman. “I have some insight into the feelings of women,” Mr. Jordan replied. “My best friends growing up were my two little sisters.” But then he seemed to think better of his answer, and ended, “I don’t know.”

After Mr. Jordan’s visit to the movie set, a private investigator hired by the production company contacted his parents, who had him committed to a mental institution for a month. Mr. Jordan testified that his parents mistakenly understood that he had sent Ms. Thurman an envelope full of razors, not just a picture of a razor, and that he had been forcibly medicated.

He then took graduate courses in education in California, and left Ms. Thurman alone for about a year in 2006-7, though he sent a poem for each letter of the alphabet to her publicist, he testified. When he failed the public-school teacher test, he drove to New York, thinking he would find wealthy families to hire him as a tutor.

He began sleeping in his car — he noted that his Go Trek experience made him well versed in survival skills — and working as a lifeguard in Midtown, he said, until he could get a New York title for his car and sell it to earn a “nest egg.” During that time, in August 2007, he walked zig-zag from 30th Street to the financial district until he recognized Ms. Thurman’s Greenwich Village town house from a photograph. Her street was so beautiful, he testified, that he parked his car there and began ringing her bell day after day, once at midnight, trying to talk to her.

He put two notes in her mailbox, the basis of two of the counts of aggravated harassment (the third was the package he gave to her on the movie set). And he dropped dollar bills into her mail slot; they were symbols, he said, of his devotion and his poverty.

Ms. Thurman was on vacation in the Bahamas, but her house-sitter called the police, who gave Mr. Jordan a ticket for trespassing.

The police, he said, told him not to go west of Fifth Avenue or south of 14th Street. He obeyed, he said, because he wanted to keep his “freedom.” He camped out in his car on the Lower East Side, waiting for his Oct. 30 court date on the summons, and was arrested in early October, based on a complaint from Ms. Thurman.

Mr. Jordan said he had been humiliated by the proceedings. “What I thought was private has been made public,” he said, adding, as if correcting himself, “but that’s not the issue here.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/ny.../07uma.html?hp





Yotta, yotta, yotta

HP Brings Storage, Servers into One Rack
Stephen Lawson

To help IT departments prepare for the coming onslaught of data, Hewlett-Packard Co. today introduced a platform that combines storage and computing in one rack with a single file system and management console.

The HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System (ExDS9100) is designed for businesses facing bigger challenges in storage than in computing. Those include Web 2.0 companies such as photo-sharing and social networking sites, as well as specialized industries such as genetics, oil and gas, said David Roberson, senior vice president and general manager of HP's StorageWorks division.

Demand for storage is doubling every 18 to 24 months, and within five years, Roberson expects to see a "yottabyte year" when the industry as a whole ships 1 yottabyte, or 1,000 zettabytes, of storage capacity. HP is investing heavily in this area because it sees a big opportunity: Enterprises will be putting much of their focus and spending there in the next two years, Roberson said. Currently, 45% of all hard drives in the world, from PCs to data centers, are sold by HP, he said.

Managing many terabytes of storage is far different from taking care of a few hundred gigabytes on a PC, said Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. analyst Mark Peters.

"You reach a point where just the sheer scale of what you're managing becomes the problem," Peters said.

Many vendors are moving toward this kind of system, including IBM, with its recent acquisition of Israeli start-up XIV, and EMC Corp., Peters said. But the ExDS9100 promises to be a good solution because of the care HP is putting into it, he said.

"There's nothing huge, bulk, cheap, easy to use that's already on the market," Peters said.

The ExDS9100 will help companies scale up their storage and computing capacity and more easily manage that capacity, according to HP. Today, in organizations with large amounts of data, it may take several administrators to manage one petabyte of data. HP wants to turn that around so a single administrator can manage several petabytes, Roberson said.

The platform consists of an HP BladeSystem chassis with room for 16 blade servers, in a rack that also accommodates storage controllers and high-density "storage blocks" with as many as 82 hard drives. A base configuration will consist of four blade servers and three storage blocks, with 246TB of storage. Customers will be able to add either type of capacity independently of the other. One rack will hold as much as 820TB, but an extra rack of storage can be added for a total of 1.64 petabytes.

Applications that access the storage will run directly on the blade servers, taking advantage of HP file-clustering software. This eliminates a tier of software, according to HP. Both servers and storage can be managed through one management console. In addition, the high density of the platform allows for efficient use of space, cooling and power, according to HP.

The ExDS9100 is scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter. HP predicted that it will cost less than $2 per gigabyte in a typical configuration.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...&intsrc=kc_top





Hard Drive Recovered from Columbia Shuttle Solves Physics Problem

An experiment that flew on the Columbia shuttle achieves closure
JR Minkel

HARDENED DRIVE: Engineers from NASA's Johnson Space Center recovered this hard drive, a cold-plate mounted Seagate containing roughly 400 megabytes of data from the CVX-2 experiment, taken from the wreckage of Space Shuttle Columbia in February 2003. They sent this image to CVX-2 engineers in October, alerting them that the hard drive had withstood the shuttle's destruction.
NASA

Researchers have finally published the results of data recovered from a cracked and singed hard drive that fell to Earth in the debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia, which broke up during reentry on February 1, 2003, killing all seven crew members.

The hard drive contained data from the CVX-2 (Critical Viscosity of Xenon) experiment, designed to study the way xenon gas flows in microgravity. The findings, published this April in the journal Physical Review E, confirmed that when stirred vigorously, xenon exhibits a sudden change in viscosity known as shear thinning. The same effect allows whipped cream and ketchup to go from flowing smoothly like liquids to holding their shapes like solids.

Although the CVX-2 results may not change anyone's life, Robert "Bobby" Berg, the lead investigator for CVX-2 and a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., says the publication caps a 20-year research project that has occupied his thoughts daily since 2003. "It was a load off my shoulders to finally get it published," says the 52-year-old researcher.

The CVX-2 experiment was designed to measure xenon's viscosity close to the critical point, or the combination of temperature and pressure at which liquid and vapor are essentially indistinguishable. Near that point, a gas should "twinkle," Berg says, as droplets quickly condense and evaporate within the thick fog. According to the theory behind shear thinning, as an object swishes through these droplets more vigorously, it should begin slicing through individual droplets and hence feel less resistance.

To test for the effect, the CVX team sent up 0.37 fluid ounces (11 milliliters) of xenon sealed in a vessel that contained a thumbnail-size nickel mesh capable of vibrating at a range of amplitudes [see image]. The group downloaded about 85 percent of the data from the 370-hour experiment while Columbia was in orbit—enough to see that it was working as expected—but the test depended on the full data, which was locked in a nearly 400-megabyte commercial hard drive ensconced in a metal "card cage" and housed with other electronics in a larger vessel in the shuttle's cargo bay.

