[JackSpratts]

Pirate Parrot Swept Up In MPAA Net
Jackson Pratts, AFDNews

A parrot famous for poor hygiene was added to the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) latest group of movie swappers sued for copyright violations, according to a late announcement by the Hollywood trade organization.

The bird, a 75-year-old male named Colonel Rico Dupree, is owned by William "Doc" Bones, a retired circus performer living in Connecticut, and had been a featured part of many famous trick-bird acts in the 1930’s, '40’s and '50’s.

Reached at his home in Fairfield County, Dr. Bones was at a loss to explain how his parrot got caught up in the dragnet. "Sure, the Colonel can use a computer, he’s actually pretty good with one, so what? He generally hates movies, unless Errol Flynn is in them or they have boats. He watches Pirates of the Caribbean over and over, but we have that on tape. I think those Hollywood big-shots are all wet."

This is not just any parrot however, no matter how talented, but one with an extraordinary pedigree. According to the International Society of Insufferable Bird Snobs, Colonel Rico Dupree is a direct descendent of perhaps the most infamous parrot of all-time, Monsieur Plein DeMerde, best known as French pirate John Lafitte’s favorite shoulder companion and generally regarded as the foulest smelling avian in history. So inseparable were pirate and parrot that some aristocratic Ladies held hostage by Lafitte were said to complain in private the buccaneer was more affectionate to DeMerde than to them, and nearly impossible to stand next to. "Parrots become quite attached to their owners," said Winifred Softbothom, president of the Society, "They can live long lives. It’s not unheard of for the birds to be passed down to family members as grandparents and even parents die, but the transition is unfortunately not always successful. In this case," she brightened, "it has been proven satisfactorily that Colonel Dupree is third generation DeMerde. Billy Bones’ bird is plainly Plein DeMerde’s grandson. I mean honestly, all one has to do is sniff."

When asked if this present lawsuit and Monsieur DeMerde’s historical association with the notorious French pirate is evidence of any peculiar family affectations, Miss Softbothom conceded to a reporter that anything’s possible with parrots. "Unlike humans, and men especially, parrots are stable, loyal, and usually very bright. Breeders know this and choose behavioral traits accordingly, which are often passed down. It’s quite possible Colonel Dupree enjoys the attention of flaunting his expertise with computers, even flapping his feathers and making wind at authority, just like his seafaring ancestors."

That assessment didn’t sit too well with his owner however. "Nonsense," sputtered Dr. Bones. "The rudest thing this bird ever does is cybering chicks on Myspace."

Maybe so, but Ed Heard of the MPAA wants a closer look. "Before we toss this suit out we’re going to take a good long look at that bird, and I don’t care how stupid we come off to you pro-user zealots. If we even think this parrot is a copyright violator we’re clipping his wings but good."

This may not be the end of Rico however. Producers from Hollywood have quietly expressed interest in the bird, considering him for several projects, in part because of his previous entertainment experience, but also, rumor has it, because his famous odor is distinctly less offensive than that of most other industry players.

"Who knows," says his owner, "when the heat’s off a little maybe we can settle out of court for a few grand and work a movie deal. He usually turns up his beak at media bigwigs but I know the Colonel would swear off crackers for a shot at 'Pirate’s of the Caribbean 2'."





Who's Building the Next Web?

Got a lot of free time? You're going to need it to enjoy the fruits of Silicon Valley's latest labors: start-ups that want you to spend even more of your life online.
Brad Stone and Steven Levy

Deciphering the exact meaning of the phrase Web 2.0 is a popular parlor game in Silicon Valley. The expression can stand for many things—the kind of start-up that forges new connections among Web users, lets them share their tastes in music and video or simply exploits their creativity and participation in new ways.

In the broadest sense, the Web 2.0 moniker captures the renewed exuberance (perhaps irrational) in high-tech circles. There are so many start-ups, in fact, that inventive observers of the newly crowded business scene have taken to mashing all their logos together in one colorful and jumbled image, then posting their work to Flickr for others to appreciate (to see some examples, Google "logo 2.0"). So consider these standout firms below, which we've noticed in the past few months, some threads from the larger quilt.

Digg
Take everything you know about how a media company works and invert it. That's Digg. Founded last year by Kevin Rose, a former on-air personality on cable network G4, Digg is a techie news site that asks its users to be editors. Anyone can submit a link to a news story or blog entry from elsewhere on the Web (the site gets 1,300 submissions a day), and then users vote for or "Digg" in the suggestion queue the stories that they think should get promoted to Digg. Users can also subscribe to their friends' Digg lists, in effect watching over their shoulders as they read the news. "From the beginning, we didn't want any editors or moderators. We wanted to give all the power back to the community," Rose says. The company has 12 employees and plans this summer to expand beyond tech into other topics. Will its users Digg Britney-Kevin stories?

Plum
When Hans Peter Brondmo's father got sick in 1999, the Norway-born entrepreneur found himself, as many others do, using the Internet to research the illness. But a few years later, when he heard of someone else trying to learn about the same rare cancer, he found that he was unable to easily pull together the collection of searches, e-mails, documents and online conversations that comprised his quest. That gap was the impetus for Plum, a company he cofounded with his friend Margaret Olson that attempts to eliminate the boundary between your desktop and all the stuff you accumulate on a given topic, no matter where it's stored. Using a custom tool called the plummer, you can grab information from any available source—everything, including Web pages, pictures, podcasts and dynamic RSS feeds—annotate it, remix it with other things and save it in a collection. Then you can share the collection with others (individually or in groups) or even blog it as you go. There's also a social-networking aspect that connects you with those whose collections are similar. Plum hasn't launched its public beta yet, but you can go to the site and sign up in advance.

Sharpcast
Gibu Thomas's two-year old Palo Alto, Calif., start-up offers something in addition to new photo-organizing software: a powerful idea. When you have a digital image, Word document or e-mail on one computer, you shouldn't have to send that file to another PC or your mobile phone. All your gadgets should synchronize seamlessly and invisibly, "so you're never even thinking about backing up," Thomas says. A veteran of Palm, he's been working quietly on the concept for more than two years with 25 employees in Palo Alto. This spring they'll launch a proof of concept: a digital photo organizer you load onto your PC, which automatically harmonizes all your computers and Windows Mobile devices so that your photos are accessible wherever you are. Ultimately, Thomas hopes to integrate Sharpcast into every software application, so that users never have to think about backing up files or synchronizing devices again.

Jajah
In the mad rush to launch new Internet telephone services, Google, Yahoo and a range of start-ups are closely emulating market leader Skype. Not Jajah. The firm, with offices in Israel, Austria, Ireland and Silicon Valley, brings online rates to regular telephones instead of clunky PC headsets. Starting this week, a caller can go to jajah.com, enter his own number (landline or mobile phone) and the number he wants to call. The company's servers in Ireland connect the call over the Internet to switching stations in the cities of both caller and recipient, and two local calls are placed from there to the regular phones. The calls cost pennies per minute, and the phone companies don't even hate the service, since at least callers are paying local rates.

Prosper
Chris Larsen does not want you to pay 14 percent interest on your next credit card. He also thinks that lending small amounts of money to regular folks is an investment opportunity that's hoarded by big financial institutions. So the e-Loan founder introduced Prosper. The San Francisco firm allows regular users to take out loans of up to $25,000. They register with the site, specify how much they need and propose a rate of repayment over three years. Lenders either compete to fund that loan, or don't touch it if the buyer's credit rating or reputation is too risky.

To improve their reputations, borrowers can band together in groups with their offline friends. Members of a PTA, for example, might join together to form a virtual credit union and can all vouch for each other's identity and standing. Groups build their status on the site over time, and the better their reputation, the lower the interest rates they can seek. Larsen thinks borrowers will be less likely to default on loans if there's a real-world stigma attached. Meanwhile, the 35-employee company performs all the background credit checks and takes a 1 percent cut of each loan from the borrower. If it can explain this tricky model to consumers, Prosper might do as its name describes.

la la
For his latest creation, serial entrepreneur Bill Nguyen went to the Web 2.0 spice rack and took a few jiggers of MySpace social networking, a slice of iTunes and a half cup of Netflix, then blended it together in a stock rich with vintage Napster peer-to-peer sharing. The result is la la, a music-discovery site that lets you find new music and connect with people who share your taste. Then you ask them to send you their used CDs, a gift that costs you only a dollar each. You qualify for that bargain by sending one of your CDs to someone else (la la supplies you with shipping materials). Once you send a CD away, you are supposed to erase the tunes from your computer because you don't own them anymore. Despite the dubious likelihood of such rigor, Nguyen insists that the music industry has no problem with this. (La la kicks back 20 percent of revenues to the artists.) Currently la la is on an invitation-only basis, but plans an open rollout this summer.

FilmLoop
The challenges and opportunities posed by the digital-camera boom minted a whole new generation of entrepreneurs, and Kyle Mashima was one of them. A former VP at software maker Adobe, Mashima looked at his digital camera and the early online photo services two years ago, and wondered if there was a better way to upload and share photos on the Web. FilmLoop is his answer. The company asks users to download a photo player, which sits on the desktop and scrolls images in a revolving horizontal slide show. Here's how it works. Go to the beach with some friends, and after you transfer your photos to your PC, you create a loop by dragging and dropping the images into the FilmLoop player. The images are uploaded to the Web, where your friends see them, get copies and add their own pictures, which in turn are added to your slide show. Or, users can put their cameras away and browse a general library of 500 photo loops of news, entertainment and groups of images that other users have publicly posted and tagged. The company makes money by inserting an ad at the end of a loop, before it starts over. Mashima has already scored some partnerships: eBay, among other firms, is using the tool to show shots of cars for sale on the auction site. Seeing pictures of classic De Loreans and MGs scrolling across their computer screens might entice even reluctant buyers.

Mercora
As unlikely as this sounds, India-born Srivates Sampath is a huge Jethro Tull fan. On Mercora, the company's founder can choose from more than a dozen radio stations from all over the world devoted to the flute-favoring rockers. The site allows anyone to become a DJ. Download the Mercora player and, using your own music, you can program up to five radio stations, which Mercora's million other users can listen to any time they want. There are currently 60,000 stations to choose from—all user-programmed. It's legal, too. Mercora paid $35,000 last year in royalties to recording-industry trade organizations like ASCAP.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12011437/site/newsweek/





Didn't Want To Change The World, Just Wanted To Work On Computers
John Boudreau

Steve Wozniak says he never intended to change the world. That was the other Steve, Steve Jobs.

He just wanted to build computers. Oh, and he really -- really -- wanted to spend his career as a Hewlett-Packard engineer, a position he reluctantly left.

Life turned out very differently for the self-trained electrical engineer. In 1976, he and Jobs started Apple Computer, which would help launch the personal computer revolution. Observers say Apple would never be what it is today without either Steve -- Jobs, the tech evangelist and visionary, and Wozniak, whose technical genius created computers for the masses.

``I didn't want to start this company,'' said Wozniak, known in Silicon Valley simply as ``Woz.'' ``My goal wasn't to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers. I only started the company when I realized I could be an engineer forever.''

Wozniak, 55, left Apple in 1981 to work on his engineering degree at the University of California-Berkeley and dabble in other things. He returned for three years in 1983. Though he has been involved in other ventures since Apple, Wozniak will always be identified with the Cupertino company.

Wozniak, who will publish an autobiography, ``I, Woz,'' this fall, prefers to stay out of the spotlight but willingly signs autographs on everything from laptops to an apple (the kind you eat).

He also recently linked up with former Apple Chief Executive Gilbert Amelio, who was ousted from Apple in 1997, and Ellen Hancock, who was chief technology officer, also until 1997, to form Acquicor Technologies. It raised $150 million this month to buy other technology companies.

