We typically refuse to get political on this blog; Since many of the out right lies have become the standard let's just look at the current crisis, and you determine who is lieing. The fact is that both Democrats and Republicans are responsible. They are responsible because everyone of them is guilty of taking this money but there is no doubt at all that the Democrats took much more money and their envolvment goes to the core.

Yet in the campaign the democrats are now claiming to be completely innocent! One should question having any of these people representing we the people of America. We can say we do not want more taxes like it or not we will get them. We can say that we do not want our country to become socialist! 

Chrisopher Dodd should never open his mouth and point fingers. One should ask how on earth he even retains his position?

While we are on that topic Before becoming Treasury Secretary, Henry M.Paulson was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs since the firm’s initial public offering in 1999. He joined Goldman Sachs. Since it has now been exposed that Goldman Sachs has a 20 billion dollar exposure! Should one should give this man a check for 700 billion to manage!

Please how about getting fired, or resign and at very least turn his duties over to the assitant. To listen to this drivel about what they did not know, and when they did know it is nothinig more than lies. 

Face it all of congress and senate should be fired! None of these people have the American people's interest at heart. I keep waiting for someone to show the American people some level of justice.

Worldnetdaily:

On Oct. 1, ComCast cable company will update its user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 gigabytes of traffic per month, the company announced on its Web site.

Comcast floated the idea of a 250 gigabyte cap in May and mentioned then that it might charge users $15 for every 10 gigabytes they go over, but the overage fee was missing in Thursday's announcement.

Curbing the top users is necessary to keep the network fast and responsive for other users, Comcast has said.

Comcast stressed that the bandwidth cap is far above the median monthly usage of its customers, which 2 to 3 gigabytes.

Very few subscribers use more than 250 gigabytes, it said. A user could download 125 standard-definition movies, about four per day, before hitting the limit.

The cap is also above those of some other ISPs. Cox Communications' monthly caps vary from 5 gigabytes to 75 gigabytes depending the subscriber's plan. Time Warner Cable Inc. is testing caps between 5 gigabytes and 40 gigabytes in one market. Frontier Communications Co., a phone company, plans to start charging extra for use of more than 5 gigabytes per month.

Yahoo! says it won't target you… to your face. On Aug. 8, the Internet giant announced that it will allow users to opt out of behavioral targeting on its site. But in fact, that change only affects behaviorally targeted ads that users see. The company will still collect information on the Web sites visited by unique computers, it just won't serve ads to individual users based on the info.

"This isn't rejecting cookies outright, you are just preferring not to see the ads," says Anne Toth, Yahoo's head of privacy and vice-president of policy.

So Yahoo (YHOO) will still know that you looked up Fannie Mae's stock on Yahoo Finance and then checked out foreclosed homes on Yahoo's real estate site. It just won't serve you a mortgage ad based on that info when you're checking e-mail. It will also still serve ads to you based on your location and the content of the page that you are on.

Toth says Yahoo must keep the information to report accurate financials on advertising click-through rates and visitors. It probably also wants to tell advertisers about the kind of people who visit certain pages, in aggregate, to sell more expensive advertising. Behavioral targeting can more than triple the price of some ads.

Congressional Pressure
The move came in response to congressional action. On Aug. 1, the House Energy & Commerce Committee sent a letter to 33 companies, including AT&T (ATT), Comcast (CMCSA), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and Yahoo, opening an inquiry into their practices for collecting and using data to target ads to consumers based on what they do online.

Behavioral targeting is different from other kinds of targeting, such as search targeting or geotargeting, which uses IP addresses or Zip Codes that people provide when they sign up for a site. Behavioral targeting works by tracking surfers as they move around the Web. Companies then apply sophisticated algorithms to that past behavior to decide what kinds of ads to show the people they're tracking.

Investors holding nearly 76 percent of Yahoo's 1.38 billion shares gave solid votes in favor of all nine current directors, in what represents an endorsement of their tough stance with Microsoft Corp in talks on a merger or partial sale.

Executives and board members tried to soothe dissenting investors, insisting Yahoo had been serious in the Microsoft talks and that it had good prospects in the next three years.

Seeking to counter attempts by some to blame Yang for talks collapsing, Chairman Roy Bostock said Yahoo's board "called the shots" when discussing Microsoft's proposals, including a $47.5 billion bid and attempts to buy Yahoo's Web search business.

Bostock said he could not understand why the software maker withdrew its bid. "There was never a compelling offer put on the table," he said. A Microsoft spokesman disputed Bostock's version of events, saying "Yahoo is attempting to rewrite history yet again."

Yahoo shares slipped 9 cents on Friday to $19.80, not far above the $19.18 that they fetched the day before Microsoft made its interest public on February 1. Microsoft's last offer for the company would have valued Yahoo at $33 per share.

A majority of members of the Federal Communications Commission have cast votes in favor of punishing Comcast Corp. for blocking subscribers' Internet traffic, an agency official said Friday. Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, was accused of violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet.

Three commissioners have voted in favor of an order reaching agreement with the finding, enough for a majority on the five-member commission. But the decision will not be final until all five members have cast their votes. The commission is scheduled to take up the issue at its Aug. 1 meeting.

The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of a certain type of "file sharing" software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data.

The text of the order is not public. But Martin has said it will not include a fine. He also said it will require Comcast to stop its practice of blocking; provide details to the commission on the extent and manner in which the practice has been used; and to disclose to consumers details on future plans for managing its network going forward.

"I continue to believe that is imperative that all consumers have unfettered access to the Internet," Martin said in a statement released early Saturday morning. "I am pleased that a majority has agreed that the Commission both has the authority to and in fact will stop broadband service providers when they block or interfere with subscribers' access."

The FCC approved a policy statement in September 2005 that outlined a set of principles meant to ensure that broadband networks are "widely deployed, open, affordable and accessible to all consumers."

The principles, however, are "subject to reasonable network management."

Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice in a statement released Friday night said the company's network management practices are "reasonable, wholly consistent with industry practices and that we did not block access to Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services."

The action is the first test of the agency's network neutrality principles. Members of both the House and Senate have sponsored network neutrality bills, but they have never come close to becoming law.  Full Article

Yang advised Yahoo's employees to brace for even more turbulence during the next few weeks, predicting that Microsoft may make more buyout proposals as Icahn ridicules the board.