After the reentry, Berg says, when it was not immediately recovered, "we assumed that it fell out of the cage and burned up and that was it." But engineers from Johnson Space Center had actually found the apparatus in the hanger at Kennedy Space Center where workers had laid out the Columbia debris, says James Myers of the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the project's lead engineer.



When the Glenn engineers learned that the hard drive had indeed survived, they sent it to Ontrack Data Recovery in Minneapolis to extract whatever data remained in the cracked hard drive disk [see image]. The data came back about 99 percent complete, but the results were so complex that isolating the shear-thinning effect took an additional several years, Berg says.

He notes that the experiment could have only worked in microgravity, to prevent the xenon from settling under its feather-light weight. With NASA's priorities shifting away from basic research, he says, "this is the sort of experiment that won't be duplicated for a long time, if ever."
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...olumbia&sc=rss





Melting Defects Could Lead to Smaller, More Powerful Microchips
Chandra Shekhar

As microchips shrink, even tiny defects in the lines, dots and other shapes etched on them become major barriers to performance. Princeton engineers have now found a way to literally melt away such defects, using a process that could dramatically improve chip quality without increasing fabrication cost.

The method, published in the May 4 issue of Nature Nanotechnology, enables more precise shaping of microchip components than what is possible with current technology. More precise component shapes could help manufacturers build smaller and better microchips, the key to more powerful computers and other devices.

"We are able to achieve a precision and improvement far beyond what was previously thought achievable," said electrical engineer Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering, who developed the method along with graduate student Qiangfei Xia. Chou's lab has previously pioneered a number of innovative chip making techniques, including a revolutionary method for making nanometer-scale patterns using imprinting.

Microchips work best when the structures fabricated on them are straight, thin and tall. Rough edges and other defects can degrade or even ruin chip performance in most applications. In integrated circuits, for instance, such flaws could cause current to leak and voltage to fluctuate. In optic devices, they could interfere with the transmission of light. In biological devices, they could impede the flow of DNA and other biomaterials.

"These chip defects pose serious roadblocks to future advances in many industries," Chou said.

To deal with this problem, researchers try to improve the process used to make the microchips. However, Chou said such an approach works only to a point; eventually chip makers will run up against fundamental physical limits of current manufacturing techniques. In particular, the electrons and photons that are used like chisels to carve out the microscopic features on a chip always have some random behavior. This effect becomes pronounced at very small scales and limits the accuracy of component shapes.

"What we propose instead is a paradigm shift: Rather than struggle to improve fabrication methods, we could simply fix the defects after fabrication," said Chou. "And fixing the defects could be automatic -- a process of self-perfection."

These electron microscope images show before (left column) and after (right column) examples of a new technique, developed at Princeton University, for perfecting nanometer-scale structures. (Stephen Chou/Nature Nanotechnology)

Chou's method, termed Self-Perfection by Liquefaction, achieves this by melting the structures on a chip momentarily, and guiding the resulting flow of liquid so that it re-solidifies into the desired shapes. This is possible because natural forces acting on the molten structures, such as surface tension -- the force that allows some insects to walk on water -- smooth the structures into geometrically more accurate shapes. Lines, for instance, become straighter, and dots become rounder.

Simple melting by direct heating has previously been shown to smooth out the defects in plastic structures. This process can't be applied to a microchip for two reasons. First, the key structures on a chip are not made of plastic, which melts at temperatures close to the boiling point of water, but from semiconductors and metals, which have much higher melting points. Heating the chip to such temperatures would melt not just the structures, but nearly everything else on the chip. Second, the melting process would widen the structures and round off their top and side surfaces, all of which would be detrimental to the chip.

Chou's team overcame the first obstacle by using a light pulse from a so-called excimer laser, similar to those used in laser eye surgery, because it heats only a very thin surface layer of a material and causes no damage to the structures underneath. The researchers carefully designed the pulse so that it would melt only semiconductor and metal structures, and not damage other parts of the chip. The structures need to be melted for only a fraction of a millionth of a second, because molten metal and semiconductors can flow as easily as water and have high surface tension, which allows them to change shapes very quickly.

To overcome the second obstacle, Chou's team placed a thin quartz plate on top of the melting structures to guide the flow of liquid. The plate prevents a molten structure from widening, and keeps its top flat and sides vertical, Chou said. In one experiment, it made the edges of 70 nanometer-wide chromium lines more than five times smoother. The resulting line smoothness was far more precise than what semiconductor researchers believe to be attainable with existing technology.

A technique invented in the lab of Princeton engineer Stephen Chou allows for the easy correction of defects and refinement of shapes in nanostructures. The "open" method involves using a laser to briefly melt defects, which self-correct before cooling. The "capped" method prevents the technique from rounding off the structures. The "guided" version causes the structures to grow toward a nearby plate, causing them to become not only smoother, but taller and thinner, which are all desirable traits for creating smaller, more powerful computer chips. (Stephen Chou/Nature Nanotechnology)

The conventional approach to fixing chip defects is to measure the exact shape of each defect, and provide a correction precisely tailored to it -- a slow and expensive process, Chou said. In contrast, Chou's guided melting process fixes all defects on a chip in a single quick and inexpensive step. "Regardless of the shape of each defect, it always gets fixed precisely and with no need for individual shape measurement or tailored correction," Chou said.

One of the big surprises from this work is observed when the guiding plate is placed not in direct contact with the molten structures, but at a distance above it. In this situation, the liquid material from the structures rises up and reaches the plate by itself, causing line structures to become taller and narrower -- both highly desirable outcomes from a chip design perspective.

"The authors demonstrate improved edge roughness and dramatically altered aspect ratios in nanoscale features," said Donald Tennant, director of operations at the NanoScale Science and Technology Facility at Cornell University. The techniques "may be a way forward when nanofabricators bump up against the limits of lithography and pattern transfer," he said.

Next, Chou's group plans to demonstrate this technique on large (8-inch) wafers. Several leading semiconductor manufacturers have expressed keen interest in the technique, Chou said.

The work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/a...ion=topstories





Samsung, Intel, TSMC to Work on Next - Gen Chip Format

Samsung Electronics <005930.KS>, the world's top maker of memory chips, on Tuesday said it would cooperate with top rivals Intel <INTC.O> and TSMC <2330.TW> to develop next-generation bigger silicon wafers to boost efficiency in chip manufacturing.

Samsung said in a filing that it would work with U.S.-based Intel Corp, the world's top maker of semiconductors, and Taiwan's TSMC <TSM.N>, the world's largest contract chip maker, to help migration of manufacturing standards from the current 12-inch (300 mm) silicon wafers to 18-inch (450 mm) discs that would yield more than double the number of chips.

The South Korean company said the cooperation plan called for a first pilot line to be operable by 2012.

The world's largest chip makers have been exploring the move to pizza-sized silicon wafers to help them grab market share as demand surges for gadgets such as Apple Inc's <AAPL.O> iPod.

"Increasing cost due to the complexity of advanced technology is a concern for the future," Mark Liu, TSMC's senior vice president of Advanced Technology Business, said in a statement.