Wozniak recently sat down with the Mercury News to talk about Apple's 30th anniversary in his home perched in the Los Gatos hills. Here is an edited version of that interview.

Q
In 1976, how did you think a personal computer would change people's lives?

A
We did believe that computers would fit into every home because of the price and some of the things they did. We thought people would use the computer in the home for normal home things: You have a kitchen so you keep recipes on it. You have a checkbook and you can have the computer do the subtraction for you. We didn't realize what having a computer in virtually every home would be like -- how you can make a decision and a million lives are affected.

I was just doing something I was very good at, and the thing that I was good at turned out to be the thing that was going to change the world. That wasn't my plan. I didn't think, I'm going to change the world. No, I'm just going to build the best machines I can build that I would want to use in my own life. Steve was much more further-thinking. When I designed good things, sometimes he'd say, ``We can sell this.'' And we did. He was thinking about how you build a company, maybe even then he was thinking, ``How do you change the world?'' He spoke like that.

Q
The big computer companies of the day didn't see the potential for a small computer for the home. Why is that?

A
Some of them expressly said this is not going to be a successful business. They didn't see the little bends in the curve. They probably didn't see the ease of running cheap applications software, a lot of little start-ups using low-cost technology to build peripherals and software, or things like VisiCalc (spreadsheet software).

Q
You were working at Hewlett-Packard while you and Steve Jobs were creating Apple Computer. Did HP know about your Apple work?

A
Yes. As soon as Steve Jobs suggested, ``Why don't we sell a PC board of this computer,'' I said, `I think I signed something, an employment contract, that said what I designed belongs to Hewlett-Packard.' And I loved that company. That was my company for life. So I approached Hewlett-Packard first. Boy, did I make a pitch. I wanted them to do it. I had the Apple I, and I had a description of what the Apple II could do. I spoke of color. I described an $800 machine that ran BASIC (an early computer language), came out of the box fully built and talked to your home TV. And Hewlett-Packard found some reasons it couldn't be a Hewlett-Packard product.

Q
Did HP ever express regret to you about passing on the Apple I and Apple II?

A
Oddly enough, by the time I was working on the Apple II, and we were selling the Apple I -- and I was working at Hewlett-Packard still -- they started up a project on my floor without telling me. . . . I asked to be on the project. I really wanted to work on computers. And they turned me down for the job. To this day I don't know why. I said, ``I don't have to run anything,'' even though I'd done all these things and they knew it. I said, ``I'll do a printer interface. I'll do the lowliest engineering job there is.'' I wanted to work on a computer at my company and they turned me down. When you think about it, every time they turned me down, it was fortunate for the world and it was fortunate for myself.

Q
Eventually, the two of you sought out investors. And is that when you left HP?

A
A venture capitalist got Steve Jobs talking to Mike Markkula. Mike had been an engineer and he had gone into marketing, which he was superb at. He had early stock options at Intel. He was looking for things to do, dabbling around in investments, and here we were. He wanted to bring technology into the home. He looked at what we had and got excited. He took the time to see that what we had was such a huge leap in technology. He decided to back us fully if I decided to leave Hewlett-Packard. I balked at first. Steve was getting all my relatives to call me and tell me, ``You should do it.'' But I had a job for life at Hewlett-Packard and that meant more to me. It was a tough decision. Finally, I decided I can start this company, but I don't have to run it. I just have to be an engineer.

Q
How would you describe your relationship with Steve Jobs?

A
We are friends and polite and talk to each other once in a while. . . . We've never had an argument. There have been a couple of artificial ones over misinterpretations of things in the press. I'm a real analytical person. When I talk with reporters, I will talk about the pluses and minuses of an issue and, boy, sometimes they like to grab a little minus, twist the words a little, exaggerate it and make a headline.

Q
Does Steve Jobs ever give you heads-up on a hot new product?

A
I would never ask. And the reason I would never ask is I think it was bad for Apple to have all the rumors and leaks from the inside. I also didn't like to get pre-released products from the inside because whatever I got had some bugs, and I'd have to go down to the company and get it upgraded, get it upgraded, get it upgraded. I'd rather know what real people are getting and buy stuff in real stores. I've got a lot of friends who work there and I will never, ever ask them what's going on. I don't want to know. Once in a while, though, if a computer doesn't work with a cell phone I have, I loan my cell phone to some engineers and they'll make sure the next operating system version works with it.

Q
What's it like being Steve Wozniak and shopping in an Apple store? Are you recognized?

A
I was in Boston once. I needed two AC adapters. I ran into this new Apple store. I went up to the counter, ``I'd like two 65-watt AC adapters.'' I didn't say anything about who I was. And they bring them out. I say, ``How much?'' They say, ``We are expensing it.'' I said, ``Yeah, but how do I pay for it?'' They said, ``No, no, no -- we are allowed to give gifts to special people.''

Q
Do you attend Apple product announcement events?

A
That's actually one of the nicest things Steve does for me: He makes sure I am always invited to the VIP guest area for the product rollouts. I appreciate that more than I can ever say. Those things have inspired me. They have inspired my children when I have brought them in the past. They are really great to see.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...printstory.jsp





Apple's Intel Challenge

Shortly after release of the new Apple operating system for Intel processors, Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computer announced he would be eager to sell computers with OS X installed – if Apple were willing to license a version for use on Dell-branded equipment. Of course, Steven Jobs said it wasn't in the cards....

Official Apple intentions aside, thousands of people are already running pirated copies of the new Apple OS on Dell systems. Both a modified “developer version” and the standard commercial versions of the Apple OS X operating system for Intel processors (now often, and unofficially, nicknamed OSX86) can be successfully installed on most Dell desktop systems released since 2003 – though please note this does not mean it is in any way legal to do so. Indeed, it appears most of this increasingly popular “experimentation” constitutes flagrant software piracy.

This site explores the current “not-only-for-geeks” fad of installing the Apple OSX86 operating system on standard desktop PC’s, and what it means for the future of Apple Computer. In light of Michael Dell’s comment, we will focus particular attention on Dell and Apple OS X.

All information presented herein is widely available on the internet. Nothing stated in these pages should be interpreted as an endorsement of software piracy or other illegal activity.

OS X for Intel

Until January of 2006, Apple’s elegant and highly secure OS X operating system ran only on Apple-manufactured hardware designed around the PowerPC processor, produced by Motorola and IBM. Unfortunately, and despite Steve Job’s many entreaties, development on the PowerPC chip lagged woefully behind the Intel CPU platform. Not only was the PowerPC chip relatively slow, but it was plagued by high power demands and excessive heat production. This latter problem constituted a huge obstacle for Apple laptop design. After considering its options and its deteriorating relationship with Motorola and IBM, sometime in 2004 Apple secretly made the bold decision to abandon the PowerPC and redesign its entire computer line around new Intel dual-core processors.

The first test version of the re-engineered OS X operating system for Intel-based computers was released to developers in July 2005. The operating system came with a specially configured test computer, and with an new OS X software system designed to work exclusively with the supplied prototype Apple hardware. Indeed, Apple has made clear the new Intel version of OS X is intended to function exclusively on its own hardware. Special code is incorporated into the software that, by mating with an encryption layer in the matching hardware, attempts to thwart installation on anything other than Apple computers.

Within weeks, however, eager hackers discovered several arcane ways of installing and running OS X for Intel on many common “Windows” computers using both the Intel and the AMD CPU. Original techniques for accomplishing this involved a prolonged and complex series of tasks suited only to a Mac-lusting geek with a weekend to burn. But that was just the first version of the hack.

Apple shipped developers a second and third edition of the new Intel-based operating system in October and November. Each incorporated more completely developed features and security measures. Both were soon “cracked” to allow installation on non-Apple hardware. In early 2006 the first commercial versions of OS X were released with still more complex routines to bond the OS X exclusively to the new Apple Intel computers. Within ten days these were also cracked. All major work modifying the Apple OS for use on generic Intel systems has been done by one extremely talented Russian programmer using the nom de hache of (caution, speaking this name can raises pixilated goose bumps of admiration in certain circles): Maxxuss.

By early 2006 several software modifications based on Maxxuss cracks were circulating around the internet. When these "patches" are applied to the Apple OS X installation disks (developer release version 10.4.3 or the commercial release versions 10.4.4 and 10.4.5), OS X can be installed on many currently available Intel desktop systems -- including most Dell desktop systems released after 2003. The hacked versions of OS X run at speeds equivalent to Apple's own Intel-based systems (much faster than most Apple PowerPC-based systems) and offer "almost" bug-free functionality (more on that below).

Rapid progress is being made by hackers toward developing an unauthorized installation DVD that will allow the current version of OS X to be easily installed on most recent PC's. (See Hacking a Mac for further details.) Stay tuned…things are developing quickly.

Bottom line: Despite Apple's effort, the commercial releases of OS X has been effectively cracked. And Steve Jobs is now faced with a real problem. Lots of people would love a dual-boot box, with OS X for home and Windows for office compatibility. Absent an offering by Apple of an OS X version configured for non-Apple hardware, and given the huge appeal of the OS X operating system in security and ease of use, software piracy could end up taking a big bite out of the golden Apple. Hey, the kids (and quite a few more mature people) already get iTunes software for free. They obtain 90% of the tunes loaded onto those ubiquitous iPods with “free” (read that “often illegal”) downloads from BitTorrent and peer-to-peer networks. Might they not decide to add an Apple to the download queue?

The Hack Scene

Immediately after release of the new Intel OS X systems, several internet sites appeared dedicated to “facilitating” installation of OSX86 (as the new Apple OS is popularly nicknamed) on standard Intel and AMD based systems. The sites are seeing lots of traffic these days. By early February 2006, one of the web forums (osx86project.org) reported 20,000 visitors had signed up for user accounts. Search on “OSX86” with Google, and you will locate tens of thousands of internet pages about “hacking” OSX86.

Even ZDNet and TechRepublic (both part of the respected CNET Networks) published detailed guides reviewing their experience installing pirated copies of Apple OSX86 on Intel based computers.

DivX, a big player in video compression software, recently posted a software update proclaiming: “DivX 6 for Mac for Intel is now available! That's right, now all of you on hacked Windows PC's running OS X.... er, wait, um... I mean, now all of you getting the new Intel based iMacs and future MacBook Pro's can use DivX 6 for Mac as well!”

Perusal of the download counter at one well-known Swedish BitTorrent site shows pirated versions of Apple OS X for Intel near the top of the popularity list. By mid-February site counters had ticked off over 100,000 downloads of various versions of the Apple Intel OS X installation disk. This is not just a drop in the bucket. It looks like the “community” is hot on the tracks of something they want badly.

History of the crack is documented in various internet posts. The new OS X for Intel software contains special routines – including the TMP protection layer and a hardware-dependent software encryption layer – to “lock” it to Apple hardware. The first job hackers faced was unlocking TMP and fooling OS X into thinking it was working on a genuine Apple computer. That done (and it was done early in the game), the next complex task was emulating the new EFI technology (a BIOS replacement used in Apple Intel computers but not yet widely adopted by other manufactures) and decrypting the hardware- dependent software encryption routines incorporated in Apple production systems. Maxxuss again accomplished both tasks.

Next problem is making the system software interface with diverse hardware – CPU’s, keyboards, video cards, audio devices, network cards – other than the stock devices natively supported by the developer and production versions of OSX.

The Apple’s Intel OS X is entirely forward-looking; it is designed to run on dual-core Intel processors and includes no backward support for less capable CPU’s. In order for OS X to work with older systems, support for the newer CPU instructions – specifically, SSE3 and NX – had somehow to be worked into the OS X kernel.