I know Yang is alot smarter than me but really it seems like he missed some serious economic class somewhere. How low does the share of stock have to go before the current board gets the point. MS plays hardball there is no doubt about this. But really let's say that MS no longer has any interest in Yahoo. What is the plan then Yang? What does the stock shares have to drop to and then what is the real plan?

MS has already said that the last offer of $33.00 with the current share price of $21.19 even the $30.00 per share offer is more than fair. Yet this was called Microsoft's "ludicrous" offer in its own shareholder letter, which underscored the Silicon Valley company's determination to fend off Icahn's attempted coup.

If the shareholds are really what Yang has said was his interest anyone who can add or subtract should question this claim. Personally anyone who has had to deal with Yahoo mail can tell that the company is on the ropes. You cannot lay off this many people and think the company can continue to grow. I have personally had people ask; How could Yahoo go broke? I can only assume they have never watched a take over happen.

I won't even go into the clear Anti Trust issues associated to Yahoo and Google working together as a solution to the problem.

This is the most current Yahoo article though the positions are weak. Icahn likely will get the board replaced and we will all wait until the August 1 shareholders vote.

I have personally hated raid 5 and refused to have anything to do with it any longer. I love it when people actually arrive at the same conclusion. But then, to reach this conclusion is simple it only takes experience. Enough is enough You can either join BARRF or not

Security appliance vendor Barracuda Networks is looking to buy Sourcefire, makers of the open-source Snort and ClamAV security software.
 
Barracuda said late Thursday that it had made a US$186 million cash offer to Sourcefire's board of directors Tuesday. Barracuda is willing to pay $7.50 per share, a 13 percent premium on the company's current stock price, but about half what shares Sourcefire fetched a year ago.

"Barracuda Networks is uniquely positioned to address the challenges that have impacted the company's performance and stock price," Barracuda said in a statement.

Although Sourcefire is best known for its intrusion detection software, the company bought the ClamAV open source antivirus project last August, and is now working on ways to commercialize this code.That's an area where Barracuda believes it can help out. ClamAV is included in Barracuda's appliance products.

The open-source software has been at the source of a high-profile legal dispute between Barracuda and competitor Trend Micro, which claims that ClamAV violates one of its patents.

Because it is already fighting a lawsuit with Trend Micro, Barracuda feels it is already addressing what could turn into a legal problem for Sourcefire, Barracuda President and CEO Dean Drako said in a Tuesday letter to Sourcefire's board of directors, which Barracuda made public Thursday.

"We also feel that the company's inaction in dealing with the looming threat of litigation from Trend Micro has had an effect on the stock price," he wrote.

Sourcefire representatives could not be reached immediately for comment, but the fact that Barracuda felt compelled to take its offer public suggests that it was not well-received by Sourcefire's board of directors.

In a letter sent Friday to the judge overseeing the case in Delaware, a lawyer for the shareholders argued Yahoo is trying "to whitewash embarrassing documents" because the company thinks the information will damage the board's efforts to repel a challenge by activist investor Carl Icahn.

Angered by the board's handling of Microsoft bid, Icahn has nominated an alternate slate of candidates to oppose Yahoo's 10 current directors — including Chief Executive Jerry Yang — at the Sunnyvale-based company's July 3 annual meeting.

Yahoo is trying "to sanitize the public record and maintain a cloak of secrecy regarding unflattering evidence of breach of fiduciary duty," shareholder attorney Joel Friedlander wrote in a letter to Chancellor William B. Chandler III.

The redacted documents include information about an employee severance plan that Yahoo adopted shortly after Microsoft made its initial bid Jan. 31 and notes about a conversation between Yang and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Friedlander wrote.

Yahoo had no immediate comment Friday. Generally, companies often seek to keep parts of publicly available lawsuits under seal for competitive reasons.Yahoo had previously disclosed the plans would give its 13,800 employees anywhere from four month to two years pay. Every $1.4 billion in severance cost theoretically would translate into about $1 per share less that Microsoft would have available to offer Yahoo shareholders.

Ballmer orally offered $33 per share, or $47.5 billion, but then withdrew the bid when Yang held out for $37 per share. Legg Mason money manager Bill Miller, whose fund is Yahoo's second largest shareholder, has publicly said he would have happily supported a Microsoft offer of $34 per share.

Friedlander's letter also indicated the redacted documents include comments that Yahoo's top executives made about the severance plans.

Charter has told its high-speed Internet customers in four markets about the pilot, which will produce enough information for Web advertisers to target online advertising for individual customers based on their habits.

The ads "will better reflect the interests you express through your Web-surfing activity," Charter senior vice president Joe Stackhouse told the affected subscribers in a letter. "You will not see more ads — just ads that are more relevant to you."

In response to the announcement, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) asked Charter President and Chief Executive Neil Smit to put the plan on hold until the three can confer.

The tracking is set to begin in June in Ft. Worth, Texas; San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Oxford, Mass.; and Newtown, Conn.

Subscribers can opt out of the tracking, though they must provide their name and address to install an opt-out cookie on their computer.

Should Charter instead offer subscribers the ability to opt in if they want to participate?

The bugs in question are crazy raspberry ants, which are named not for their flavor, but for their inscrutable meanderings and for past efforts by exterminator Tom Raspberry to eliminate them.

Supposedly, crazy raspberry ants are fond of electronics.

According to Associated Press writer Linda Stewart Ball, the ants are "are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers."

"They have been known to short out many different types of electrical apparatuses," says a Texas A&M University Web page about the pests.

Exterminators in Houston are aware of problem but aren't all that alarmed.

How it works: The USPTO (US Patent & Trademark Office) gets the initial patent application from the inventor or patent agent. But it can take a while to grant or deny a patent application. They have a heavy workload, examining and publishing thousands of patents each week! However, during the period of waiting for a USPTO grant decision, the USPTO publishes the patent application at some point (usually after 18 months) and the general public may view the full contents and it is in the public domain. (note: FreshPatents.com does not have access to and does not publish confidential and/or non-USPTO-published Patent Applications!)

Next, FreshPatents.com (no affiliation with the USPTO) empowers users with FREE tools to better find and track published patent applications. FreshPatents.com features the latest published US patent applications...which is certainly useful for your business and technology intelligence needs.