"Intel, Samsung, and TSMC believe the transition to 450mm wafers is a potential solution to maintain a reasonable cost structure for the industry."

The size of a wafer, the silvery disks from which tiny chips are diced, is critical to make production more efficient. A new generation of larger wafers typically comes out each decade or so.

The group is planning to cooperate with the whole semiconductor industry in order to establish common standards through the International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI) consortium.

Still, some analysts say cost is a major hurdle and the industry -- from semiconductor makers to the companies that make their equipment -- needs to agree on how to proceed.

A factory designed to make chips on 18-inch wafers could cost $10 billion or more to build, nearly triple the price of a current 12-inch wafer factory.

Only the biggest companies, like Intel, Samsung and TSMC, have the resources to be the first adopters of the new technology, while smaller chip makers, such as those in China, are unlikely to buy into the expensive plan soon, they say.

(Reporting by Marie-France Han and Baker Li; Editing by Nick Macfie)
http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...14823620080506





CCTV Boom Has Not Cut Crime, Says Police Chief
Kevin Dowling

Billions of pounds spent on Britain’s 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras has not had a significant impact on crime, according to the senior police officer piloting a new database.

Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said it was a “fiasco” that only 3 per cent of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV.

Mr Neville, who heads the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) unit, told the Security Document World Conference that the use of CCTV images as evidence in court has been very poor.

“Billions of pounds have been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court,” he told the conference.

“It’s been an utter fiasco: only 3 per cent of crimes were solved by CCTV. Why don’t people fear it? [They think] the cameras are not working.”

The aim of the Viido unit is to improve the way that CCTV footage is processed, turning it into a third forensic specialism alongside DNA analysis and fingerprinting.

Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country in Europe. But Mr Neville is reported in The Guardian as saying that more training was needed for officers who often avoided trawling through CCTV images “because it’s hard work”.

Viido had launched a series of initiatives including a new database of images that will be used to track and identify offenders using software developed for the advertising industry. This works by following distinctive brand logos on the clothing of unidentified suspects. By backtracking through images officers have often found earlier pictures of suspects where they have not been hiding their features.

Mr Neville said that Viido would be publishing pictures of suspects in mugging, rape and robbery cases on the internet from next month and building a national CCTV database that will hold images of convicted criminals and unidentified suspects.

Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, said: “We would expect adequate safeguards to be put in place to ensure the images are used only for crime detection purposes, stored securely and that access to images is restricted to authorised individuals. We would have concerns if CCTV images of individuals going about their daily lives were retained.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3877670.ece





Stupid Hacker Tricks: The Folly of Youth

Tech-savvy delinquents set the Net aflame with boneheaded exploits that earn them the wrong kind of fame
Andrew Brandt

Ah, youth. Ready to take on the world, today's generation of dynamic, tech-immersed youngsters have grown up alongside the Internet. Firsthand, and sometimes single-handedly, they have advanced some of today's hottest technology trends, from peer-to-peer networking, to massively multiplayer online games, to social networks and instant messaging. And along the way, a small, sociopathic number of them have behaved very, very badly.

Even the very definition of poor online behavior has been advanced by these cyberschnooks. Armed with broadband and lots of unsupervised free time in front of the computer, shielded by the relative anonymity of the Web, they've managed to transform themselves from Those Neighborhood Kids Who Set Fires and Torture Small Animals into international menaces who destroy online communities, damage the reputation and utility of online services, and steal anything worth taking from the Net -- all while mangling the English language as thoroughly as possible.

Fortunately for the rest of us, while using the Net's multiplier effect to their nefarious benefit, most are as sloppy and egotistical as we've come to expect from the young and delinquent, leaving a bread-crumb trail a mile wide for authorities to follow. And when they cross the line, as many of these tech-savvy Nelson Muntzes eventually do, it's with more than a little schadenfreude that white-hat vigilantes posse up to take them down.

It is to these ne'er-do-wells that this latest installment of 0 "Stupid hacker tricks" is dedicated. Call it Portrait of the Stupid Hacker as a Young Man.


You got Rbot in Mytob, you Zlob

Perp: Farid "Diab10" Essebar

Status: Currently a guest of the Moroccan prison system. His prison sentence is scheduled to end later this year.

Dossier: In 2005, at the ripe old age of 18, Farid Essebar probably thought he was untouchable. Working with accomplices in his home country of Morocco and in Turkey, the Russian-born Essebar wrote and distributed the Mytob, Rbot, and Zotob botnet Trojans. The malware infected thousands of computers at large corporations, US government departments, and media companies and was built to log keystrokes and steal financial and personal data.

Among the targets reported to have major outbreaks on August 15, 2005, were Daimler Chrysler, ABC News, CNN, The New York Times, the US Senate, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Affected computers typically got into a cycle where they rebooted constantly, spread the malware to other computers on the network, then provided remote access to infected computers to a bot herder. The Zotob variant spread rapidly, taking advantage of unpatched Windows computers using a vulnerability disclosed only days earlier.

Essebar also fell prey to the braggadocio bug, a common ailment. When University of Pennsylvania security researcher David Taylor deliberately infected a computer with Zotob, and stumbled into one of Essebar's botnet IRC channels, he struck up a conversation with him. Surprisingly, Essebar responded, gloating that he earned substantial sums using his bot to install adware on infected computers.

But within seven days, the FBI, working in concert with local law enforcement and Microsoft employees, sent teams of computer experts to Rabat, Morocco, and Ankara, Turkey. On August 25, less than two weeks after the outbreak began, authorities arrested Essebar, as well as then-20-year-old Achraf Bahloul in Rabat. The team in Ankara paid a visit to, and arrested, then-21-year-old Atilla "Coder" Ekici, alleging that he paid Essebar to write the Zotob variant. A bit more than a year after the initial arrest, Moroccan authorities convicted Essebar of illegal access to computer systems, theft, credit card fraud, and conspiracy, and sentenced him to two years in prison.

Authorities were able to clearly identify Essebar as the author of the worm; not only had he signed it with the words "by Diabl0" buried in the source code, but he'd written the worm using Microsoft's Visual Studio, which embeds information about the computer on which the code is written into the compiled program -- in this case, the directory path "C:\Documents and Settings\Farid." D'oh!

When Moroccan cops seized his computer, Essebar had formatted the hard drive. Forensic specialists helped recover the source code, which had not been completely wiped clean from the drive. In contrast, Turkish authorities had a more difficult time establishing evidence against Ekici because he'd physically removed and thrown out his hard drive days earlier.

Lessons learned: If you don't want to draw attention to yourself, avoid targeting major media organizations with your poorly designed malware attacks. Always throw out your hard drive that contains all the source code and evidence of your criminal malware creations before the cops arrive. Name your account on your malware creation computer something innocuous, like "user." Also, neither Turkish nor Moroccan prisons are places you want to be. Ever.