Among Maxxuss’ very impressive programming achievements was creating code to emulate the SSE3 calls used by the OS X operating system. His (her?) patch inserts SSE3 software emulation routines into the operating system kernel, thus allowing OS X to install and run on CPUs supporting only the older SSE2 instruction set. This modification (along with the protection cracks) allows OS X to run on most Intel processors manufactured after 2003 and pretty much all Dell computers shipped in the last two years. Of course, newer systems equipped with more recent versions of the Pentium that include SSE3 and NX support (Pentium Prescott, Pentium D, Celeron D, Intel Duo-Core T series) do not require the emulation modifications, but can still run perfectly well using them.

Then there is the issue of input and output devices. Apple computers exclusively use USB keyboards and mice. Many Intel systems still use PS2 type keyboards. A driver was needed, and created, to support this hardware. Network interfaces are tricky. Dell’s commonly integrated Intel Pro network interface works well, but a several other models will not, and a compatible network card sometimes has to be added into a hacked box. With the exception of USB plug-in devices, most other wireless network cards are not supported.

Graphics integration are still more difficult. Drivers exist in the Apple OS X setup for only a few specific devices. Since Apple uses ATI graphics hardware, most ATI graphics cards work. Support for everything else is a little less perfect. Integrated Intel graphics setups (like those found on many Dell motherboards) seem to work, as do many nVidia cards, but these units may not support some of the fancier graphics routines (Core Graphics and Quartz) used by the Apple Aqua desktop interface. Small graphics imperfections – "mouse tearing" – remain a problem for most hacked systems. (Interestingly, early reports suggest this is a small problem on the production systems as well.)

What would a Mac be with out sound? Apple is all about iTunes and that cool Mac Aqua desktop copulating with the 20 zillion little iPods Apple sold last year. But sound is also a bit of a problem. The audiophile add-in audio boards like the Creative Audigy series shipped as an upgrade with Dell systems are not supported by Apple or the hacked OS X systems. Nonetheless, the integrated sound present on most Intel motherboards (and on most all Dell systems) is supported and can be easily turned on even if the box still has an Audigy card plugged in. USB-connected sound systems also are reported to work without a problem.

Other important peripherals – printers, USB devices, hard drives, CD and DVD burners – all are generally reported to work without alteration of the stock OS X setup. Installation on laptop computers is also possible (and sometimes quite successful), however drivers for integrated video, audio, touch-pads, battery power management and networking are sometimes difficult to configure.

The Patch

In late-2005, the various pieces of this complex crack project appeared on the internet one by one, and often in multiple evolving versions. Earlier adopters – er ah, hackers – faced the daunting task of pasting the different pieces together into a workable installation. Internet posts leave a bread crumb trail of the angst-plagued path trodden by Hackintosh pioneers, a veritable trial by fire – or at least of burning, and re-burning, and reburning trial OS X installation DVDs.

Then in early January, along came “The Patch”. With a little help from his friends, a hacker named JaS put it all together in a consolidated installer, the Jas 4.2b patch. Just call it the Patch. What does the Patch do? In a few quick clicks, it takes the original Apple Developer installation DVD (version 10.4.3 8F1111) and rewrites it, adding all the refined Maxxuss-authored changes to kernel code and appending automatic installation scripts for most of the commonly needed peripheral support kernel extensions. This “patched” OS X installation disk is then simply burned to a new DVD. Similar patches are now also appearing for the most recently release commercial versions of OS X.

And with a patched installation DVD in hand: Voila! Drop the disk into the computer’s DVD drive, boot the Apple OS X installer program, and in twenty short minutes… It Breaths! It Bounces!

…Or it is DOA, and the wannabe Mac displays a grey tombstone (Apple’s polyglot equivalent the infamous Microsoft “Blue Screen of Death”) stating politely in four languages that you are screwed: The noble Apple OS X won’t install in your illicit wormy Windows besmirched boxen.

But more often than not, at least on a commonly configured Dell system, it just works. In twenty minutes or so the installation program completes and the system reboots into the wondrous world of an Apple OS X re-engineered for Intel processors. Having seen this marvel materialize before my own eyes – and even given a weary cynicism about the digital revolution – I admit being somewhat awed by a bouncy OS X toolbar floating above the Dell logo on a 20” LCD monitor plugged into a stock Dell office system. Was it a faint echo of the ancient and mysterious alchemical coniunctio oppositorum: a wedding of two divergent visions rushing toward a connubial digital future? Whatever. It was cool.

Of course the best of hacks is still an illegal hack, and hundreds of frantic posts on the forums suggest large numbers of would-be Mac hacks are meeting the gray screen of death. But using a clean copy of a properly-patched installation disk DVD, more and more people are also gleefully declaring success in creating their own hackintoch boxen. (For a personal assessment of your hacker potential, take the Hacker Aptitude Test.)
http://macadell.com/index.html





Run the new Intel Apple OS X on a Dell computer? It can be done with little more difficulty than it takes to install Windows XP. Apple knows it. But will they cash-in?

Hack a Mac - Doing it with Andy

Special note to Oprah: The anonymous author of this purported true-life account has confessed to the editor that all names and events depicted have been edited, amplified and/or fictionalize to protect the innocent, and the guilty. The author admitted he has really never spent even a single night in jail, and does not want to go there now. Editorial review has further confirmed that information contained in this account is widely available on the internet. Nothing stated in this account should be interpreted as an endorsement of software piracy or other illegal activity. If you really want a Mac, buy the genuine article.

Important Notice: Before reading any further, please take the Hack-a-Mac Aptitude Test

Last December a young friend at the office popped open his Dell Inspiron to proudly display OS X Tiger booting up. I was duly amazed, and intrigued. Over the course of the next month, I did some browsing on Apple and Intel. Finally, I asked my friend (call him Andy) to give me a hands-on introduction to the magic of making OS X run on a Dell.

Andys’ basement is a typical techie lair. On the work bench sit three different system boxes, including an Apple G5 and a big honker of a tower glowing gamer neon from every orifice, two LCD monitors, and surrounding trip wire maze of 5/1 speak and Ethernet cables. In center ring sits Andy’s new custom-built Hackintoch – pasted together from scratch, he explains, with Apple OS X compatible components. “It’s a perfect clone, but faster….”

We sit down for the polite geek preliminaries. He makes his HackMac jump gracefully through a few hoops. It displays widgets and bounces! It plays tunes! It runs iLife ‘06! I am admiring. But I am here for another reason. I want to see what OS X can do on the two-year old stock Dell 8300 I have dragged along.

“No problem”, says Andy. He moves the G5 out of the way, lays my box on the table, pops a button and spreads its case wide apart. Thrusting in a nimble hand, he yanks out my IDE drive, and drops it into an anti-static bag. “This is your first time, so let’s us protection.”

From a crate of junk on the floor he pulls out a 20GB drive that has obviously been round the block. “We’ll start with a fresh (more or less) drive. So technically, we are not putting anything on YOUR system. Your stuff is in the bag. When we’re done, I destroy the evidence, and you take home a clean box.” Hum. This kid is quick.

I am in for the ride, and ask the first question obvious question: “So where did you get the Apple OS?”

Okay, I admit, I already sort of know the answer. Andy gives me a look of disbelief, turns to his hacked mac box and opens a Google search. He types in “10.4.3 8F1111”, the version number of the developer release, followed by the word “torrent”. Lots of links appear. Four clicks later he is downloading a copy of the Apple developer OS X.

I’ve used BitTorrent clients to download (legally) a couple of Linux distributions. Some of these were huge DVD-sized files, like the Apple OS install disk, and can take a few days to download, even with a fast broadband connection.

But I also know lots of “other people” use torrents to download pirated software, music and movies. Therefore, let me make something clear about the way BitTorrent software works: Whenever you are downloading a file with a torrent, you are also at the same time uploading it back to other users. If you are downloading software that is being illegally distributed, you are also at the same time uploading and distributing illegal material yourself. Get the point? I ask Andy to kill the download.

“No problem. Just answering your question. I already have the file.” He turns to the glowing gamer tower (running Windows XP) and opens up a folder.

"What you want is a completely patched and ready to install DVD image, and several of these are available on BitTorrent host sites, like The Pirate Bay. Unfortunately, some for those big files are corrupted in the download process or when they are burned to a DVD. A corrupt file will not work. To check integrity of a DVD image, you need to know the expected MD5 of the file. For example, the MD5 checksum on an iso image of the 10.4.3 8F1111A installer disk that has been pre-patched with the JaS4.2b patch should be exactly [16139ae55ac283c114a5231f85c3f54c]. If the burned DVD of this .iso has this MD5, it is a good copy and should work. If it has a different MD5, it is probably a corrupted download or DVD copy." (A freeware program to check MD5 of files is MD5summer. UltraISO can all check the MD5, see below.)

“Anyone installing OS X on a PC for the first time should start by installing the 10.4.3 version with the Jas 4.2b patch. This is the version most likely to work on the largest number of computers, and with the least trouble. Most of the newer patches for version 10.4.4 and 10.4.5 (the commercial versions shipped with the first Apple Intel systems) use parts of this original cracked version. Lots of times you need this version working to install other new versions. So we will do a 10.4.3 install on your box."

"But what," I ask, "if you do not have -- or are not sure you have -- a known good cracked disk?" Andy explains, "Then the file you need is the final developer version of 10.4.3 released by Apple in November.” The real thing is "macosx_10.4.3_8f1111_for_dtk_userdvd.dmg”, and it has an MD5 of [3665735d1b651b5a4ad15ca59ab40142]. The ".dmg" stands for a disk image, the Macintosh equivalent of a Windows ".iso" file.

"For instructional purposes, I will show you the complete way to produce an install disk, starting with an image of the Apple developer installation disk, version 10.4.3 8F1111."

With an image of the Apple macosx_10.4.3_8f1111_for_dtk_userdvd.dmg installation disk in hand, a few preparation steps are required. The Mac format disk image .dmg file has to be converted to an equivalent Windows compatible .iso disk image before it can be “patched” (“cracked”). Using a shareware program called UltraISO he runs the image conversion routine, copying the dmg format file to a new .iso file.

“Now we check the MD5 again, to make sure the conversion was clean. People who don’t do this spend days wondering why their installs won’t work.” Using UltraISO again, he selects the "Check CD/DVD Disc", and runs the MD5 checksum on the newly created .iso image. This time the numbers don’t match up with the expected result. “Happens sometimes. Lots of bits to bite. We need to do the conversion again.” Second time, the resulting file gives the correct sum.

Next comes the real crack operation: applying the patch files to the Apple installation disk. Andy clicks back to a bookmark for a web forum post titled “JaS 1111a Generic Patch v4.2b”, and finds there a download link. The patch downloads in a few seconds.

“This JaS patch is great. It writes all the needed changes into the .iso disk image we just made.” Using the downloaded file, Andy opens the included patcher software, clicks a few boxes, enters the name of the input .iso he just created and the new patched output .iso file he is about to create, and clicks start. A few minutes later, the patched .iso file sits in his file folder. Checking the MD5 of the converted file against the numbers on the website [16139ae55ac283c114a5231f85c3f54c], he declares the patch good.

Last step is burning the .iso image to a DVD. Andy opens Nero, selects the newly created Apple OS X image as source, throws a DVD+R disk into his drive and hits the burn button. Fifteen minutes later the installation disk pops out of the drive. Oh yes, one more thing – check that MD5 sum again. Should be the same as the iso from which it was burned, but Andy warns me – like a parent telling his kid for the hundredth time to look both ways before crossing the road -- that with some computers and some DVD burners, people may burn five or more DVD disks before they get the perfect copy. A less than perfect copies usually won’t install. Ours is good on the first burn. (Of course, he notes, some people already have a good pre-patched install DVD. He has one and could have just dropped in in the drive and started the install. All of the above was done to show me the process.)