In case you're having a hard time keeping track, here's a brief history of events as they've unfurled in the ongoing Microsoft-Yahoo drama:

May 2006: Some of the earliest rumors that Microsoft is considering an offer to buy Yahoo appear in the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal; at the time such a deal is considered far-fetched, so the rumors are dismissed fairly quickly.

October 2006: Rumors begin to swirl that Yahoo has approached Time Warner about purchasing AOL, a notion that is somewhat more believable than a Microsoft-Yahoo deal.

2007: Microsoft-Yahoo rumors surface from time to time but disappear soon after as there is nothing to substantiate them.

Feb. 1, 2008: In the shot heard 'round the Internet, Microsoft makes a formal purchase offer of $44.6 billion based on Yahoo's stock price of $19.18; Yahoo's stock price starts rising.

Feb. 11: Yahoo rejects Microsoft's offer as too low; Yahoo stock price closes at $29.87. According to the rumor mill, Yahoo is now looking for closer to $40 a share because the value of the company has risen since the offer.

Feb. 12: Microsoft for the first time publicly hints in a letter to Yahoo that it is willing to get hostile in its takeover, saying it "reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo's shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal."

March 5: Reports emerge that Yahoo is stepping up negotiations with Time Warner for some kind of tie-up with AOL. Meanwhile, reports make the rounds that Microsoft will mount a proxy fight if Yahoo won't play ball.

March 11: News Corp.'s Murdoch says publicly that he won't "get into a fight" with Microsoft over Yahoo, because the software giant has "a lot more money" than his company.

April 5: Microsoft sends Yahoo a join-us-or-die letter, claiming that if the two companies can't make a deal in three weeks, Microsoft will take its offer directly to shareholders in a proxy battle. In the letter, signed by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft basically tells Yahoo board members they've run out of better options, and it would be foolish not to accept an offer immediately. Microsoft also hints that it would consider Yahoo less valuable if it is forced to mount a proxy fight, thus threatening to lower its offer.

April 7: Yahoo again rejects Microsoft's offer on the basis that it is too low. In a letter signed by Chairman Roy Bostock and CEO Jerry Yang, the company calls Microsoft's threat of a proxy battle "unproductive," and says it would consider a deal if Microsoft was willing to pony up more dough.

April 9: Yahoo says it is testing the display of Google search ads in a small number of its search-engine queries, a move seen as a way to stave off Microsoft's advances. Microsoft immediately attacks that notion as anticompetitive and says it would never pass regulatory approval.

April 10: News Corp. is said to be in talks with Microsoft to join forces to buy Yahoo, seen by many as a way that Microsoft can raise its offer without spending any more money. At the same time, the old Yahoo-AOL union talk again makes the rounds.

Warner Music Group is reportedly considering a plan to have Internet service providers add $5 a month to subscribers' bills for unlimited access to music on the Web. Full Article here.

Now here is a cure to the problem. Have everyone pay, and a totally strapped ISP industry collect and pay for something the media industry cannot control on their own. Lets see with the names like TimeWarner Cable, Comcast, Roadrunner, Cox and Charter holding the lions share of cable networks.

In america the adsl based ISP find it nearly impossible to compete with cable. This due to the amount of bandwidth cable companies provide, this is primarily due to the fact that ADSL simply will not support this type of bandwidth. Now it seems they really want to collect a tax from each of their clients to pay for those who listen to music on the web.

The handful of small ISP's left would simply be driven again by telling the small number of users left they will have to tax them $5.00 so the Music Industry gets their part of the pie. Of course this means nothing to the Cable Companies who already dominate the industry. Seems to me they already make enough money off their user base, without taxing their client base to some 20 billion dollars more.

I currently pay $180 per month for cable TV and internet. If this is typical and 5.00 relates to 20 billion. It does not take a math major to see how big this pie really is.

Does anyone even remember cable TV that was not loaded with commericals? When it is the only game in town, I am sorry but this is nothing more than a monopoly. One which is now seeking to add another $5.00 to the bill.

Are Apple sales in trouble? Two research analysts have reported in recent days that Apple is aggressively cutting back production on iPods and iPhones, while increasing production on Mac computers.

It seems that the iPod Touch may have seen the weakest sales. Berger reported production orders for the Touch have fallen the most. The device may suffer from being less than an iPhone, since it has no phone capabilities but is substantially more expensive than Apple's music-playing iPhones. The touch relies on Wi-Fi for connectivity, so users who aren't in range of a Wi-Fi connection simply can't get online.

Meanwhile, Asian production facilities indicate that production is going up for Macs, down for iPods, and the iPhone situation is volatile.

For MacBooks and iMacs, production has moved up more than 20 percent so far this quarter, Banc of America said, which indicates Apple is replenishing inventory and seeing solid demand. Banc of America predicts continued growth through March.

After severe production cuts in December and early January, production is now up for iPhones. Banc of America expressed concern that production and demand for the innovative phone remain lackluster.

Meanwhile, Net Applications released new numbers on its operating-system statistics, which revealed that Macs accounted for the largest percentage of Internet traffic ever -- 7.57 percent. iPhone-based traffic nudged up from 0.12 percent in December to 0.13 percent in January. More importantly, Net Applications' numbers show that iPhone traffic is coming from many more countries than have official wireless carriers for the phones, indicating substantial gray-market sales.

"We've heard the rumours that many iPhones are being used outside the officially sanctioned countries. So we decided to check it out and surprise, surprise, it's true. The iPhone has a presence in almost every country on Earth," Net Applications wrote in its report.

A third underwater fiber-optic cable was cut today in the Persian Gulf, off the coast of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, according to its owner Flag Telecom, compounding Internet problems in the Middle East and India, the BBC reported today.

The third cable, known as the Falcon cable, comes after breaks in two cables off the Mediterranean seacoast on Wednesday.

Those breaks required carriers to reroute Internet traffic from the U.S. to India and other nations in the Middle East the other way around the world, across the Pacific Ocean, leading to some Internet delays.

The cause of the first two breaks is believed to be a result of a ship's anchor that dragged and snapped the cables, and a similar cause might be involved in the third incident. Flag Telecom will start repairs next week on one of the first two cables linking Egypt and Italy, the company said today. A repair ship is expected to reach the site of the damage, 8.3 kilometers (about five miles) from Alexandria, Egypt, on Tuesday. The repair will take a week to complete.