When the DDoS ain't stoppin' expect the cops to come knockin'

Perps: Ivan Maksakov, Alexander Petrov, and Denis Stepanov

Status: All three are guests of the Russian penal system, sentenced to eight years at hard labor and a 100,000 ruble fine

Dossier: Looking to make a little extra money while at college in 2003, Ivan Maksakov, then 22, devised an inventive, entrepreneurial scheme that probably sounded good at the time: He created a botnet to engage in DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks and then blackmailed online gambling sites based in the UK, threatening to take the sites down during major sporting events.

However, Maksakov -- a student at the Balakov Institute of Engineering, Technology, and Management -- couldn't anticipate that the Russian government, looking to demonstrate its resolve in dealing with cybercriminals, would make an example of him.

The botnet, based in Houston, was directed to launch DDoS attacks against the UK-based bookmaking Web sites and online casinos only if Maksakov's demands weren't met. According to Russian news reports, Maksakov, along with co-conspirators Alexander Petrov and Denis Stepanov, attacked nine Web sites from the US autumn of 2003 until the US spring 2004. The sites were initially attacked for a short time, before a ransom demand was e-mailed.

In one example, the attacks crippled a site run by Canbet Sports Bookmakers during the Breeders' Cup horse races, costing the firm US$200,000 for each day it was offline. But even when the firm paid a US$40,000 ransom to a Western Union account in Riga, Latvia, the attacks continued.

Authorities allege that the attacks for which the trio were convicted cost the UK-based Web site operators upward of US$4 million, not including an additional US$80 million the companies paid out for additional bandwidth and security hardware designed to thwart DDoS attacks. Charges weren't filed for 54 similar attacks the group is alleged to have engaged in, affecting companies in 30 other countries.

Britain's intelligence services tracked the IP address used to send commands to the botnet to Maksakov's home computer. When the British government provided the information to the Russian Federation's Interior Ministry, the three were arrested. Authorities say at least 13 others who have not been arrested were involved in the scheme, including 10 people working as "money mules" in Riga, two other cyberattackers in Kazakhstan, and one more in Russia.

Lessons learned: Russia's a terrible place to base your operations for a criminal enterprise, unless you like taking long vacations in Siberia. Kazakhstan and Latvia seem to be much more agreeable. Also, if someone sends you 40 large, don't wait: Turn off the damn DDoS before MI-5 gets involved.


Punked over a prank

Perp: Shawn Nematbakhsh

Status: Currently employed as a software engineer with a medical data company.

Dossier: One of the hottest technology topics of 2003 was how election systems were vulnerable. With the first presidential election since the Bush v. Gore fiasco coming up the following year, technologists were up in arms about the unreliability and untrustworthiness of electronic balloting systems, and were eager to prove their point.

Enter Shawn Nematbakhsh, computer science undergraduate at the University of California. Was he eager -- perhaps a bit too eager -- to make a point about the electronic balloting system that the university employed to hold student council elections, when he cast 800 votes for a fictitious candidate named American Ninja? Sadly, no.

"I really wasn't making any point at all," Nematbakhsh admits, debunking news reports to the contrary. "It was a senior prank, a silly thing."

The student council elections were held over the Web. Students could log in to a special page and cast their ballots for student council members and student body president. Unfortunately, the election system suffered from a serious internal weakness: "There was some input that was not bounds-checked, so using certain input you could vote as anyone," Nematbakhsh explains. "I wrote a script that would log in, cast a vote, log out, then log in again, cast another vote, and so on."

But seriously, American Ninja? "That year I remember watching that really stupid movie and talking about it with my friends, and it was the first thing that came [to mind]," he said.

Nematbakhsh says the jig was up when campus police called him in to discuss the incident. He'd told some friends about the vulnerability he had discovered in the voting system, and his name had eventually surfaced in the investigation. When asked, Nematbakhsh immediately admitted his involvement in the prank.

"I confessed to doing it, thinking it wasn't such a big deal. I thought they might fine me, or suspend me for a quarter or something," he says. That did happen, but a month later, he also faced criminal charges that could have landed him prison time.

In the end, he arranged a deal to accept a misdemeanor charge. His sentence: "I had to pick up trash on the weekends for three or four months, and pay back the cost of the election -- a couple thousand dollars."

Lessons learned: "Getting caught was kind of a wake-up call, that the Internet was not some kind of playground and I couldn't do what I wanted to all the time. I had to obey the law. The prank was not well received by a lot of people at the school."

Nematbakhsh's advice to potential election pranksters: "Things like that seem funny when you're doing them, but when you get caught, it's not much fun. I'd caution against silly pranks like the one I did."


The worst paid cybercriminal in federal prison

Perp: Robert Moore

Status: Moore is currently a guest of the federal prison system and will remain so until 2009.

Dossier: As one of the oldest members of this youthful brigade of miscreants, Robert Moore, 23, was involved in crimes that caused among the greatest financial losses to his victims of anyone featured in this rogue roundup -- though he didn't reap many financial rewards himself.

Federal agents claim in court papers that Moore, and the ringleader of the scheme Edwin Pena, defrauded at least 15 VoIP phone companies to the tune of more than US$300,000 each in broadband service charges by hacking into the VoIP companies' networks and then reselling stolen phone call minutes at a deep discount.

Pena, who lacked the technical skills to pull off the scam alone, recruited Moore to do his hacker thing, which he accomplished with aplomb. But while Moore did manage to pull off the scam for nearly two years before getting caught, his success wasn't due to any superior hacking skills on his part.

In an interview Moore gave just before his incarceration began, he explained that his job was made all the easier by system administrators who never changed the passwords on their Cisco routers and Quintum Tenor VoIP gateways from the default factory settings. Moore threw together an application that scanned IP address ranges for vulnerable boxes and then used those routers to send the call traffic through the busiest hacked networks, which masked the large amounts of data.

Pena made well over US$1 million reselling the more than 10 million stolen minutes; Moore was reported to have been paid just US$20,000 by Pena for his part in the scheme. With his ill-gotten proceeds, Pena bought houses in six states, luxury cars (including two BMWs and a Cadillac Escalade), and a 40-foot Sea Ray MerCruiser yacht. Moore reportedly is more annoyed that he cannot use a computer than the fact that he was sentenced to two years in federal pokey.

"It's so easy, a caveman can do it," Moore said in the interview. Cavemen were reportedly pissed at, once again, being presented in a negative light by a guy who himself got shafted -- twice -- by his partner in crime.

Moore ended up surrendering when federal agents showed up at his door. When Pena was arrested, the mother of Pena's girlfriend put up two of her properties as collateral on Pena's bail; once out of jail, Pena promptly fled the country and is believed to be in Venezuela, leaving everyone high and dry.

Lessons learned: If your partner in your massive criminal enterprise is making 50 times what you're making, but you're both sharing an equal risk of prosecution, look for a better-paying job in another criminal enterprise. Also, if you're the mastermind's girlfriend (or her mom), and you've paid for his bail with your house, for the love of god hide his passport.