The moment of truth: We turn on my Dell 8300, and at startup hit the F2 key to enter the BIOS setup. Andy explains, "We have to turn on your motherboards native audio - the AC97 thing. Soundcards like your Audigy don't work. But on-board sound does. Also, the Apple installer doesn't like Intel processors running Hyperthreading on the CPU, so we will turn that off too. You can turn it back on later, and after the install it will probably work." He selects the BIOS options, and reboots.

The system reboots, and now as things startup he hits F12 key to select the boot device (we need to boot from the DVD drive). Andy selects option 5, to boot from the CD/DVD drive (and not the default HD). He drops the newly created DVD into the drive drawer, and away we go.

The DVD whirls, a cursor, and then a little “Darwin” prompt, and then a big grey Apple splash screen appear. In a about 25 seconds, the installer routine boots.

It’s working. The first screen asks us to select an install language. Checking my paranoia level, Andy perversely clicks on something that looks like Arabic, or Japanese, or something.... “Lets cover our tracks.” A few more screens appear. This part is a little unclear, since everything is now Arabic. But Andy makes up the translations as he goes. A couple screens later he clicks the top tool bar “Disk Utility” option, explaining we need to format the old HD before running the rest of the install. With Disk Utility, he chooses the hard drive, which I see does actually have a prior installed partition. “A SUSE Linux install,” he explains, “Kiss it good bye. We got OSX86!” He selects to repartitions the whole drive as a new Apple journaling file system. That done, the install runs without further user input. Twenty minutes later, it gives what appears to be an Arabic gesticulation of success and reboots.

It worked. Apple OS X starts with a polyglot flash of graphic mania, spins the screen, and invites us (in a foreign tongue) to register our new Apple. Total time from arrival in Andy’s basement to booting OS X on the Dell 8300 is about 2 hours, and that includes a few habitually awkward geek social nanoseconds.

Andy smiles at me. “Okay. Are you ready to go all the way?” Huh? “I mean, do you want to really do it, put a double boot setup on your system?” I wiggle on the pirate hook. Okay. It is a spare box I don’t use it much. Hey, this is only a “test of concept” activity. I will scrub out the OS X partition when we are done….

Back my hard drive goes into the Dell. We boot Windows XP. I already have Acronis Disk Director installed, and have previously used this great application to partition drives and create dual boot Windows 2000 and Linux systems. Using Disk Director, I create a new 30 GB primary partition on my 80 GB hard drive (note it must be a “primary” and not an extended partition for an operating system to install). And then I install the Disk Director boot manager tool that elegantly handles the startup of multi-boot installations. Andy takes over. He reboots the Dell, hits the F12 key, selects to boot from the CD/DVD drive, and puts the cracked Apple OS X install DVD back in the drive. This time when the Apple install program starts he uses its Disk Utility to format the new blank partition on the drive as an Apple file system (the Windows partition is left alone), and then runs the install into this partition. Again, it works.

When the system reboots, the Acronis OS selector pops on screen asking us to select either Windows XP or the new “Unknown OS” (Acronis software does not recognize the Apple OS, since the very possibility of such a dual-boot system was not conceived by its designers). We select to boot from “Unknown OS”.

The grey apple splash appears, and then OS X boots with all its graphics glory, inviting us (this time in English) to register a new Mac.

Andy runs the box through a few test routines. Everything seems to work great. He downloads the free XBench benchmarking software for Macintosh, and we run the speed trial. The Dell 8300 scores around 60, equivalent to Andy’s single processor G5, and a couple times the score of an average G4 system.

BUT -- it is a hack. What I want is a legal dual-boot box. And so, as the sun set in the Western waters, I kiss the OSX86 partition good-bye, and I take my all-too-ordinary Dell Windows XP back home.

However, my wife's birthday is just around the corner, and her old Dell Latitude laptop is falling apart. Don't let the big cat out of the bag, but I think she is going to be getting an Apple Intel MacBook. Me? I am waiting for the dual-boot miracle machine.
http://macadell.com/macadell4.html





Beatles Take Rival Apple To Court Over Core Business
Liz Chong

IT IS the ultimate battle of the generations over an image of a half-eaten piece of fruit.

In one corner Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the ultimate stars of vinyl who defined music in the 1960s. In the other, the creators of a small white box that has revolutionised the way we buy and listen to music.

This week the Apple Corps goes to the High Court seeking multimillion-pound damages against Apple Computer, the creators of the iPod, over their hugely successful iTunes Music Store.

Apple Corps, owned by the former Beatles and their heirs, still owns the licensing rights to Beatles’ products. It is claiming that the introduction of iTunes broke a $26 million settlement under which Apple Computer agreed to steer clear of the music business, for which the Beatles’ company retains the famous trademark. It is the latest clash in one of Britain’s longest-running corporate legal battles.

Any damages for this latest clash could amount to tens of millions of pounds because it concerns Apple Computer’s hugely successful iTunes Music Store and iPod digital music players.

The court will be treated to a demonstation of an iPod, but it is unlikely to play a Beatles song, as they have not been licensed for download and it would therefore be illegal.

The Beatles first used a logo of a Granny Smith in 1968 when they founded the Apple Corps to distribute their records and those of other artists they signed to the Apple record label. The records had a ripe apple on one side and a neatly sliced half on the reverse.

The Apple Records subsidiary is still active as the licensing agent for Beatles products.

Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, founded his company in 1976 with a logo of a rainbow-coloured apple with a bite taken out of it. Apple Corps sued him five years later, accepting an $80,000 settlement and a promise that the computer company would stay out of the music business.

The companies clashed again in 1989 after Apple Computer introduced a music-making program. The computer company settled in 1991, for $26 million. Apple Corps was awarded rights to the name on “creative works whose principal content is music” while Apple Computer was allowed “goods and services . . . used to reproduce, run, play or otherwise deliver such content”.

Critically, however, the agreement prevented Apple Computer from distributing content on physical media. This was designed to cover CDs and tapes, but it is unclear whether it included later inventions such as digital music files or devices used to play them.

Apple Computer will argue that its music service, which has sold more than a billion songs since 2002, is merely data transmission.

The case is scheduled to begin on Wednesday at the High Court before Mr Justice Mann, a self- professed fan of music and computers. He is no stranger to the iPod, having inquired of both sides some time ago if he should disqualify himself from hearing the case because he owned one.

The owners of Apple Corps — Sir Paul, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison — will not attend the hearing, but witnesses will include Neil Aspinall, the company’s managing director and the former Beatles road manager; and Eddy Cue, head of internet services at Apple Computer.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...105800,00.html





Apple vs Apple: High Court Freaks Out
Philippe Naughton and agencies

The Royal Courts of Justice came alive to the beat of the 1978 disco classic Le Freak today as two giants of the music business clashed in a battle over internet downloads and a piece of forbidden fruit.

Apple Corps, the music company set up by the Beatles in 1968, is suing Apple Computer over its iTunes Music Store, which it says infringes a 1991 trademark agreement that the computer-maker would steer clear of the record business.

Apple Computer denies infringement and says that its iTunes service is an electronic data-processing device - an argument dismissed by Geoffrey Vos QC, representing Apple Corps, as a "perversion" of the 1991 deal.

As the case opened in the High Court, Mr Vos argued that Apple Computer was clearly in the music business, having sold a billion tracks already through its iTunes service. He quoted Steve Jobs, founder of the computer firm, as saying that downloading music from the internet now was exactly the same as buying an LP in the era of vinyl.

And to prove his point that Apple Computer was using the trademark to sell music even though its download service is branded otherwise, he demonstrated to Mr Justice Mann how to download a track from the iTunes website onto an Apple iPod music player.

Choosing Le Freak - which spent six weeks at No 1 for the group Chic before the internet had even been invented - Mr Vos took the judge through the procedure, pointing out how many times the Apple logo appeared as he did so.

The song and its chorus - "Aah Freak Out! Le Freak, c'est Chic!" - boomed around court No 73. Mr Justice Mann proved no beginner: the learned judge is an iPod owner had earlier offered to disqualify himself the case on that basis.

Mr Vos told the court that both sides had respected the 1991 agreement and all had gone well between the two companies until the advent of the iPod, the portable music player that can store thousands of tracks downloaded from the internet or ripped from a user's CD collection.

He said that Apple Computer violated the agreement when it launched iTunes in 2003 and described as "plainly wrong" its argument that it uses the apple mark only in connection with a delivery system.

Customers of the service now have access to 3.7 million songs and when Mr Jobs launched Music Store in 2003, part of the presentation included exclusive tracks from artists including U2, Eminem, Bob Dylan - "tracks for the Store that you cannot get anywhere else".

Mr Vos said: "[Apple] Computer was promoting a store at which to buy music, and more particularly, Computer's musical recordings - permanent downloads - with special characteristics. No objective onlooker could think otherwise.

"What Apple Computer are not doing using the Apple mark is selling software, delivery systems, or anything of the like. They are selling music," Mr Vos added, "and that is in violation of the agreement."

The computer company’s logo is a cartoonish apple with a neat bite out of the side; the record company is represented by a perfect, shiny green Granny Smith apple.

He added that Mr Jobs wanted to use the mark "apple" for the Music Store but realised that the agreement prevented this. Before the launch of iTunes it had even approached Apple Corps and offered $1 million for the trademark Apple Records. That offer was rejected by Neil Aspinall, the Beatles former road manager, who is now managing director of Apple Corps.

Although Computer recognised that the use of "apple" marks would be impermissible, it "succumbed to its earlier desire" and used the logos with "great prominence" and the name "apple" and had continued to do so up to the present date, Mr Vos said.

Apple Corps is seeking court orders to stop Computer using the "apple" marks in connection with the iTunes Music Store and is also asking for damages after an investigation into Apple Computer’s profits from the world's dominant music download service.

Apple Corps' current owners - Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono - did not attend the hearing.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...109802,00.html





iHate iTunes
Stephie Coplan

When I downloaded iTunes onto my computer, I sold my soul to Apple.

For years, I had downloaded songs from Morpheus, Kazaa and LimeWire (or whichever P2P file-sharing program wasn't being prosecuted at the moment). It was fun and instant and, most importantly, it was cheap. But Apple was offering me safety, accurate tagging (none of this "01-By By By-Backstreet Boyz.mp3" business) and album art for less than a dollar.

Song by song, album by album, I became an addict - which was a problem I was probably prone to anyway, due to my impulsive personality. I'd look at my $50 e-bills, sigh, and think about how I'd explain this month's splurge to my father.

Three months after putting iTunes on my computer, I had probably paid for Steve Jobs' entire cancer treatment.

However, like a relationship that starts off all puppies-and-rainbows but, a year later, feels more like rattlesnakes-and-raindrops, I can now say - without calling myself a heathen - that iTunes can be an iPain.

This was a gradual realization that started the day I downloaded Prokofiev's Carnival of the Animals and noticed that iTunes had labeled the third movement "Hens and C**ks" with a red "explicit" label next to it.

The store has since removed the "explicit" label (obviously the iTunes honchos gave it a listen and were no longer horribly offended by the violin and trumpet). But they continue to mask the euphemism for "rooster" for apparently no reason at all other than the unwarranted paranoia that some child under the age of eight (searching for Prokofiev?) might get confused and ask his parents why iTunes is selling a song about Hens and Penises. Hilarity ensues; Prokofiev rolls over in his grave.