The breaks on Wednesday were to the Flag Telecom Europe-Asia cable, owned by India's Reliance Communications Ltd., and on the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) cable, owned by a consortium that includes Verizon Communications Inc. in New York. The cable damage disrupted the Internet and other communications to the Middle East and India.

Flag said the Europe-Asia cable was cut at 8 a.m. GMT on Wednesday. The company also said it was able to restore circuits to some customers and was switching to alternative routes for others.

The US Congress Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing next week to scrutinize Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar bid to acquire Yahoo in order to take on Internet goliath Google. Leading members of the committee scheduled a February 8 hearing after Microsoft's announced it is courting California-based Yahoo with a 44.6-billion-dollar offer.

"Microsoft's bid to acquire Yahoo is certainly one of the largest technology mergers we've seen and presents important issues regarding the competitive landscape of the Internet," Congressmen John Conyers and Lamar Smith said in a written statement.

"The Committee will hear from experts who will weigh in on whether this proposed consolidation works to further or undermine the fundamental principles of a competitive Internet." Yahoo has yet to say whether it will accept the offer, but analysts believe it is too good a deal for the struggling Internet veteran to refuse and that US regulators are unlikely to find grounds to stop it.

On Friday, I had a brief phone interview with Kevin Johnson, president of the Microsoft division that includes Windows and Windows Live, shortly after the software giant announced its $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo. I tried to get more details on the how Microsoft plans to bridge the cultural gap between the two companies, which brands it is tied to and what it will do if Yahoo says no. Sorry, I don't have more concrete answers, but I've posted a pretty complete transcript so you can read for yourself. More

Internet access in India improved Friday as international service providers shifted their Internet traffic to cables under the Pacific Ocean to bypass two undersea cables damaged earlier this week.

The two cables deep under the Mediterranean Sea snapped on Wednesday 1.30.2008, disrupting service since then across a swath of Asia and the Middle East.

India took one of the biggest hits, and the damage from its slowdowns and outages rippled to some U.S. and European companies that rely on its lucrative outsourcing industry to handle customer service calls and other operations.

Bandwidth providers in India said they were working to restore service to about 80 percent of its usual speed Friday.

In Egypt, Internet access remained sporadic or nonexistent Friday, the first day of the official Muslim weekend in the Middle East when all government offices and most businesses are closed. Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamil said service would be up to about 80 percent of its usual capacity within 48 hours.

The pair of cables — which lie on the sea floor near each other and at some points are no thicker than the average human thumb — caused problems across an area thousands of miles wide. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain all reported trouble.

By an overwhelming margin -- 409 to 2 -- the U.S. House of Representatives passed new legislation on Thursday aimed at making the Internet safer for children. The Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act was sponsored by Texas Democrat Nick Lampson, one of the founding members of the House Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.

Among other things, the legislation imposes significant fines on Internet service providers (ISPs) that fail to report evidence of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. According to a press release from Rep. Lampson's office, ISPs would be fined $150,000 per incident per day for first offenses, and $300,000 per incident per day for second and succeeding offenses.

"We are not trying to make these (Internet providers) spies on what they put out there," Lampson said in the statement, "but there are plenty of ways information can be gleaned from what you see on the Internet and if that is illegal, we want it reported to law enforcement."

The requirements of the legislation, if it takes effect, could impose significant regulatory burdens on affected sites. In addition to reporting possible violations to NCMEC, ISPs and covered sites would be required to preserve the images themselves (normally itself a violation of federal law), as well as preserving information about when the images were accessed and any available information about the individual who downloaded them.

As it is currently drafted, the legislation applies not merely to photographs of minors engaged in sexual activity (which is clearly child pornography), but also more subjective material, including photographs of minors in provocative poses and sexually explicit cartoon drawings depicting minors. Many question whether ISPs should be put in the uncomfortable position of determining whether borderline material should be reported, much of which may not even be criminal.

Comcast Corp. acknowledged "delaying" some subscriber Internet traffic, but said any roadblocks it puts up are temporary and intended to improve surfing for other users.

The statement was a response to an Associated Press report last week that detailed how the nation's largest cable company was interfering with file sharing by some of its Internet subscribers. The AP also found that Comcast's computers masqueraded as those of its users to interrupt file-sharing connections.

Internet watchdog groups denounced Comcast's actions, calling it an example of the kind of abuse that could be curbed with so-called "Net Neutrality" legislation. It would require Internet providers to treat all traffic equally — as has largely been the case historically.

Comcast has repeatedly denied blocking any Internet application, including "peer-to-peer" file-sharing programs like BitTorrent, which the AP used in its nationwide tests.

On Tuesday, Mitch Bowling, senior vice president of Comcast Online Services, added a nuance to that statement, saying that while Comcast may block initial connection attempts between two computers, it eventually lets the traffic through if the computers keep trying.

When eBay (EBAY) bought Skype Technologies for $2.6 billion in late 2005, few could fathom why the online auction company saw so much in a money-losing Internet phone service. Two years later, eBay is admitting it made a mistake.

On Oct. 1, eBay confirmed that it overpaid for Skype—by nearly $1 billion—and that the popular Web-calling business has not performed up to the rosy forecasts set back in 2005. In announcing a $1.43 billion charge against profits, eBay also revealed a broad management reshuffle in which Skype co-founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis will be leaving their posts.

About a half-billion dollars of the charge is for a payment to Zennström, Friis, and other early Skype investors. Although it might sound like a plump farewell present, that payout is well short of the $1.7 billion those shareholders stood to receive from eBay if Skype had met the targets for users, revenue, and profits set in the 2005 buyout agreement.

Considering Skype's rapid growth since the acquisition, it can't be an encouraging sign that its founders and early investors are cashing out well before the clock has run out on the original performance goals. When eBay bought Skype, it agreed to pay Skype shareholders as much as $1.7 billion extra if Skype met certain user growth and financial targets in 2008 and 2009. In accepting $530 million, those investors agreed to forgo any future payments, suggesting that none were likely. eBay plans to record that payment, plus $900 million more, as an impairment charge recorded in the third quarter.

The geographical regions are as follows:

REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China
REGION 7 -- Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
REGION 8 -- Persevered for Cruise Ships, Airlines, etc...
REGION 0 or REGION ALL -- Discs are uncoded and can be played Worldwide, however, PAL discs must be played in a PAL-compatible unit and NTSC discs must be played in an NTSC-compatible unit.