Tweener virtual worlds: Training grounds for tomorrow's cyberschnooks

Perp: "Helgi B"

Status: Scared straight (or so we hope)

Dossier: If you need proof that youth and innocence don't necessarily go together, you need look no further than the woeful tale of a 13-year-old sociopathic script kiddie who, for reasons of privacy, we'll refer to only by his "handle," Helgi B.

Helgi B has already learned the fine art of theft of online account information through social engineering. While even moderately sophisticated adults can easily see through his clumsily crafted scams, impressionable kids have already fallen victim. His target: Habbo Hotel game account information.

If you're not a Western European middle-schooler who plays online games, then you probably don't know that Habbo Hotel is an incredibly popular online environment, a kind of blocky, pixelated, isometric Second Life designed for Euro tweens. It's not so much a game as a hangout spot, one where you can have your own "room" and decorate it with furniture (or, in Habbo lingo, "furni") you buy using the in-game currency, "coins," which you obtain using real money through Habbo Hotel's online shopping page.

Helgi B's scam is to connive other Habbo players into giving him their account information, or paying him for dodgy "hacking" programs or for what he claims are discounted coins in bulk, at impossibly low prices. Of course, anyone with your account details can log in to your account and transfer your coins or furni to an accomplice, just as if someone with your bank account information logged in and transferred your entire balance to an untraceable account in Hackistan.

When security researcher Chris "Paperghost" Boyd began digging into Helgi B's online shenanigans, he had no idea where it would lead: YouTube videos demonstrating so-called game-hacking tools; downloadable phishing kits; archives full of stolen passwords and commercial software license keys; remote access Trojans he claims to have created; and worst of all, forum posts where he brags about his 1337 h4x0r skilz.

"When did we become so jaded that we didn't just tolerate anonymous punks hacking us but gave a green light to 13-year-olds screwing us over and doing it in full view?" Boyd writes on his blog at Vitalsecurity.org. "Sigh. These kids are openly and wantonly peddling their leet hacking tools across all manner of websites -- worse, they don't even bother to do it anonymously anymore."

So Boyd took it to the next level: He began, as he describes it, "14+ solid hours of non-stop beatdowns" on all of Helgi B's Web sites that peddle illegal goods. One after another, Boyd contacted the various Web hosting providers and ISPs where Helgi had set up shop, providing them with documentary evidence, including screenshots, detailing the broad scope of illegal activities the forum was engaging in.

The only glitch: One of the service providers hosting Helgi B's stolen-passwords/license-keys forum seems reluctant to take down the site. It goes down for an hour or two and then comes back online. Four days later, the Web host finally pulls the plug permanently -- but only after Boyd threatens to report the hosting company to law enforcement.

Lessons learned: Just because you may not have reached puberty doesn't mean you can't be arrested and prosecuted for cybercrimes. It just means your parents might go to jail also/instead, or have to pay a huge fine, and then who's going to drive you to band practice or soccer games? Remember: Going to jail is like being grounded ... in a jail cell. And for you Web hosts out there: Getting another $5 or $10 from some message board operator isn't worth having your head-end ISP pull the plug on you for violating their terms of service, so turn off those illegal sites when someone reports them. Fast.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...16;fpid;1;pf;1





Server Theft Knocks Peter Gabriel Off the Web
Drew Cullen

Peter Gabriel's online music empire is reduced to a holding page, following the theft of servers from his web host over the weekend.

According to the web monitoring firm Netcraft, Gabriel's servers are hosted (http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?posit...tergabriel.com) by Rednet Ltd, although that appears to be a defunct brand of a UK company called Opal Telecom (http://www.red.net/about-us/), which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse.

But details are sketchy and as it's a public holiday in the UK, we'll fill in the gaps tomorrow.

In the meantime here is the message posted at time of writing on the web-savvy musician's site, PeterGabriel.com (http://www.petergabriel.com).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05..._server_theft/





Web Firm Sounds Alert on Criminal Data Trove
Mark Trevelyan

A Web security firm said on Tuesday it had tipped off international banks and police after finding a huge trove of stolen business and personal data amassed on a server in the space of just three weeks.

Finjan Inc said it had notified the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, police in various countries and more than 40 financial institutions in the United States, Europe and India about the discovery of the so-called "crimeserver".

"This server was running for about three weeks and within this period it managed to collect 1.4 gigabytes of data. It is indeed the largest treasure we've found in this very short time," Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of the California-based firm, said in a phone interview from Israel.

The stolen data consisted of 5,388 unique log files including 1,037 from Turkey, 621 from Germany, 571 from the United States, 322 from France, 308 from India and 232 from Britain.

It included company personnel files, insurance details, social security numbers, medical records, credit card details and exchanges of confidential business email, in one case including details of a pending court case.

Ben-Itzhak said it was striking that the crimeserver itself was not security-protected, meaning anyone could potentially have accessed it over the Internet.

"The server was not secure at all. It indicates that these people that are doing the crime today, they are not security experts, they are not computer science experts.

"They are people who are buying the crime toolkits ... software packages that hackers, the smart people, are selling," he told Reuters.

"The person that operated this server had no clue on security, he had no clue about how to configure a Web server. He just took a ... toolkit and started to use it and in three weeks he managed to have this fortune, this treasure on his server."

'Trojan' Software

The crimeserver had a 'command and control' application that enabled the user to define what types of target to infect with 'trojan' software.

"Online statistics reports are included in this command and control. They can tell you who you managed to infect; where they are coming from; if the trojan that is now installed on their machine is sending you data, how much data you're getting -- you get all these online reports as well."

The hosting server was located in Malaysia and the Web domain was registered to a Russian individual with a Moscow address. Ben-Itzhak said this could not be validated because domains can easily be registered in false names.

He said the discovery highlighted a growing trend for criminals to target commercial data. Details of pricing, company policies and stock-sensitive earnings results were all at risk.

"It's not just individuals at home doing their online banking and someone is stealing their password...The big picture is these criminals are looking for business data."

(Editing by Robert Woodward)
http://www.reuters.com/article/inter...080506?sp=true





CoreCodec Apologizes for Wrongful Google DMCA Takedown
Ryan Paul

CoreCodec, the company behind the high-performance CoreAVC H.264 implementation, issued an apology this morning for its recent abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law that broadly prohibits circumvention of copy-protection mechanisms.
In a DMCA takedown notice sent to Google over the weekend, CoreCodec demanded that Google cease hosting coreavc-for-linux, an open source project that provided a Linux compatibility layer for the CoreAVC codec. The DMCA notice claimed that the open-source project infringes CoreCodec's copyright and includes CoreAVC code. Although Google complied with the notice and removed the project, the allegations made by CoreCodec were entirely without merit. The coreavc-for-linux project contains no infringing code and is merely a compatibility wrapper that enables legitimately purchased copies of CoreAVC to be used by Linux users.