Strike two: what iTunes likes to call "iTunes Originals." These are albums, often acoustic, recorded exclusively for iTunes and infused with boring interview clips in which most of the artists say things they've already said in 10,000 other interviews. Should you, for whatever reason, want to download just the interview segments and not the music, you're out of luck. The interviews are "album only."

The artists never sing a bonus verse (like Simon and Garfunkel did during "The Boxer" at the famous Concert at Central Park) or break into 12 minute Iron Butterfly drum solos.

Fans fear that if they don't purchase their favorite artist's iTunes Originals, they are either not true fans or they are missing out on a milestone in the artist's career.

It's a shame that so many talented artists who have always seemed to remain unaffected (or at least put out an image of remaining unaffected) by the economic aspect of the music biz - Ben Folds, Death Cab for Cutie, Aimee Mann - have agreed to participate in such a blatant marketing gimmick. But then again, iTunes can make you do crazy things.

Strike three, iTunes is out: while it's cool that the iTunes Music Store sells TV shows, it's not cool that it ruins the endings of the episodes in each episode description, which is necessary to view if you're interested in downloading a particular episode instead of an entire season.

I, for example, didn't want to buy all 20 episodes of Season One of "Saved By the Bell," I only wanted a few. But the only way to determine which ones sounded interesting was to read their descriptions. Check out this description of an episode entitled "The Election:"

"When Zack discovers that the new student body president will win a trip to Washington D.C., he runs against Jessie solely to win the trip. After he wins, Zack feels guilty and resigns, handing the office to Jessie."

I'll concede that "Saved By the Bell" is no "24" when it comes to plot development. But that doesn't give iTunes the right to steal Bayside High's thunder.

I've saved my biggest tiff with iTunes for last: media previews. One would think that a 30-second preview of a song or TV show would be a good way of determining if the media were worth purchasing - and it is, but not the way iTunes does it.

Every preview of every episode of every show includes at least 20 seconds of the theme song, which, naturally, is exactly the same from episode to episode. This type of preview demonstrates that the file works properly, but it doesn't serve its purpose.

I'd like to download a 30-second clip of Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101" starring Jamie-Lynn Spears so I could make fun of it, but iTunes only provides the nauseating 29-second theme song and one second of MiniBrit opening her mouth to speak.

Similarly, iTunes likes to play applause during clips of live tracks rather than a guitar solo, dialogue during Broadway tracks rather than belting, and unfamiliar bridges during pop songs rather than the catchy hooks. Don't they realize that this ploy makes a popular song like "Dirty Little Secret" unrecognizable to someone who heard it on the radio and wanted to download it when she got home?

When used as a music-organizing program, iTunes is marvelous. But after a year of buying from its music store, I think I'd rather buy my music from a drug dealer.

Unfortunately, iTunes corners the market on online media stores just as Apple dominates the MP3 player market. Other online music stores exist, like Rhapsody, now-legal Napster and the upcoming MTV-Microsoft store, to name a few. But they are so unpublicized and inaccessible (most stores either require a monthly subscription or only allow their songs to be downloaded to non-iPod MP3 players) that they might as well go out of business. The only comparable legal competitor I've found is www.mp3search.ru, which has a smaller selection than iTunes (artists tend to be either extremely popular or extremely obscure without anything in between) but sells its songs for a dime and full albums for $1.08.

And come on, if nothing else, can they please stop putting a lowercase "i" in front of everything?
http://www.tuftsdaily.com/media/stor...ftsda ily.com





What's That Sound?

French MPs vote to control digital downloads, but suppliers probably won't be facing the music
Grant Rosenberg

When the French National Assembly last week approved legislation that would force "interoperability" on Apple, Microsoft and other digital-music providers, much of the commentary focused on whether or not Apple would cease operating in France, rather than give up exclusive rights to its popular iTunes Music Store and iPod technology. That would be a bit premature; the "authors' rights" bill still has to pass the Senate in May. And in any event, the bill seems likely to have little effect on music downloading in France, because comparatively few use iTunes anyway.

While Internet users in other countries seem to be making the shift toward legitimate digital-music purchases, France saw its illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing double in 2005 from the previous year, with legal files representing just 2% of downloads, according to a Dec. 2005 joint study by tech magazine SVM and market research institute GFK. And the bill seems unlikely to affect that behavior. It imposes penalties for illegal downloading, but they're miniscule: slap-on-the-wrist fines of just j38 to j150 for individuals. This probably won't discourage the estimated 8 to 11 million people who download pirated music online.

Some critics maintain that the bill is unenforceable and won't benefit artists. The Association des Audionautes (ADA), a P2P-rights group, slammed the draft law, saying it erodes the notion of private use and criminalizes cultural exchange. Furthermore, as the National Assembly rejected a proposed idea of "global licensing" — a government-set flat fee for unlimited downloading — there is still no mention of how artists would be compensated in the bill. Says the ADA's president, Aziz Ridouan, 17, "I think there really should have been more consultation and time spent on the bill."
http://www.time.com/time/europe/digi...177629,00.html





A Web Site So Hip It Gets Laddies to Watch the Ads
Saul Hansell

"This will be over faster than your last relationship" and ".001% of your daily ad intake" are the sorts of wisecracks users see right above the video commercial that greets them when they visit Heavy.com.

And that pretty much sets the tone of knowing commercialism for a Web site that has become one of the most popular among a growing crop of sites attracting young people with racy, humorous video programming.

Heavy is honed especially for young men. It mixes animation, music, video games, grainy home movies of oddball characters, supermodels in bikinis and pop culture parodies. Often, all of these elements are squished into a single two-minute clip. Advertising is everywhere.

This potent stew drew 5.5 million users to Heavy.com in February, according to comScore Media Metrix, nearly triple the audience of a year earlier.

Heavy's founders and chief executives, Simon Assaad and David Carson, both 35, say they modeled the frenetic site — with quick-triggered interactive features and almost no text — more on a video game than any other media form.

About half of the videos are submitted by amateurs, but Mr. Carson and Mr. Assaad put up only those that fit Heavy's rude and wry sensibility.

"Heavy has always been about our point of view," Mr. Carson said. "That's why we have attracted an audience." The site makes money through advertising, and all of the videos and game offerings are free.

Howard Handler, the chief marketing officer at Virgin Mobile, which advertises on Heavy, said that the site worked because Mr. Carson and Mr. Assaad "really get the 18- to 34-year-old market."

More and more Internet services are being built around video programming rather than traditional Web pages, and much of it aims to attract viewers in their late teens and 20's.

Viacom, which dominates the youth market on cable television, has created sites with video taken from its main networks, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. Yahoo has made itself the Web's most popular destination for music videos.

Much of America Online's growing video programming, which includes music, extreme sports and TV reruns, is aimed at a younger audience.

Likewise, smaller Web sites from Mania TV, YouTube and Atom Entertainment are competing for viewers and advertisers with games, music and video, often sent in by their users.

Heavy has attracted mainstream marketers like Virgin, Sony, Unilever, Verizon, NBC Universal and Burger King, often by blending content with advertisers' products.

For example, it commissioned amateur videomakers to create short videos featuring the masked king character who now appears in Burger King's TV commercials. And Sony paid Heavy.com to create an animated series called "Pimp My Weapon," which is recut from Sony's "God of War" game for PlayStation 2.

These kinds of segments have proved to be extremely popular. People have watched the Burger King character videos 9.1 million times and the "Pimp My Weapon" segments 6.5 million times since September.

The site's mix of creativity and commercialism reflects the background of its two founders. Mr. Assaad, a onetime filmmaker, and Mr. Carson, trained as a composer, founded Heavy Industries, an advertising agency focusing on the Internet, in 1998.

They started experimenting with a series of animated parodies of the VH1 feature "Behind the Music," taking humorous jabs at pop stars and celebrities. After the series became popular on other sites, they started Heavy.com in 1999, raised money and hired 60 people to create programming.

Of course, soon after, the Internet advertising market collapsed with the dot-com bubble. Heavy, based in New York, was forced to abandon most of its programming efforts, although it continued to show its old programs and music videos.

For a time, Mr. Carson and Mr. Assaad returned to the marketing business, largely helping Cablevision start its music channel, now known as Fuse.

By 2004, as the audience for Heavy grew to more than 250,000, they quit the Cablevision account to devote their energy to expanding the programming on Heavy.

"We knew it was the business we really wanted to be in, because we could have a direct relationship with consumers and an outlet for our creativity," Mr. Assaad said. "We felt it was only a matter of time before we could do it using our weapon of choice: the Internet."

Last year, Heavy, which is privately held, raised $10 million from Polaris Ventures, its first outside capital since 1999, to pay for a series of expansions. It expects advertising revenue of about $20 million this year, up 300 percent from 2005.

This year Heavy will increase its production of original programming tenfold, to 600 segments. It will spin off one of its popular channels, "Teriyaki Strips," which features animation with an Asian theme, into a separate site aimed at teenage boys. And it is developing content for mobile phones, like the "massive mating game," modeled after the "Dating Game" television program. One woman —perhaps a minor celebrity — will interrogate perhaps thousands of contestants by text message.

One of Heavy's hallmarks is how it weaves advertising into the animated experience of moving around the site. Each time a user clicks to move to a new section, an ad briefly moves to fill the screen. When a video begins to play, the ad remains as a frame around the video.

These bold graphic ads account for about two-thirds of Heavy's advertising revenue. About a quarter of its revenue comes from customized content, like the programs with Sony and Burger King. Less than 7 percent comes from traditional commercials on the site.

While advertisers initially want to run their existing commercials on Heavy, Mr. Assaad said, many soon learn that less-intrusive forms of advertising can get five times the number of people to click on them. At first, though, the advertisers bristle to hear this.

"It's kind of like telling someone they have an ugly baby," Mr. Assaad said. "Nobody wants to hear they have a TV commercial that nobody wants to watch."

Today, Mr. Carson says, young people see no difference between entertainment and advertising; he points to celebrities like Snoop Dogg, the rap star, and Tony Hawk, the skateboard champion, who are closely associated with their product endorsements.

"I grew up in a time when if you did something like that, you were a sellout," said Mr. Carson. "For kids under 24, the notion of sellout is nonexistent. If Snoop sponsors Pepsi, it's not that Snoop has sold out, it's 'Snoop is getting paid by the man.' "

For advertisers, this shift means they have to alter the way they use their brands and icons.

Burger King was initially leery of Heavy's proposal that it send masks of the king character to two dozen of the site's regular contributors. And rather than permitting the company and its lawyers to approve each video, Mr. Assaad asked the company to keep its hands off.

"We said, 'Legal will have nothing to do,' " Mr. Assaad said. " 'It will be user-generated content, and you will have to trust our editorial judgment.' "

In fact, Mr. Carson and Mr. Assaad rejected several video submissions. But the ones that were shown on Heavy were certainly more risqué than is typical for Burger King.

One video showed what seemed to be a scantily dressed woman flirting with the viewer over a Webcam. As she removed her bra, she revealed herself to be a man wearing a king mask, holding up a sign that said, "You've been served by the king."

Gillian Smith, Burger King's senior director for media and interactive marketing, said the program with Heavy was "a calculated risk."

Ultimately, the company concluded that people who were likely to be offended by this sort of video were not likely to spend much time on Heavy.com, and besides, it no longer had the ability to control its brand imagery the way it had in the past.

"Anyone could have purchased a king mask, which we sell online, done exactly the same stuff and put it up on their own blog," Ms. Smith said. "It was a great way to let people have fun with the king masks and see the king as another piece of pop culture."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/te...y/27heavy.html






Cablevision Tests 'Remote Storage' DVR Use
David Lieberman

In a move that could ignite a major debate about consumer "fair use" of TV programming, Cablevision Systems will unveil plans to test a service that gives cable subscribers the ability to record and time-shift shows using existing digital set-top boxes.