DVDs encoded for regions other than Region 1 cannot be played on a region 1 DVD player, also, players marketed for other regions cannot play region 1-stamped DVDs

Growing up in rural Lacrosse, Wash., Robert Moore reached adolescence and discovered he was a high school misfit. Suffering from several ailments, including narcolepsy, Moore skipped playing sports, the normal path to small-town popularity.

He moved to Spokane, graduated from North Central High School and became skilled enough to land several jobs, including a project for one firm needing anti-spam software.

In 2005, a Florida man, Edwin Pena, found Moore's site and asked him to create a tool for detecting certain types of network computers that worked with a new technology, Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

About a year later, FBI agents showed up at Moore's north Spokane home and arrested him, charging him with federal wire fraud and computer hacking. They also arrested Pena in Miami. Pena, 25, jumped bail and fled the country and is believed to be living in South America.

Moore, now 23, was nabbed because he designed the software tools Pena used to bilk Internet phone companies of more than $1 million in unpaid VoIP phone charges.

Next month, Moore will begin serving two years in a federal prison at a site not yet revealed. The New Jersey federal judge who sentenced him also ordered Moore to pay $152,000 in restitution to victims of the scheme.

The case created international attention. It marked the first large-scale hacking of the VoIP system. Moore used his 12 home computers to find vulnerable network doorways, called ports.

He pleaded guilty to the charges, acknowledging his role but saying he was just a provider of information that Pena misused for personal gain.

"What I did was totally wrong, and I have to pay for it," Moore said. "But Edwin was the guy who stole the minutes and resold them. All I did was find passwords for (network computers) that he wanted to use."

Many who wrote about or discussed the VoIP break-in said Moore's use of fairly unsophisticated tools, coupled with some special software he designed, pointed out major security holes in many corporate networks.

Enable the Display of File Extensions in Vista:

1. Open a folder or open explorer
2. Click the Layout button (to the left of the Views button) as shown in the picture below.

3. Click Folder Options
4. Click the View tab
5. Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types
6. Click OK

Dateline NBC associate producer Michelle Madigan was heckled and derided as she ran from DefCon, the world's largest computer hackers conference, and raced away in a car.

"They sent a moderately attractive young lady with a purse cam whose mission was to first capture someone on film admitting to a felony, which is really not cool, and second to catch a fed on film," said DefCon spokesman "Priest."

"She was basically trying to do a slam piece."

Federal agents openly, and covertly, mingle with hackers at the conference, which features a panel discussion titled "Meet the Fed."

"This is the Switzerland of hacking, neutral ground on which hackers and feds meet with a common goal of making computers safer," said Priest.

Dateline did not respond to AFP requests for comment but issued a general statement saying it does not discuss reporting tactics.

Priest and DefCon founder Jeff Moss, whose hacker name is Dark Tangent, lured Madigan to a packed conference room by putting out word they were going to have hackers finger federal agents in a game called "spot the fed."

After she was in the audience, it was announced the game was actually "spot the undercover reporter."

Without naming Madigan, Moss condemned her stealth tactics from a stage. Boos and jeers erupted from hundreds of hackers, one calling for her to be tarred and feathered.

Madigan shoved aside a DefCon "goon," one of the volunteers working at the event, and dashed from the room as the mob called for her to be booted from the premises.

Root Servers.

The root name server operators do not determine the content of the root zone file. The file is edited by the IANA according to a process described on the IANA web site. The root name server operators publish the file as received from the IANA. See: http://www.iana.org/root-management.htm

No Internet traffic passes through the root name servers at all. They have nothing to do with routing, note the difference in spelling. Name servers just answer queries from other parts of the DNS.

The root name servers do not store all the information in the DNS. Storing all the information in one place would be totally infeasible today. This is exactly why the DNS was developed as a distributed database. So if you register thatnewdomain.org the root zone file will not change and the root name servers will not give different answers. The ORG zone file will be changed.

The root name servers are not queried every time you browse the web or send mail. Information is cached in the DNS. Your computer will query a caching DNS server to resolve domain names. A well behaved DNS server needs to query the root name servers only once every 48 hours for each particular TLD.

In the meantime it can resolve names for that TLD without involvement of the root name servers. Because of this caching almost all DNS queries are answered without involvement of the root name servers.

The Public-Root Servers are strategically deployed around the globe. They support a global network of domain name servers that provide access to all known, non-colliding, and operational Top-Level Domains Some of their locations

In 2005 the current 12 organisations providing root name service at 13 unique IPv4 addresses. They were:

A - VeriSign Global Registry Services
B - University of Southern California - Information Sciences Institute
C - Cogent Communications
D - University of Maryland
E - NASA Ames Research Center
F - Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.
G - U.S. DOD Network Information Center
H - U.S. Army Research Lab
I - Autonomica/NORDUnet
J - VeriSign Global Registry Services
K - RIPE NCC
L - ICANN
M - WIDE Project

Last year, AOL said it was giving away its e-mail accounts, software and other features to users as it moved to an advertising-focused business model.

Overall revenue at AOL was $1.3 billion in the second quarter of 2007, which ended June 30, down 38% from the same quarter in 2006. Advertising revenue increased 16% to $522 million, up from the $449 million in the same quarter of 2006, but down from the 40% increases the company had reported in the last four quarters, according to the statement. AOL's operating income climbed 9% to $360 million. At the end of June, AOL had 10.9 million U.S. subscribers, a 59% drop from the 26.7 million subscribers it had in September 2002.

In the company's earnings call, Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons said the parent company no longer thinks that AOL's advertising business will grow "at or above" the rate of growth of other U.S. Internet companies. AOL is in trouble," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at San Jose-based Enderle Group. "The market they exist in is fairly robust, and they shouldn't be showing the significant declines that they're showing."

However, Enderle said changing AOL's model was probably the right thing to do because if it hadn't, the company would have been out of business by now.

ComputerWorld's On the Mark: Shift to Web Has Just Begun:

At the bottom of the article is this sub article which seems to have been clipped on as some type of public service announcement. While the concerns about infrastructure are true the questions are more related to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Live: Dog Pile on Microsoft

While certainly I am not a Linux hater; I honestly question people who think that an operating system can or should be compared to a religon. I have seen these zeolut comments all over the web for years now and it really does little to improve either the OS or its adoption.