In a statement published today in CoreCodec's community forums, cofounder Dan Marlin apologized and said that the company is working with Google to get the project back online. He explains that CoreCodec had some concerns about reverse-engineering that they were working privately to resolve with Alan Nisota, the lead developer of the coreavc-for-linux project, and that the DMCA notice was sent because the company's overzealous legal counsel wrongfully believed that it was a necessary part of the process.

"The DMCA does allow for reverse engineering for compatibility purposes and hence in the end no matter what the 'other points' are the DMCA takedown request was wrongly sent," wrote Marlin in a public statement. "I'd like to publicly apologize to Alan for the disconnect between him and us as well as the disruption to the project as there was no ill will intended and we were already working on a resolution with him before this went public."

Marlin says that that CoreCodec has established a new internal process for handling intellectual property issues so that they won't improperly use the DMCA again in the future. CoreCodec will also be assisting Nisota with his ongoing development efforts to ensure that coreavc-for-linux users can continue buying and using the CoreAVC codec. In the long-term CoreCodec also hopes to release a GStreamer-based CoreAVC codec so that they can officially support Linux users.

This situation highlights some of the serious flaws of the DMCA. Companies often issue takedown notices without fully understanding the situation and hosting providers often acquiesce in order to avoid any potential liability. All too often, DMCA takedown notices are used as a tool to censor and intimidate rather than a vehicle for addressing instances of infringement.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-takedown.html





"Grand Theft Auto" First Week Sales Top $500 Million

Take-Two Interactive Software Inc <TTWO.O> scored more than $500 million in global sales of criminal action game "Grand Theft Auto 4" in its first week, marking what it said on Wednesday is one of the most lucrative entertainment events in history.

The interactive software publisher, which is facing a takeover offer from rival Electronic Arts Inc <ERTS.O>, said it sold about 3.6 million units globally at its debut on April 29, and some 6 million units in total in the week.

Retail chains such as GameStop Corp <GME.N> and Best Buy Co Inc <BBY.N> took advance orders for weeks of GTA 4, which has been lavished with near-universal accolades.

The first-week sales of Grand Theft Auto, a game hailed as a brutal and satirical masterpiece equal to films like "The Godfather," beat the $400 million scored by last year's "Halo 3" from Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O>.

"Grand Theft Auto IV's first week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date," said Strauss Zelnick, chairman of Take-Two, in a statement.

Made by Take-Two's Rockstar studio, the game casts players as an Eastern European immigrant who runs drugs, shoots cops and beats up prostitutes after falling in with a crime syndicate -- stuff that has drawn fire from family groups and politicians.

Take-Two shares closed on Tuesday at $26.35 on Nasdaq, higher than EA's offer price of $25.74 per share. Take-Two management has rejected EA's offer as too low and has suggested that it might start discussions once the game was launched.

(Reporting by Franklin Paul; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...55678120080507





Milestones

Steve Winwood - A Sixties Rock 'N' Roller Turning 60

Turning 60, Steve Winwood is starting to believe rock 'n' roll may be a younger man's game. Maybe.

"I think to be a musician (at 60) is fine but to be a rock 'n' roller at a ripe old age is maybe slightly questionable," said the singer, guitarist and organist who played with 1960s rock legends the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith.

"If rock 'n' roll is indeed what I play, I'm not sure whether it is, as I try and combine bits of folk and jazz.

"The music I write I feel is not the kind of music for a 25-year-old," Winwood acknowledged in an interview.

Half a lifetime ago, Winwood was aware of the contradiction of an aging musician playing essentially youthful music. "'Cause my rock 'n' roll is putting on weight/ and the beat it goes on," he sang on his 1980 album, "Arc of a Diver."

Winwood has been performing for 45 years -- as long as the Rolling Stones, who are still playing well into their 60s.

Whatever the definition of his music, Winwood has played his share of genres, from backing blues greats like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, performing with Eric Clapton, arranging English folk with Traffic and recording artfully produced 1980s hits like "Higher Love" in the early years of MTV. His new solo album, "Nine Lives," just came out.

Tour With Petty

Asked how he felt about turning 60 on May 12, the youthful-looking Englishman was philosophical. "I'm OK, I'm lucky to still be doing what I love to do.

"I might slow down a little bit after 60 but I'm going out on a long tour this summer with Tom Petty and I still enjoy playing live. So as long as people want to come and hear me or buy the record, I shall keep going, I think."

Winwood, whose father was a dance band musician, burst onto the scene in 1965, with his older brother "Muff," in the Spencer Davis Group. They had hits with "I'm a Man" and "Gimme Some Lovin"' featuring Winwood's driving organ and distinctive voice.

While still at high school, Winwood was playing and singing in church and also clubs in Birmingham, even playing with U.S. blues and R&B greats when they toured Britain.

It was his love of the blues that he shared with fellow Britons Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Clapton, Robert Plant and Jeff Beck, that got him kicked out of a music school.

"It's an often-asked question, 'Why did all these spotty white English boys suddenly start playing blues in the '60s?'

"It was recognized as this kind of vibrant music and when I first started playing in a blues band I just wanted to bring it to a wider public who hadn't really heard it," said Winwood.

Jazz and blues were not readily accepted in 1960s England. "I got thrown out of music school for even listening to Fats Domino and Ray Charles," said Winwood.

"I was asked, 'What kind of music do you like to listen to?' and I said, 'Well, I do like Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky but I also like Fats Domino and Ray Charles and they literally said, 'Either forget about that or leave.'

"I was doing a few gigs around town so I said, 'Thank you very much,' and I was gone."
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...52156720080507





Memoirs of a Girl From the East Country (O.K., Queens)
Anthony DeCurtis

IT is one of the most evocative images of Greenwich Village in the 1960s. An attractive young couple are walking down the middle of a snow-covered street. His head is down and tilted toward her. He’s wearing an artfully half-buttoned brown suede jacket, but his hands are stuffed in his jeans’ pockets against the cold. She is smiling, huddling against him. Shot in February 1963, the photo would come to epitomize the romantic youth culture of the time — its freedom and fragility, its rootlessness and sense of purpose.

The couple is Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo, then his girlfriend, and the photograph graced the cover of Mr. Dylan’s groundbreaking second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (Columbia), which came out three months later. “Freewheelin’ ” — which includes songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War” — established Mr. Dylan, who had just turned 22, as the spokesman of his generation.

Last month, more than 45 years after that photograph made her a nationally known figure, Ms. Rotolo, now 64, stood on the spot on Jones Street where it was taken and eyed the reporter accompanying her warily. “I don’t do re-enactments,” she said, laughing.

After rarely discussing her relationship with Mr. Dylan since they broke up in 1964, Ms. Rotolo has looked back, mostly with affection. Her book “A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties” comes out this week, and a similar photo from the “Freewheelin’ ” session serves as its cover.