Although it works just like TiVo and other digital video recorders (DVRs) — consumers choose in advance which shows to capture and can fast-forward through ads — the recording itself will be stored at the cable system, not on a hard drive in the consumer's home.

The technology for what Cablevision calls its "remote storage digital video recorder" (RS-DVR) "is here today, and in Cablevision's case, we can use it to put DVR functionality in more than 2 million digital cable homes instantaneously, without ever rolling a truck or swapping out a set-top box," COO Tom Rutledge says in a statement.

It will be tested on Long Island in the second quarter in advance of a broad commercial rollout. The system will give each subscriber about 80 gigabytes of storage capacity — enough for about 45 hours of programming — on the central server. They'll also be able to record two programs simultaneously while watching a previously recorded show.

Although pricing hasn't been set, the company expects it to be less than what it charges for DVR, currently $9.95.

Cablevision's plan is sure to irk TV networks and programmers. If it catches on, it would weaken their ability to sell reruns of their shows via Internet downloading or video on demand. They also have long held that recordings of their shows — particularly by commercial entities — violates their copyrights.

That's one reason Time Warner in 2003 scrapped plans to introduce a centralized DVR-like system it called Mystro. It would have recorded all TV shows, giving consumers the ability to select shows to watch on demand up to a month after they had aired. (Related: Time Warner talks "Hits" channel with networks)

Time Warner followed up in October with a system called "Start Over," now in 65,000 homes in South Carolina. It gives cable customers who tune in late to a show the opportunity to watch it from the beginning — but without the ability to fast-forward through ads.

Cablevision says it believes its RS-DVRs don't violate copyright laws.

"Consumers have well-established rights to 'time-shift' television programming by making copies for personal, in-home viewing," the company says. "This new technology merely enables consumers to exercise their time-shifting rights in the same manner as with traditional DVRs, but at less cost."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/product...sion-dvr_x.htm





How To: Back up your DVDs in Ubuntu

I wrote a bash script to help you duplicate your DVDs. This may be illegal depending on where you live, but if you use your DVDs regularly you should have backups, to protect your investment. This script will backup the DVD to your hard disk, decrypt it, and create a directory structure that you can burn back to DVD-R. The following assumes that you are using Ubuntu, but I’ve run the script on both Libranet and Mandrake with only minor modifications (see comments within the script for hints.)

Add universe and multiverse repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list (if you need help doing that, drop me a line via the comments below).
On the command line: sudo apt-get install libdvdread3-dev mkisofs dvdbackup dvdauthor transcode libdvdcss2 (alternatively select all of the mentioned packages in synaptic, and install)
Download streamanalyze (mirror) and streamdvd (mirror) from http:// www.badabum.de/streamdvd.html
tar -zxvf streamanalyze-0.4.tar.gz; cd StreamAnalyze; make; sudo make install
tar -zxvf streamdvd-0.4.tar.gz; cd StreamDVD-0.4; make; sudo make install
Download my script
gunzip DVD-Duplicator.gz
Now, some final configuration is needed; first, you need to work out the file system and mount points of your dvd drive, if you don’t know them already.

To do this, type: cat /etc/fstab; you should see a table which includes something like the following:

/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 ...
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom1 ...
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom2 ...

Put a DVD into the dvd drive that you want the script to use
It should automount; in gnome or kde you’ll see a prompt asking you what you want to do. Hit cancel, or ignore.
To work out which is the drive in question, I did the following:

> ls /media/cdrom0
> ls /media/cdrom1
> ls /media/cdrom2
AUDIO_TS JACKET_P VIDEO_TS

So, in my case, /media/cdrom2 is the drive, and (from the drive table that I got above) I can see that this refers to /dev/hdc filesystem.

Use your favorite text editor (vi, gedit, kate, whatever) and edit DVD- Duplicator; you’ll need to change DVDDEV and DVDDRIVE to whatever values you just discovered are appropriate for your system. Save.
Now you’re ready to make some backups!

To use it, on the command line, type: ./DVD-Duplicator folder-name, where folder- name is the name of the directory that you want the dvd to be backed up to. The directory will be created if it doesn’t exist already. Example, you might type ./DVD- Duplicator thematrix. Once the script finishes, you can now use k3b (or your favorite dvd/cd burning program) to burn the dvd from the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS directories that were created under the directory you specified. (Hint: the script can also generate an iso file for you to burn, if you have the hard disk space to spare; that way, you don’t have to worry about copying the files from AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. To use the script in this way, you might type: ./DVD-Duplicator thematrix thematrix-iso.)

If you have questions on getting it working, suggestions for improvement, etc, please post a comment here.
http://flavor8.com/index.php/2006/03...vds-in-ubuntu/





Low-D TV

Next-Gen DVDs' Blurry Picture
Cliff Edwards

The battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD was already tricky for consumers. But new content protection may mean buyers get even less than they might have hoped

After years of waiting, the new era of high-definition home theater has finally arrived. In April, Toshiba (TOSBF ) plans to introduce HD-DVD, its high-definition successor to the DVD player,
two months ahead of rival consumer-electronics companies who plan to sell a competing format called Blu-ray Disc.

Electronics makers hope the new gear will keep sales in the $120 billion industry humming, while Hollywood hopes the lure of interactive features and crystal-clear pictures five times the resolution of current DVDs will jump-start slumping home-video sales.

"IT'S CRAZY." Here's the problem: Both camps are shooting themselves in the foot before they get to the starting line. Consumers already were faced with the prospect of mass confusion, thanks to two next-generation DVD formats, whose disks do not work in each other's machines but look essentially the same. Remember Betamax versus VHS? At least then you could tell one tape from the other.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Turns out, most of the 20 million high-definition TVs sold over the past three years aren't capable of displaying the disks in their full resolution. Worse, at least one major studio intends to downgrade the picture even more unless consumers hook their players up through a special, pricey cable aimed at preventing piracy.

"It's crazy," says chief analyst Richard Doherty of consumer-research firm Envisioneering. "The sticker on your new player promises the equivalent of a high-performance car, but the fine print says you may be buying an Edsel instead."

OPTING OUT. The new content-protection scheme would be the first time any consumer electronics purchaser -- not just those who try to break copyright laws -- could be penalized. In this case, even if you have a perfectly equipped TV, content providers retain the right to automatically downgrade the picture quality because of piracy concerns. Current DVD releases like Batman Begins and Walk The Line include software to prevent unauthorized duplication, but still play normally.

New software included on both Blu-ray and HD-DVD releases, however, will automatically slash the image, making it only marginally better than current DVDs, unless consumers have a relatively new connector and cable called HDMI to hook up players to their televisions. Only one in 20 HD sets sold to early adopters over the past few years has the right version of the connector. Only 15% of new sets sold this year will include it, and deliver the full 1080 resolution capable of showing such detail.

Sony execs say a majority of Blu-ray content, at least initially, will play at the highest resolution possible on a consumer’s HDTV, regardless of how the player is hooked up. Four major studios -- Sony Pictures (SNE ), 20th Century Fox (NWS ), Disney (DIS ), and Paramount (VIA ) say they initially will not use the new copy protection on their releases. Universal execs told BusinessWeek on Mar. 21 that they, too, will forego the protection. Execs at Warner Brothers declined to comment, but sources with knowledge of the studio's plans say "at least some" of the 20 HD-DVD releases planned through April will use the software. "What do you have then? A very expensive DVD player," says Sony Senior Vice-President Tim Baxter.

To make matters more confusing, Sony and other consumer-electronics companies are adding features to the next-generation players that then may "upconvert" -- boost the image quality -- so the same disk may look vastly different, depending on which machine you purchase and the size of the TV (see BW Online, 3/27/06, "Sony's Renaissance Geek"). Experts say both of the new formats shine on sets 50 inches or larger.

The confusion may be just enough for consumers to say good night, and good luck. Already, a growing number of so-called technology influencers and Web sites are recommending sitting out the first round of the new DVD wars.

Many believe the best bet for either format to gain acceptance now lies with next-generation game consoles. Sony plans a November worldwide release of its new PlayStation 3, which will include a Blu-ray player. Execs at Sony hope by then that enough new HD sets will be sold, with the right connectors, to make the player worthwhile. And Microsoft (MSFT ) has said it may add an HD-DVD player to its Xbox 360 in coming months. Until then, the crystal ball for crystal-clear movies remains fuzzy.
http://cache.directorym.com/creative...e=AB_Context_B





Google Joins the Lobbying Herd
Kate Phillips

For a company that takes pride in being the quintessential outsider, Google is moving quickly into the ultimate insider's game: lobbying.

Started less than a decade ago in a Stanford dorm room, Google has evolved into a multibillion-dollar business, its search engine ubiquitous on the Internet. Its sprawling growth, fueled by a public stock offering in August 2004 that created a market behemoth, has now thrust it into the glare of Washington.

As lawmakers and regulators begin eyeing its ventures in China and other countries and as its Web surfers worry about the privacy of their online searches, Google is making adjustments that do not fit neatly with its maverick image.

It has begun ramping up its lobbying and legislative operations after largely ignoring Washington for years, in a scramble to match bases long established here by competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as the deeply entrenched telecommunication companies.

Google has hired politically connected lobbying firms and consultants with ties to Republican leaders like the party chairman, Ken Mehlman; Speaker J. Dennis Hastert; and Senator John McCain; and advisers say the company may set up a fund-raising arm for political donations to candidates. And in a town where Republicans hold the levers of power, Google has begun stockpiling pieces of the party's machine.

To some, Google is a novice arriving late to the table. To others, the company's embedding on K Street, which serves as home to many of Washington's top lobbyists, represents a new and not necessarily welcome sign of sophistication.

"It's sad," said Esther Dyson, editor of the technology newsletter Release 1.0 and former chairwoman of Icann, a nonprofit group that plays a role in Internet administration. "The kids are growing up. They've lost youth and innocence. Now they have to start being grown-ups and playing at least to some extent by grown-up rules."

In doing so, Google provides another example of how Internet companies, no matter how unconventional their roots or nonconformist their corporate cultures, increasingly find themselves wrestling with the same forces in Washington that more traditional industries have long faced. Google's executives consider the moves necessary as they achieve a prominence that allows them to elbow their own interests onto the political stage.

"We've staked out an agenda that really is about promoting the open Internet as a revolutionary platform for communication," said Alan Davidson, brought on board less than a year ago as the company's policy counsel to set up offices in the Penn Quarter area of Washington. "It's been the growth of Google as a company and as a presence in the industry that has prompted our engagement in Washington."

Even as they emphasize policy over politics to raise their profile, Google executives and advisers are also fully aware that they are embracing the lobbying world at a time when it has been rocked by the Jack Abramoff scandal of influence peddling. Some advisers say the company may wait until after Congress decides whether or how to overhaul lobbying laws before it wades more deeply into fund-raising and politics.

With its stock price closing on Monday near $370 a share and its vaulting onto the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index this week, the company also cannot afford to be caught flat-footed by regulatory agencies or its competitors.

"They are brilliant engineers," said Lauren Maddox, a principal in the bipartisan lobbying firm Podesta Mattoon that was hired by Google last year. "They are not politicians."

In signing on Podesta Mattoon and other consultants, Google is spreading its lobbying dollars on both sides of the political aisle, increasing its spending on outside firms this year to well beyond $500,000, officials said, although that does not include its own new office complex or payments to some of the consulting groups being added on. (By comparison, the giant Microsoft spent almost $9 million last year in lobbying, and Yahoo spent more than $1 million for just part of last year, according to partial-year filings compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, an independent campaign finance Internet site.)