Honestly if you talk bad about someone you achieve nothing. If you find a weakness in the MS OS, just make something better and that is all you have to do. It has nothing to do with Catholiclism verses Protestants. If you beat them at their own game that is all that is required. Saying that we have plans for server improvements in the coming year, then going off into that old time religon does nothing.

I suggest that time is better spent finding those areas where you can beat a company at their own game, and just do it. The rest means nothing and is truly a waste of time. Why would you build server OS strickly on the hate for something else. If you have a better mouse trap just build it. Seems that focusing on making Linux drop dead simple, more secure, more rapidly updated, would be more than enough to beat the hated Microsoft and their evil empire. But really likened to the Protestant Reformation?

The acquisition of the security software outfit bolsters a product suite designed to loosen Microsoft's hold on business customers.

Google has long coveted the pot of gold represented by Microsoft's business customers, those lucrative users of such applications as Outlook e-mail, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slide presentations.

In recent years, Google has been snapping up companies in hopes of replicating that suite of services, and it finally may be nearing a full quiver.

On July 9, Google said it is paying $625 million for security company Postini, which helps corporations and smaller businesses monitor e-mails and instant messages, encrypt information, and enforce company policies in such areas as the dissemination of confidential information. Google's third-largest purchase after YouTube and DoubleClick, Postini is the market leader in its field, with more than 36,000 companies using its products.

"With this transaction, we're reinforcing our commitment to delivering compelling hosted applications to businesses of all sizes. With the addition of Postini, our apps are not just simple and appealing to users -- they can also streamline the complex information security mandates within these organizations," said Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Google.

Hosted services, like Google Apps and Postini solutions, provide organizations with high quality communications tools without the expense and hassle of traditional on-premise solutions. Google Apps, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs & Spreadsheets, and Personal Start Page, has been adopted by more than 100,000 businesses already. Postini solutions include Email Security, IM Security, Web Security, Message Archiving, Message Encryption, and Policy-enforced TLS.

Itching to make Windows Vista behave the way you want it to, not the way Microsoft does? Take these fun and useful hacks for a whirl.

You've run Windows Vista, you've played around with the Aero interface, and maybe you've even mucked around a little bit in Vista's innards to see what makes it tick.  Now what?

Now is when the fun begins. There are plenty of ways you can hack Windows Vista, make it jump through hoops, bend it to your will and generally make it behave the way you want it to behave, not the way Microsoft does.  Full Article Here!

When a Windows tip becomes popular, it spreads through the community like wildfire. Unfortunately, there's usually only a random relationship between the speed of transmission, the quality of the advice, and its relevance to you.

Case in point: I've seen at least 10 sites this week echo a tip that shows how to use an obscure command-line tool to trim the amount of disk space Windows Vista sets aside for System Restore. But is this good advice? Before you start chopping, make sure you understand the facts and the alternatives.

The stated reason for making this tweak is that, by default, Windows Vista allocates 15% of your hard drive to storing System Restore points and doesn't provide an easy way to shrink that space, as Windows XP does. Lifehacker (a generally excellent site that I read regularly) put it this way:

Full Artilcle:

Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts dazzled a cable industry audience at Las Vegas, showing off for the first time in public new technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems.

The cost of modems that would support the technology, called "channel bonding," is "not that dissimilar to modems today," he told The Associated Press after a demonstration at The Cable Show. It could be available "within less than a couple years," he said.

The new cable technology is crucial because the industry is competing with a speedy new offering called FiOS, a TV and Internet service that Verizon Communications Inc. is selling over a new fiber-optic network. The top speed currently available through FiOS is 50 megabits per second, but the network is already capable of providing 100 Mbps and the fiber lines offer nearly unlimited potential.

The technology, called DOCSIS 3.0, was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories. Instead of using one TV channel to transmit data, it uses four.

The laboratory said last month it expected manufacturers to begin submitting modems for certification under the standard by the end of the year.

In the presentation, ARRIS Group Inc. chief executive Robert Stanzione downloaded a 30-second, 300-megabyte television commercial in a few seconds and watched it long before a standard modem worked through an estimated download time of 16 minutes.

Stanzione also downloaded the 32-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica 2007 and Merriam-Webster's visual dictionary in under four minutes, when it would have taken a standard modem three hours and 12 minutes.

"If you look at what just happened, 55 million words, 100,000 articles, more than 22,000 pictures, maps and more than 400 video clips," Roberts said. "The same download on dial-up would have taken two weeks."

Other cable industry executives, including Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons, News Corp. President Peter Chernin and Viacom Inc. Chief Executive Philippe Dauman, cheered the demonstration during a panel afterward.

The Cable Show: http://www.thecableshow.com  Cable Television Laboratories: http://www.cablelabs.com

There are many approaches to doing this for protecting your server though personally the worse thing is to have none when you need one. We have put together a really simple down and dirty approach to backing up IIS 6.0 meta backup below. This approach first creates the backup then renames them to the current date. We run the first bat file daily to assure your system is protected.

@ C:
@cd %systemroot%\system32

@cscript iisback.vbs /backup /b backup

@cd %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\MetaBack"

ren backup.MD0 %DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%-%DATE:~10,4%-backup.MD0
ren backup.SC0 %DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%-%DATE:~10,4%-backup.SC0

Then to avoid the folder from filling up and retaining 7 days of backups we just run a second script we only run once a week.

echo on
rem Delete Meta Backup File
FORFILES /p C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\MetaBack /s /m *.MDO /d -7 /c "CMD /C del /Q @FILE"
FORFILES /p C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\MetaBack /s /m *.SCO /d -7 /c "CMD /C del /Q @FILE"
rem

	Controlling Authenticated access is a simple three step process. Create a simple user Apply this user to a folder Turn off anonymous access in IIS

Software maker Microsoft Corp. asked search engine operator Yahoo Inc. to re-enter formal negotiations for an acquisition that could be worth $50 billion, the New York Post reported on Friday.

At the time The search and advertising industry could change drastically over the next year if Microsoft has its way with Yahoo. In the last several weeks, it was well publicized that Microsoft and Google went head on in a bidding war for Internet advertising giant DoubleClick. Eventually, Google won and settled with DoubleClick for roughly $3.1 billion -- a sum that had analysts questioning Microsoft's true motives.

of the acquisition, Microsoft had roughly $25 billion of available cash in its bank; more than double that of Google's $11.9 billion. Observing these figures, it was odd to see Microsoft back out of a deal it could easily win. "The best side to be on in a bidding war is the losing side," said legendary Wall Street tycoon Warren Buffet. Buffet is implying that the loser in a bidding war has forced the winner to over-pay for something.