Looking elegant in a lightweight black coat, a long gray skirt and black boots, Ms. Rotolo, who is now a visual artist, recalled the original photo shoot. “We were facing this way,” she said on Jones Street, as she pointed north toward Fourth Street. “I figured they’d choose one of Bob by himself, so it was astounding, really surprising.”

With her long light-brown hair, Ms. Rotolo became a model to emulate for young women and an object of desire for men at the time. She does not recall it that way, however. “It was freezing out,” she said. “He wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put a coat. So I felt like an Italian sausage. Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat.”

In “A Freewheelin’ Time” Ms. Rotolo walks a delicate line between not wanting to exploit her relationship with Mr. Dylan but needing to address people’s understandable curiosity about it. “Feeding the beast” is how Ms. Rotolo describes the futility of trying to gratify the endless hunger of Dylan fanatics. “When you know that someone is human, to make them godlike is disconcerting,” she said. “I’m not a rapacious Dylan junkie.”

When the couple first met in July 1961 at a folk concert at Riverside Church at which Mr. Dylan performed, they were just two of countless young people who had made their way to Greenwich Village to reinvent themselves. He had left his native Minnesota to pursue his dream of following the path blazed by his idol Woody Guthrie. Ms. Rotolo meanwhile had grown up in Queens, the daughter of working-class Italian Communists during the height of the McCarthy era. Well read, artistically inclined and intellectually adventurous, she yearned for an environment in which her interests did not seem weird, let alone dangerous, for a 17-year-old girl. In the 20-year-old Mr. Dylan she encountered a “kindred spirit,” she said.

They lived together in a small apartment on West Fourth Street and fed each other’s ravenous hunger for meaning. “We created this private world,” Ms. Rotolo recalled over lunch in an Italian restaurant on Waverly Place. “We were searching for poetry, and we saw that in each other. We were so ultrasensitive, both of us. That’s why it was a good relationship, but also why it was difficult.”

Mr. Dylan has been a gnomic figure for so long that it’s sometimes hard to recollect the Chaplinesque aspect that characterized him in his youth. His boundless enthusiasm proved a delight for the more reserved Ms. Rotolo. For his part Mr. Dylan soaked up her passion for the likes of William Blake, Bertolt Brecht and Arthur Rimbaud; he inscribed a paperback edition of Byron’s poems to her “Lord Byron Dylan.” Equally important, her political activism, particularly in the civil rights movement, spurred his thinking and writing about those issues.

“She’ll tell you how many nights I stayed up and wrote songs and showed them to her and asked her: ‘Is this right?’ ” Mr. Dylan told his friend and eventual biographer Robert Shelton. “Because I knew her father and mother were associated with unions and she was into this equality-freedom thing long before I was.”

Their romance, then, began on the basis of an equality that became impossible to sustain. She would soon feel overwhelmed by the obsessive attention the world focused on Mr. Dylan. Having made the symbolic journey across the East River to discover herself and what she might become, she felt lost once again, reduced to being Mr. Dylan’s chick and urged even by her most well-intentioned friends to accommodate her life in every way to his genius.

In approaching Ms. Rotolo about doing the book, Gerry Howard, an editor at Broadway Books, mentioned “Minor Characters,” a memoir by Joyce Johnson, who had been Jack Kerouac’s lover at a similar stage in his career. “I’m a great fan of ‘Minor Characters,’ and I thought Suze stood in exact relation to Dylan as Joyce Johnson did to Kerouac,” Mr. Howard said. “They were present at liftoff and then had to live in the backwash of all that.”

It turned out that Ms. Rotolo too was a fan of “Minor Characters,” which is something of a pre-feminist classic, and saw her story in similar terms. In part for that reason she chose to write the book herself rather than with a collaborator. (Disclosure: I share a book agent with Ms. Rotolo.)

For his part Mr. Dylan was no less disoriented by his rising success than Ms. Rotolo was, and he resented Ms. Rotolo’s need for distance. A nearly six-month trip she took to Europe with her mother in 1962, for example, left him distraught. The pained letters he sent her (“Yes maybe I wish maybe you didn’t cut your hair — it’s so good ... it’ll grow back tho huh?”) reveal a vulnerable side of Mr. Dylan that has rarely been seen.

In the grip of his own struggle, he turned to other women for support, most notably Joan Baez, who, having become a star herself when she was barely 20, could help him negotiate this strange new terrain. Their romantic involvement, which included Ms. Baez’s frequent requests that he perform with her, also significantly expanded his audience, a fact not lost on Mr. Dylan.

“He needed somebody who could guide him,” Ms. Rotolo said. “I could not be the person he needed at that time. I needed that myself. I was still finding out who I was. I had no sense of mission or dead-on ambition, whereas he did. It’s a male-female thing, and it’s also of the time. I knew I was an artist, but I loved poetry, I loved theater, I loved too many things. Whereas he knew what he wanted and he went for it.”

When Ms. Rotolo became pregnant, she and Mr. Dylan agreed that she would have an abortion, which was illegal (and often dangerous) at the time. That further strained their relationship.

“The alliance between Suze and me didn’t turn out exactly to be a holiday in the woods,” Mr. Dylan wryly concludes in his 2004 memoir, “Chronicles, Volume One.” (Mr. Dylan declined to be interviewed for this article.) But he describes their first meeting in more glowing terms: “She was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. She was fair skinned and golden haired, full-blood Italian. The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves.”

He often wrote about their love affair, most prominently in “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “One Too Many Mornings,” and most caustically in “Ballad in Plain D,” in which he castigates her mother and older sister, who did not approve of him. In his liner notes to “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” (1964), Mr. Dylan wrote, “ah but Sue/she knows me well/perhaps too well/an is above all/the true fortune teller of my soul.”

On a perfect spring afternoon Ms. Rotolo agreed to stroll through Greenwich Village and reminisce about some of the sites she writes about in “A Freewheelin’ Time.” After the stop on Jones Street, she walked toward Fourth Street, where the drones of a man playing a sitar floated from the Music Inn, a crowded instrument store that looked unchanged from the ’60s. “Musicians would just come and play at Allan Block’s,” she said, referring to the famed sandal store and folkie hangout that had been next door, “the way they would at Izzy Young’s Folklore Center on MacDougal Street. If they didn’t have an instrument, they could go to the Music Inn and borrow one.”

A few doors east stood 161 West Fourth Street, where she lived with Mr. Dylan in a two-room walk-up for $60 a month. “Well, some things have changed,” she notes, as she eyes the “exotic novelties” shop that has replaced Bruno’s Spaghetti Store on the ground floor. Their apartment “was in the rear,” she said, “and we looked out on this little garden. There was a pizza place somewhere, so there was always a smell of stale sauce.”

Further west on Sheridan Square she pointed out the newspaper stand on a small island in Seventh Avenue where she and Mr. Dylan awaited the early edition of The New York Times that included Mr. Shelton’s review, now legendary, of Mr. Dylan’s performance at Gerde’s Folk City. The rave, which ran on Sept. 29, 1961, led to Mr. Dylan’s record contract with Columbia Records.