Podesta Mattoon is led by Anthony Podesta, a Democrat, and Daniel Mattoon, a Republican and longtime friend of Speaker Hastert, an Illinois Republican. The speaker's son Joshua also works at the firm, along with Ms. Maddox, a former top aide to Newt Gingrich.

Adding to its arsenal is the DCI Group, a firm with top-flight corporate clients and strong ties to Mr. Mehlman and Karl Rove, President Bush's senior political adviser. DCI, Google officials say, will help it establish links to Republicans, as well as promote its book search project, an effort to make the full text of books searchable online, among publishers and authors.

At the helm of that operation is Stuart Roy, senior vice president of DCI and a former aide to Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas. Mr. Roy also counts as a client Progress for America, the conservative group that successfully rallied grass-roots support for Mr. Bush's Supreme Court nominees.

Ms. Maddox said Google's emerging army of advisers would help it fight fires along several policy lines, including copyright law, access to the Internet and privacy issues like its successful court fight this month to narrow a Justice Department subpoena over disclosure of its users' searches.

"We have a team of Republicans and Democrats who are helping them sort out these issues," Ms. Maddox said, an effort that recognizes that the "policy process is an extension of the market battlefield."

The big Internet companies, including Google, are bracing for an uphill struggle with lawmakers and the titans of the telephone and cable industries over whether fees should be charged for heavy data traffic, like video streaming over broadband width.

"Our belief is that this is going to be an issue of great concern for consumers," Mr. Davidson said. "The telephone companies have been lobbying these committees for generations. Our industry is very young."

Google's political awakening was nowhere more evident than on Capitol Hill last month, when it, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Yahoo were slammed by Republicans and Democrats alike over business dealings in China. Elliot Schrage, vice president for global communications and public affairs at Google, was lashed repeatedly with the company's motto, "Don't Be Evil," as House members accused the corporations of abetting China's government in censoring Internet communications and imperiling the safety of Chinese Internet surfers.

It is an issue that Google and others know will not go away soon. Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, and other legislators are demanding that Internet companies be more sensitive when dealing with foreign countries.

"I think they are just going to lobby to spread this yarn that by being there, they're going to spread democracy," said Mr. Smith, who presided at the hearing. "This dictatorship can go on for generations if it's not unchecked."

Mr. Davidson said companies were trying to address the prickly subject. "I think we all said in our testimony that we were serious about trying to work out standards for engaging in countries where these kinds of censorship issues come up," he said.

By some accounts, China may be so radioactive that even a longstanding relationship with Congress would not have tempered that hostile reception. But "the lack of a presence is what they recognized needed to get remedied fast," said Harry W. Clark, managing partner of the Stanwich Group, who has just been hired as a management consultant for Google. A veteran adviser to Internet corporations, Mr. Clark is a tightly connected Republican who worked in the Bush administration and who is now doing volunteer work for Senator McCain, an Arizona Republican.

Google's recruitment of heavy hitters in the nation's capital has not stopped. While it had already retained the firms of Public Policy Partners and Capital Tax Solutions, the headhunter Russell Reynolds Associates is in the midst of a search to fill a senior position alongside Mr. Davidson. Mr. Clark also predicted that Google would name a political director, probably a Republican.

Because some Republicans still view the company as Democratic-leaning, citing the 2004 election analyses that showed nearly all its employees' contributions went to Democrats, the company will be careful, Mr. Clark said, to spread its wealth around.

"The folks I've talked to," he added, "everybody recognizes that the employee contributions were weighted heavily toward Democrats, and they're waiting to see a course correction."

And despite the climate of indictments and investigations that pervades K Street right now, industry experts say Google has no choice but to get into the arena.

Rhett Dawson, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, admonished that lobbying was not "a dirty word." Google, Mr. Dawson noted, "is quickly going through a maturation phase that a lot of companies have gone through that shows it pays to pay attention to Washington or it can hurt you in ways that don't reflect well on you."

He added, "It doesn't have to be a system that makes you embarrassed to talk to your mother about."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/po.../28google.html





Vapo-rub

InPhase Demos 515 Gigabits Per Square Inch Data Density
Press Release

InPhase Technologies announced today that it has demonstrated the highest data density of any commercial technology by recording 515 gigabits of data per square inch. Holographic storage is a revolutionary departure from all existing recording methods because it takes advantage of volumetric efficiencies rather than only recording on the surface of the material. To compare, magnetic disk drives allow 300 gigabits per square inch data density.

InPhase will deliver the industry’s first holographic drive and media later this year. The first generation drive has a capacity of 300 gigabytes on a single disk with a 20 megabyte per second transfer rate. The first product will be followed by a family ranging from 800GB to 1.6 terabyte (TB) capacity.

Densities in holography are achieved by different factors than magnetic storage. Density depends on the number of pixels/bits in a page of data; the number of pages that are stored in a particular volumetric location; the dynamic range of the recording material; the thickness of the material, and the wavelength of the recording laser.

In this demonstration there were over 1.3 million bits per data page, and 320 data pages spaced 0.067 degrees apart were stored in the same volume of material. A collection of data pages is referred to as a book, and InPhase’s PolyTopic recording architecture enables more holograms to be stored in the same volume of material by overlapping not only pages, but also books. Three tracks of overlapping books were written with a track pitch of 700 microns. The InPhase TapestryTM material was 1.5 millimeters thick, and the laser wavelength was 407 nanometers.

“The latest results from our ongoing tests on holographic data density have surpassed expectations,” said Kevin Curtis, chief technology officer of InPhase. “We are particularly pleased at the rate of improvement. In April of 2005, we demonstrated 200 Gb/in2 data density and - a year later - the density has increased more than 2.5 times. “

The write transfer rate is determined by the time required to position the laser at the correct angular address, the speed of the shutter, the laser power, and the exposure time. In this demonstration the average exposure time per page was 2.7 milliseconds, which translates into a user write transfer rate of 23 megabytes per second.

The impact that these data densities will have on future products is tremendous. For the home video fan, one disk could hold the equivalent of 106 DVD movies. For IT managers dealing with archiving millions of email messages, higher densities mean savings on space, time, and power.

Michael Mangiona, president of offsite storage provider Data Solutions, adds that “with extremely high densities of holographic storage demonstrated by InPhase, IT companies such as Data Solutions benefit, as greater storage density ultimately translates into lower storage costs for us and for our customers.”

InPhase will be presenting several holographic storage papers at the Optical Data Storage Conference from April 23-26, 2006 in Montreal, Canada.
http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=12169





Does Power Corrupt?
Martin Mittelstaedt

Kevin Byrne is a man in the prime of his life who feared he had an old man's problems. Last summer, he was devastated by chronic back pain and thought his hips were about to give out.

"I'm thinking, gee, I'm 47 years old and I'm going to need hip replacements already," he said.

The hip pain was the beginning of a strange personal odyssey for Mr. Byrne, a technical writer who lives in Newcastle, a bedroom community east of Toronto. He is now convinced his ailment wasn't a sign of premature aging, but an allergy to one of modern society's ubiquitous substances: electricity.

No one knows how many people are sensitive to electricity. Scientific debate is intense over whether the condition exists or is a figment of people's imagination. Some estimates place the number afflicted at a handful out of every million. Others view it as more common but still a tad unusual, perhaps a few individuals out of every thousand.

Mr. Byrne counts himself among those unlucky few. He began researching the topic when a neighbour expressed the belief that electricity was dangerous. In an act of desperation brought on by constant pain, he did something he initially thought was off-the-wall. He spent $1,000 on filters that, much like surge protectors on a computer, clean up fluctuations and surges in the electricity flowing in the wires around his home.

"When you're in a lot of pain, you'll do just about anything. So I was sort of grasping at non-medical straws," he said. "I didn't think they would work, to tell you the truth. I thought I was probably wasting my money."

But within a couple of days, after months of pain for which his doctor could find no cause, he started feeling fine again. "I said to my wife, 'This has got to be the placebo effect,' " he said, referring to the well-known medical phenomenon of patients reporting that they are cured of illnesses after being given a sugar pill doctors suggest will help them.

Mr. Byrne also noticed another odd health effect after he cleaned up his power, convincing him that electricity was at the root of his problems. Both he and his wife suddenly began to sleep more soundly and his dreams became "incredibly real and very vivid."

Stories such as Mr. Byrne's are not isolated tales. In fact, they're becoming increasingly common, rising in lockstep with homes filled to the brim with electronic gadgets and the proliferation of wireless technologies.

Symptoms of electrical sensitivity include the joint pain Mr. Byrne experienced, but also a bewildering array of other common problems most everyone feels at one time or another, such as fatigue, headaches, poor sleep quality with frequent wakefulness, ringing in the ears, depression, difficulty remembering things, and skin rashes. The list of symptoms has created speculation that some cases of sick building syndrome, where people working in buildings complain of nausea and headaches, might be due to electrical sensitivities.

Madga Havas, an associate professor at the Environmental Studies Department of Trent University who is an expert on the health claims about electricity, says she receives "almost a call a day" from people who say electricity is making them ill and they can't find help in the medical system. "It's not just from Canada. It's usually from the States as well," she says.

She thinks the condition is more widespread than commonly thought, and speculates that for some people, exposure to electricity causes physiological stress, producing symptoms of tiredness, difficulty concentrating and poor sleep.

The possibility of such a widespread health impact from electricity is greeted with skepticism in the electricity industry, where such an effect would have wide-ranging consequences.

"We don't have support to suggest that there is electrosensitivity in members of the population," says Jack Sahl, a manager of safety and environmental issues at Southern California Edison, a large U.S. electricity provider.

The industry position has been bolstered by studies showing that most of those who say they have allergies to electricity are unable consistently to detect the presence of electric currents in laboratory experiments.

Medical authorities and scientific researchers have consequently been baffled over these wide-ranging claims of ill health, not only in Canada and the United States but in Britain and other European countries. In Sweden, the electrically sensitive are so numerous they have established their own self-help and lobby group.

Those with the condition bristle at suggestions their symptoms are imaginary. "This is not psychosomatic at all. . . . We're not delusional," says Susan Stankavich, who lives near Albany, N.Y., and says her problems developed after a large cellphone tower was erected near her home. She's had debilitating headaches, among other symptoms, and can barely tolerate being under fluorescent lights.

Reacting to this rising tide of claims of a new illness, the World Health Organization issued a fact sheet in December on the allergies, which it dubbed "electromagnetic hypersensitivity" and likened it to multiple chemical sensitivities.

The WHO says the "symptoms are certainly real" and "can be a disabling problem for the affected individual."

Reports about sensitivity to electricity began with the introduction of computers, predating the recent spread of Wi-Fi and cellphone towers, which release a related but more powerful type of electromagnetic energy than that produced around electric wires.

There have been long-running concerns about the possible health effects of electricity because it is a source of both electric and magnetic fields, invisible lines of force that surround all power lines and any power-consuming device, from the lowly kitchen toaster to a computer. Electric fields are always present near power wires and appliances, even when devices are turned off, but magnetic fields are generated only when devices are on.

The nerves in living things work on electrical impulses. So do other biological processes, such as the voltages in hearts detected using electrocardiographs. This has given rise to worries that man-made electricity fields, to which humans were never exposed before the modern era, might be biologically active, just like chemical pollutants.

The WHO has been looking at electrical sensitivity as one aspect of a larger investigation into the health effects of the cocktail of electromagnetic fields enveloping people in modern societies via everything from power lines to cellphones. It says that exposure to electromagnetic fields represents "one of the most common and fastest growing environmental influences, about which there is anxiety and speculation spreading."