Today, Forbes is reporting that Microsoft is in negotiations with Yahoo for a possible acquisition that could be worth $50 billion. According to the report, Microsoft is feeling greater pressure to compete in the online advertising space. Just recently, Yahoo announced its acquisition of online advertising firm Right Media for $680 million. While this is far from Google's $3.1 billion expense on DoubleClick, it does indicate that Yahoo is already quite a force in online advertising.

Another sticking point for Microsoft is the fact that both Google and Yahoo are ahead of the game when it comes to search. Microsoft has been playing catch up to Google and Yahoo with MSN Search, but having Yahoo under its belt would surely set the company onto a different playing field altogether.

Despite an impending deal with Yahoo, Microsoft hasn’t taken its eyes completely off the Google – DoubleClick deal. Microsoft is loudly voicing its opinion against the deal and has asked regulators to carefully monitor the acquisition.

Cold fusion, the ability to generate nuclear power at room temperatures, has proven to be a highly elusive feat. In fact, it is considered by many experts to be a mere pipe dream -- a potentially unlimited source of clean energy that remains tantalizing,  but so far unattainable.

However, a recently published academic paper from the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (Spawar) in San Diego throws cold water on skeptics of cold fusion. Appearing in the respected journal Naturwissenschaften, which counts Albert Einstein among its distinguished authors, the article claims that Spawar scientists Stanislaw Szpak and Pamela Mosier-Boss have achieved a low energy nuclear reaction (LERN) that can be replicated and verified by the scientific community.

Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder from serious nuclear physicists since 1989, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were unable to substantiate their sensational claims that deuterium nuclei could be forced to fuse and release excess energy at room temperature. Spawar researchers apparently kept the faith, however, and continued to refine the procedure by experimenting with new fusionable materials.

Szpak and Boss now claim to have succeeded at last by coating a thin wire with palladium and deuterium, then subjected it to magnetic and electric fields. The researchers have offered plastic films called CR-39 detectors as evidence that charged particles have emerging from their reaction experiments.

The Spawar method shows promise, particularly in terms of being easily reproduced and verified by other institutions. Such verification is essential to widespread acceptance of the apparent breakthrough, an important precursor to scientists receiving the necessary funding to fuel additional research in the field.

Around $1.7 billion of unpaid VAT did not appear on a U.K. Revenue and Customs debt case management system because of a failure to transfer data from the main VAT computer system, legislators have been told.

Edward Leigh, chair of the powerful Commons public accounts committee, highlighted a series of problems with major government IT projects in a parliamentary debate on the committee's inquiries

He told MPs: "We found that not all information on VAT debt recorded on the main VAT computer system had been transferred to the so-called trader register.

"That may appear to be an obscure point, but it meant that some $1.7 billion of debt failed to appear on the debt case management system. That is hardly a first-rate example of financial management by a department that should be at the forefront of such matters."

Leigh cited evidence given to the committee earlier this month by Ian Taylor, a past president of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply who is now director of the center for procurement performance at the Department for Education and Skills.

Taylor had told the PAC "that in his view, public sector people are every bit as skilled as those in the private sector, but the information systems in the public sector are so bad that no private sector firm could afford to put up with them. They would simply go out of business," Leigh said.

The committee chair added: "They do not provide the data that public sector leaders need to manage effectively or to develop robust strategies for delivery."

Leigh also hit back at the government after it attempted to deflect criticism of the NHS's $23.4 billion IT program by claiming that a damning PAC report was based on "out of date" findings by the National Audit Office.

The PAC warned that the NHS scheme was unlikely to deliver significant benefits, unless there was a fundamental change in the rate of progress on the 10-year project. 

The committee chair told MPs he had spoken to Sir John Bourn, head of the NAO, to put a timescale on the auditors' promised -- and unprecedented -- second examination of the project. "Following my encouragement, we are to have another NAO report on the NHS computer in the next year so that we can have an update to check whether all the excellent recommendations of the NAO and the PAC... are being carried out."

Responding to the debate -- which also touched on the IT fiasco at the Rural Payments Agency that is estimated to have cost $940 million -- Treasury minister John Healy gave an indication that the government might reconsider its hardline stance against making public the findings of Office of Government Commerce "gateway reviews" of major IT schemes.

The Social Security numbers of 63,000 people who received Agriculture Department grants have been posted on a government Web site since 1996, but they were taken down last week. Free credit monitoring is being offered to those affected.

The Agriculture data that included Social Security numbers were removed from the Web on April 13 and similar data from 32 other agencies were taken down April 17 as a precaution, said Agriculture spokeswoman Terri Teuber.

A review has determined that none of the other 32 agencies had a similar problem, said Sean Kevelighan, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget.

"There is no evidence that this information has been misused," Teuber added. "However, due to the potential that this information was downloaded prior to being removed, USDA will provide the additional monitoring service."

The breach was discovered by Marsha Bergmeier, president of Mohr Family Farms in Fairmount, Ill. "I was Googling my farm name at 11 p.m. when I couldn't sleep," she said in a telephone interview, and details of her land loan came up in the second listing of the Google search, a private Web site that reposted the government data.

The next morning, April 13, she contacted the Agriculture Department, her congressman, Rep. Tim Johnson, the private Web site and the Census Bureau and was surprised by how quickly they removed the personal information.

"If somebody downloaded it, it's still out there in the world," she said. "That will never be a private number again."

A federal judge dealt a blow to Vonage Holdings Corp. that sent its stock reeling on Friday, when he agreed to bar the company from using Internet phone call technology patented by Verizon Communications Inc.

Vonage said it was confident its customers would not experience service interruptions, but investors sent its shares down nearly 26 percent.

U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton said he would delay signing the order for two weeks to give Vonage time to try to convince him to stay the injunction while it appeals the entire patent infringement case. "I will sign the injunction at the time I rule on the stay," Hilton said at a hearing.

Hilton agreed with Verizon that it would suffer irreparable harm if he allowed continued infringement of the Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies that allow consumers to make calls over the Internet.

He rejected arguments by Vonage that the harm to Verizon, the No. 2 U.S. telephone company, was outweighed by other factors, including the public interest.