Ms. Rotolo still lives nearby, in the East Village, where she bought a loft, she said, “when they were giving them away.” She has been married many years, and her son, Luca, is a musician and guitar maker who also lives in the city. She has been an illustrator and a painter, and now calls herself a “book artist,” work she described in an e-mail message as reinterpreting “the book as an art object” and combining “drawing, painting, collage, and found objects.” “Reliquaries,” an exhibition of her work, will be on display through mid-July at the Medialia Gallery in Manhattan.

At the Italian restaurant Ms. Rotolo explained how “No Direction Home,” the 2005 documentary that Martin Scorsese directed about Mr. Dylan, inspired her to tell her own story. She is in occasional, if infrequent, touch with Mr. Dylan, and is extremely respectful of his privacy. That he would sanction Mr. Scorsese’s film, in which she appears, and publish his own memoir made her feel more secure about coming forward.

“The feeling I had was, sure, it’s about Dylan, he’s the focal point, but it was my life,” she said about “No Direction Home.” “This is what we all lived through, and what an exciting and pivotal time it was. I came to grips with the fact that this is important, and I should stop being so private.”

Still, she is not nostalgic. “All this indulgence of the ’60s, ay-yi-yi, get over it,” she said. Every era and place hold magic for people willing to live intently in them, she believes. “Everything occurs again, just differently,” she said. “There will always be creative people who feel that they’re different and create a community of some kind. Whether it’s a physical neighborhood or an Internet neighborhood, in Bushwick or in Greenwich Village, it’s not over."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/ar...ted=3&ref=arts





The Day the Music Died

This is a letter I sent to my father to explain what it means that Microsoft is pulling support for MSN Music. Tech issues like this often bubble up into the media that he reads, but they are rarely explained well. My father assumes I have an opinion on such stories, and he is rarely wrong.

Actually, it is still technically in the future tense. The day the music dies will be August 31, 2008.

But first, some backstory.

It was the Dark Ages, around 2004 or so. The iTunes Store was new and booming. Microsoft, in its bid to be the center of everything without having to deal with pesky “end users”, decided that the way to fight Apple was to create a developer platform. This developer platform would handle all the technical details of ensuring that people could “purchase” music files from a variety of online vendors, and play these music files on their (Windows) PC or on a variety of handheld music players. This developer platform would also ensure that such “purchased” music files could not be copied. This involves a lot of fancy math (encryption) which Microsoft was happy to license to companies running online music stores and companies making handheld music players, as well as including by default in all modern versions of Windows.

Bruce Schneier, a famous cryptologist — or at least as famous a cryptologist as cryptologists are likely to get in this century — once described attempts to make digital bits uncopyable as “trying to make water not wet.”

Microsoft named this developer platform “PlaysForSure”, and they (and their partners) ran many, many ads decrying the fact that music purchased from Apple’s iTunes Music Store would “only” play in iTunes and on iPods. This was, technically speaking, true — and indeed it is still true, and it is why I have cautioned Dora and you and anyone else who would listen that you should never “purchase” anything from the iTunes Music Store that you might want to “own” longer than Apple was willing to allow. Nor should you “purchase” anything from a “PlaysForSure”-compatible music store, and for the same reasons, only with the word “Apple” crossed out and “Microsoft” written in in crayon.

To their credit, if that’s the right word, you can now purchase some music from the iTunes store that is unencrypted and plays anywhere. Apple calls these songs “iTunes Plus”, because it sounds so much better than calling everything else “iTunes Minus.” Apple has also promoted podcasts and other non-traditional sources of “things you might want to download onto our handheld devices where we make all of our money.” Steve is many things, but he is not an idiot.

To demonstrate the awesomeness of their developer platform, Microsoft opened their own online store, MSN Music, so they could compete directly with their business partners who also offered “PlaysForSure”-compatible music downloads. Because there’s nothing end users love more than fake choices.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — to whom I donate money every year because they are the digital embodiment of Tom Lehrer’s description of folk singers as “the people who get up on stage and come out in favor of all the things that everyone else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on” — has also been warning anyone who would listen that they should not “purchase” encrypted music from these services, since if these services go under then all that “purchased” music will no longer… what’s the word… “play”. But mostly people ignored them (and me), because, you know, Microsoft was at the center of it all, and nobody ever got fired for “buying” from Microsoft. Or something.

So what happens on August 31, 2008? On that day, Microsoft will turn off the servers that they maintain for the sole purpose of validating that the songs that people have already “purchased” through MSN Music are still theirs to play. Those people (hereafter “the victims”) will not notice the change right away. The victims will only notice it when they purchase a new computer, or when they upgrade the operating system on their current computer, or when the hard drive in their computer dies and needs to be rebuilt/reinstalled. At that point — transferring the music files they have “purchased” to another drive or a new computer — the Microsoft music player running on the victim’s PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft’s validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them. In this case, the left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing: they’re both giving you the finger.

It is at this point that I am reminded of one classic call that I fielded when I worked at the AT+T Relay Service. One Friday night, a deaf person called Pizza Hut to, well, I don’t know, but probably to order a pizza of some kind, and the guy answered the phone with “Pizza Hut, we’re out of dough… can I help you?” Can you make me a pizza? No, we’re out of dough. Do you make anything else? No. Then you can’t help me! Does your music player play this music I “purchased”? No. Does your music player do anything other than play music? No. Then you can’t help me either.

Outside the EFF, a few of the smarter industry analysts (not this guy) have been predicting this doomsday scenario for a while. In 2006, Microsoft tacitly admitted that its PlaysForSure strategy wasn’t working when they announced that they were going to sell their own handheld music player (the “Zune”, which competes with the iPod… and with all the other handheld music players from Microsoft’s “PlaysForSure” business partners) and start a second music service (which would directly compete with the iTunes Store… and Microsoft’s “PlaysForSure” business partners… and Microsoft’s own MSN Music store). End users, it turns out, aren’t so bad after all; they just can’t be trusted to make the right choices.

Also, to ensure that no one could screw this one up except Microsoft, this new music service and new handheld music player would use an entirely new encryption system that was incompatible with “PlaysForSure”, and the encryption system would not be available for licensing. Any victim who had “purchased” music through Microsoft’s old MSN Music store had no upgrade/migration path to transfer those music files to their new Microsoft Zune; the victim would have to re-purchase the same music all over again. But the victims were assured that their existing MSN Music “purchases” would continue to work as long as they owned “PlaysForSure”-compatible devices. Except now they won’t, because Microsoft is turning off the servers that verify that the music they “purchased” a long time ago is still theirs to play.

As you might expect, the EFF is just bursting with joy at the prospect of rubbing salt in the wound and saying “I told you so.” This is their “I told you so” letter. I would join in their jubilation, but frankly I’m tired of being right all the time. It was fun for a while, but now it’s just depressing.
http://diveintomark.org/archives/200...the-music-died


















Until next week,

- js.



















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