Until now, most of the medical researchers looking at electricity and health have searched for links to cancer, rather than the fatigue-related symptoms the electrically sensitive claim.

The cancer research has linked childhood leukemia to power-line magnetic fields. About 5 per cent of the U.S. population is regularly exposed to fields of the strength associated with leukemia in children, a percentage that is probably similar in Canada. For adult leukemia and brain tumours, some studies have found links to electricity, as they have with Lou Gehrig's disease, but the research is less conclusive than that for childhood leukemia.

Richard Stevens, an epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center, has been studying electricity for nearly two decades, and first advanced the hypothesis that the use of electricity is a factor behind the rise in some cancer rates in developed countries. He says there is strong evidence linking the use of night lighting to cancer because exposure to light at night disrupts people's production of the hormone melatonin.

But he's unsure what impact the fields around electric wiring and devices might be having. Some studies have found that magnetic fields suppress melatonin in animals, something that might explain the allergy-like symptoms, but this effect hasn't been observed in humans. "Whether or not magnetic fields have any effect at all, I do not know," Dr. Stevens says.

The allergy-like symptoms are a far different medical condition than the cancers Dr. Stevens studies, and some researchers are speculating that a possible culprit is the recent deterioration in the quality of electricity flowing in power wires.

Power quality is a well-known problem in the utility business, caused by the proliferation of computers, lighting dimmer switches, energy efficient bulbs, and other modern electronic gadgets. These new devices cause a more complicated use pattern for electricity than old-fashioned items such as incandescent bulbs, producing negative feedback involving high-frequency peaks, harmonics and other noise on electric wiring.

The way to picture the quality effect is to imagine that electricity is like water flowing in a pipe. An incandescent bulb uses electricity steadily, just like an open tap allows a constant flow into the sink. Computers and other modern devices use power in variable amounts, similar to turning the tap on and off, or any setting in between, causing water pipes to clang.

This deterioration in power quality has been going on for years and would have likely escaped public notice, except that when home computers became popular in the 1990s they would frequently crash or malfunction because of it.

The change in power quality means more variable electromagnetic fields, and possibly more biologically active ones, are associated with electricity than there used to be. This is a possible explanation for the rise in electrosensitivity complaints in the view of Denis Henshaw, a professor at the University of Bristol in Britain, who is an international authority on the health effects of power transmission lines.

He says that if electricity were flowing in a constant way, most people's bodies would likely adapt, but with all the interference from modern devices, the resulting fields are too variable for people to get used to. "We just don't get to adapt to these because they don't have any special pattern to them," he said. "There is no proof of this, it's just an opinion."

In Canada, Dr. Havas has been investigating whether the deterioration in power quality has led to sensitivity. To this end, she's been installing filters that clean up the interference on electrical wires to see if people notice.

In 2003, she installed filters in a Toronto private school where a student was electrically sensitive for a six-week test, three weeks with the devices and three weeks without them. Half of the teachers who responded to her questionnaire said they felt health improvements, such as being able to concentrate better and feeling less tired, when the filters were in place. Even more unusual, the teachers, who were not told what the research was about, reported that 60 per cent of their classes showed improvements in student behaviour when the filters were installed.

Based on this finding, Dr. Havas estimates that perhaps half of the population may have some sensitivity to electricity.

In another test, she installed filters in the homes of people with multiple sclerosis, a disease that might be reactive to electricity because it is associated with poor sheathing on nerves. Brad Blumbergs, 29, says his MS improved so much last year that he could walk without shaking and could even run again. "It allows me to retire my cane," he said. "It hasn't cured me, but my symptoms are a percentage of what they used to be," Mr. Blumbergs said.

Dr. Havas has presented some of these findings at scientific conferences on electrosensitivity, but the work hasn't appeared in the gold standard of research, the peer-reviewed scientific journals that would confer more legitimacy on the results.

The utility industry's Mr. Sahl is skeptical about efforts to improve power quality, which generally cost about $1,000 to handle one home, and calls them a "waste of money."

He agrees that the action may make some people feel better, but only because they're affected by the power of suggestion and not by the power of electricity. "I hate to be blunt about it, but there is this well-established effect in science and we've studied it over and over and it's called the placebo effect."

That doesn't ring true to Mr. Byrne. He says his sensitivity might have been prompted by his decision last year to conserve energy by replacing much of his home's simple incandescent lighting with high-efficiency compact fluorescent bulbs, some brands of which cause the power-quality problem.

He's become so convinced that electricity can make people sick that he's set up a website, offering tips to fellow sufferers on how to alleviate their symptoms, such as urging them to throw out their dimmer switches and limiting exposures to electronic gadgets. When it comes to electricity, Mr. Byrne says, "I think people should automatically begin changing their lifestyles."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...eRequested=all





Toshiba’s Environmental Commitment
Press Release

At Toshiba, we believe that investing in the earth means that we are investing in the future of its inhabitants. We strive to apply stringent environmental standards to the products we’re currently manufacturing. In fact, every notebook computer we currently produce is RoHS compliant even though these standards established by the European Parliament don’t go into effect until July 2006.

We also want to ensure that older notebook computers, LCD monitors and Pocket PCs that weren’t developed under our strict environmental guidelines are safely dismantled and retired. These efforts are reflected in a number of Toshiba environmental initiatives:

Toshiba’s Environmental Recovery and Recycling Effort (TERRE)
What happens when non-functioning PCs are sent to landfills? Many of the materials used to make notebook computers, LCD monitors and Pocket PCs contain toxic elements that pose environmental risks and can also affect our personal health when they seep into our ecosystem.

What is TERRE?
TERRE is a proactive program to ensure that end-of-life computers are disposed of in an environmentally respectful manner. Toshiba will recycle any manufacturer’s notebook computer, LCD monitor, or pocket PC free of charge. As an added incentive, Toshiba will send the system’s owner a USB flash drive.

How do I arrange to send my old devices to TERRE?
Click here for a step by step process on how you can arrange to send your devices to TERRE. Ultimately, you will determine when you would like UPS to pick up your old PC products at no cost to you. Once you are registered with TERRE, we will send you your USB flash drive within eight to ten weeks.
If you have any additional questions, please e-mail TERRE@toshiba.ca and we’ll be happy to provide additional information.

Why are you giving away free USB flash drives as part of TERRE?
We want to ensure that TERRE is an appealing initiative to ensure that we recover as many non-functioning devices as possible. Anyone using a PC regularly in their daily lives will find a USB flash drive a useful device. We hope that this is an added incentive to the safe environmental recycling of PCs.

What if my PC still works?
Should an individual wish to dispose of a functioning PC, there are a number of worthwhile programs that channel these systems to needy organizations in the community.

Where does my old non-functioning notebook PC, LCD monitor or Pocket PC go when I use TERRE?
When you register with TERRE, Toshiba will send a courier to retrieve your old PC product and deliver a USB flash drive within 8 – 10 weeks.

When Toshiba takes possession of the non-functioning PC product, they are then disassembled and the PC components are separated and placed in temporary storage bins for recycling.

Does Toshiba do the recycling?
Toshiba has partnered with a registered ISO 14001 company that disassembles incoming notebooks and personal computers into their basic components such as plastics, circuit boards and metals.
Plastics are ground to achieve consistency of size and recycled into other useful materials such as foundation pads for buildings, containers used for agriculture potting systems and plastic lumber.

Circuit boards are smelted to reclaim various precious and semi precious metals.

The metal portions are separated and reprocessed into basic commodities, such as copper, aluminum and steel.
http://www.toshiba.ca/web/link?id=2200





BT Cracks Down On 'Broadband Hogs'
Will Sturgeon

BT is cracking down on heavy Internet users who are habitually breaking its monthly download limit, suggesting that they either pay more or shop elsewhere for their Internet access.

BT has agreements in place with users of its ADSL broadband service that limit them to up to 40GB of downloads per month. However, although the incumbent telecommunications company claims to be relaxed on occasional breaches of this limit--and has no automatic blocking in place once a limit is exceeded--it reports that some customers are taking liberties and regularly downloading up to 200GB each month.

"I think it's fair to characterize these people as broadband hogs. You would have to be downloading pretty much all day, everyday, to manage that level of downloading," a BT representative told Silicon.com.

BT has contacted 3,200 customers identified as excessive users. The letters offer customers the chance to pay for their excess bandwidth consumption or seek service from another provider.

Last October, BT sent a similar letter to 1,800 customers, and while "a small percentage" of them agreed to a new payment plan to cover their monster downloads, the majority saw their contracts with BT terminated. The company representative suggested that "it would probably be fair to extrapolate out those results," in terms of a prediction regarding the likely outcome of the current crackdown.

Such high levels of downloading are certainly far from typical for the average person and are likely to indicate a heavy diet of large media files such as music or movies.

If these customers were downloading music, for example, at a rate of 200GB per month, they could nearly be filling an iPod Nano twice over every single day--or 50 times over in just one month. That's approximately 50,000 songs.
http://news.com.com/BT+cracks+down+o...3-6054223.html





Cloned Pigs Are Porky And Best, Say Scientists

Researchers say they have created cloned piglets that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the oil that is prized as being beneficial to the heart.

Omega-3 is mostly found in fish, but this supply is threatened by overtrawling and clouded by worries about mercury pollution, which accumulates in fish livers.

A team led by Yifan Dai of the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine transferred into foetal pig cells a gene called fat-1 that had been identified in a well-studied lab animal, a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans.

Fat-1 converts the abundant but less desirable omega-6 fatty acids into the coveted omega-3.

The nucleus of pig eggs was then removed and substituted with the nucleus from these engineered cells, following the now-classic method of animal cloning that began with Dolly the Sheep in 1996.

The research's prime aim is to gain a better understanding of cardiac function, where hog and human are strikingly similar, the team reports on Sunday in the specialist journal Nature Biotechnology.

"We would use these animals as a model to see what happens to heart health if we increase the omega-3 levels in the body. It could allow us to see how that helps cardiovascular function," said co-author Randy Prather, a specialist of the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Given that the animals are experimental -- not to say extraordinarily expensive -- no one knows what their meat tastes like, whether it is safe to eat and whether the piglets will retain high levels of omega-3 when they reach adulthood.

If, eventually, the transgenic hogs go to market, there could be double benefits, argued Prather.

"First, the pigs could have better cardiovascular function and therefore live longer, which would limit livestock loss for farmers. Second, they could be healthier animals for human consumption."

Genetic manipulation of animals and plants for agricultural purposes is fiercely opposed by environmentalists as being potentially dangerous to health and the ecology.

Their concerns are shared by many experts, who urge extensive testing to obey the so-called precautionary principle when introducing novel technology.

Animal cloning, with the present technology, also results in many failures, as shown in Dolly's premature demise in 2003.

The endeavour to create the world's first omega-3 pig entailed the creation of 1,633 cloned embryos, which were implanted into 14 sows.

Only 12 pregnancies resulted, of which five came to term, delivering just 10 live piglets and two dead ones.

Of the 10 survivors, only six had the fat-1 gene -- and three (including two with fat-1) had a heart defect and had to be killed at the age of three weeks.

The demand for omega-3 has surged in recent years because of their deemed benefits in cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.

But a review of the evidence, published on Saturday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), casts doubt on this.

It looked at 89 studies into omega-3, and said there was concern that people who have angina might suffer a higher risk of a fatal heart attack by taking supplements of the oil.

In 2002, Prather's team created pigs designed to produce organs that were more suitable for transplantation into humans.

Pig organs are coated with sugar molecules that trigger acute rejection by the human immune system. The modified piglets lacked one of the two copies of the sugar-making gene, thus marking an important experimental step towards so-called xenotransplantation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060326...s_060326181525


















Until next week,

- js.


















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