"I don't think it's going to kill Vonage," said Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research. But he said the legal costs and management distractions were disruptive.

Microsoft Corp. quietly deployed a patch to its Windows Live OneCare security suite earlier than expected to fix a bug that has erased some users' e-mail.

"On Sunday, March 11, the Windows Live OneCare team released a new anti-malware engine that will fix the issue of OneCare erroneously quarantining certain Outlook .pst or Outlook Express .dbx files when infected files were detected within them," a Microsoft representative confirmed today. "Windows Live OneCare customers whose PCs are connected to the Internet will automatically get this fix."

Last week, Microsoft responded to user complaints that their Outlook and Outlook Express mail had vanished by acknowledging the bug and naming today as the patch date. As complaints continued to mount, it released the patch ahead of schedule.

1) Create a text file and name it Backup.sql (or what ever you want).

2) Paste the below script in it:

DECLARE @BackupFile varchar(255), @DB varchar(30), @Description varchar(255), @LogFile varchar(50)
DECLARE @Name varchar(30), @MediaName varchar(30), @BackupDirectory nvarchar(200)
SET @BackupDirectory = 'E:\SQLBackup\'
--Add a list of all databases you don't want to backup to this.
DECLARE Database_CURSOR CURSOR FOR SELECT name FROM sysdatabases WHERE name <> 'tempdb' AND name <> 'model' AND name <> 'Northwind'
OPEN Database_Cursor
FETCH next FROM Database_CURSOR INTO @DB
WHILE @@fetch_status = 0

    BEGIN
    SET @Name = @DB + '( Daily BACKUP )'
    SET @MediaName = @DB + '_Dump' + CONVERT(varchar, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP , 112)
    SET @BackupFile = @BackupDirectory + + @DB + '_' + 'Full' + '_' +
    CONVERT(varchar, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP , 112) + '.bak'
    SET @Description = 'Normal' + ' BACKUP at ' + CONVERT(varchar, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP) + '.'

    IF (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM msdb.dbo.backupset WHERE database_name = @DB) > 0 OR @DB = 'master'
    BEGIN
    SET @BackupFile = @BackupDirectory + @DB + '_' + 'Full' + '_' +
    CONVERT(varchar, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP , 112) + '.bak'
    --SET some more pretty stuff for sql server.
    SET @Description = 'Full' + ' BACKUP at ' + CONVERT(varchar, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP) + '.'
    END
    ELSE
    BEGIN
    SET @BackupFile = @BackupDirectory + @DB + '_' + 'Full' + '_' +
    CONVERT(varchar, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP , 112) + '.bak'
    --SET some more pretty stuff for sql server.
    SET @Description = 'Full' + ' BACKUP at ' + CONVERT(varchar, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP) + '.'
    END
    BACKUP DATABASE @DB TO DISK = @BackupFile
    WITH NAME = @Name, DESCRIPTION = @Description ,
    MEDIANAME = @MediaName, MEDIADESCRIPTION = @Description ,
    STATS = 10
    FETCH next FROM Database_CURSOR INTO @DB
END
CLOSE Database_Cursor
DEALLOCATE Database_Cursor

Open scheduler and create a new task that calls the below command line:
            sqlcmd -S . -i "E:\Backup.sql"

Clean up Old Backup Files.

If you are running Windows Server 2003 you can also run a command utility to delete any files older then x number of days. This helps keep it cleaned up. Just paste this in a batch file and schedule the batch file.

echo on

rem First Delete old SQL Backup Files

FORFILES /p E:\SQLBackup /s /m *.* /d -3 /c "CMD /C del /Q @FILE"

rem pause

Insulting the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is a crime in Turkey punishable by prison.

Turk Telekom, the country's largest telecommunications provider, immediately began enforcing the ban Wednesday. Those who tried to access the YouTube site from Turkey encountered the message: "Access to this site has been blocked by a court decision!..."

"We are not in the position of saying that what YouTube did was an insult, that it was right or wrong," the head of Turk Telekom, Paul Doany, told the state-run Anatolia news agency. "A court decision was proposed to us, and we are doing what that court decision says."

A message in both Turkish and English at the bottom of the page said, "Access to http://www.youtube.com site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace Court."

The court — acting on a petition from Turk Telekom — ruled later Wednesday that it would revoke the ban as soon as it ascertained that the offending videos had been removed from YouTube. YouTube is owned by internet search engine giant Google.

In recent days, Turkish media publicized what some called a "virtual war" between Greeks and Turks on YouTube, with both sides posting videos to belittle and berate the other.

The video prompting the ban allegedly said Ataturk and the Turkish people were homosexuals, news reports said. The CNN-Turk Web site featured a link allowing Turks to complain directly to YouTube about the "insult."

On its front page on Wednesday, the newspaper Hurriyet said thousands of people had emailed YouTube and that the Ataturk videos had been removed from the site. "YouTube got the message," the headline said.

12.27.2006 Yahoo's article pointing at the gloom & doom of American broadband.   The U.S. needs to spur greater investment in its broadband network, said Kara Swisher, another Wall Street Journal technology columnist. I am questioning a capitalist based news paper, having a columist writing this. 

The quote that really seemed to have rubbed me is this one. "The government has got to get behind this, like it did with the public highways," Swisher said, referring to the federal government's investment in the interstate highway system beginning in the 1950's".  They have the right to publish whatever they wish though the method which has put America on the forefront of the technology which is home grown will take us into the future with out the government getting envolved.

It seems that while they might be correct with America needing some investment, I am not sure the government is the place to get any of this done. Let's really look at the facts.

I hardly think that the need here should not be compared to the Interstate Highway system. The downside to any government controlling their internet is clear. China who totally controls their users experience is nothing I personally would ralley around.  This type of Federal based logic is running wild in America. I am starting to wonder if there is something in the water. The market and capitalizm have got the internet where it is right now just exactly what is the problem? The only thing the government could do is to help or offer some incentive to installing fiber to every home in america as this is seriously expensive. They did not do well with creating the monopoly called cable. I doubt they could do much better with fiber. If they could build it as a neutral network great, but that would be seem to be mission impossible.

Short for "information technology". Synonymous with MIS or CIS, which is "management/computer information systems." Term used to loosely describe computers and the management of information.

IT professionals are often looked down upon as non-social beings who fix computers all day. IT, in reality, is anything related to using technology to store and analyze information.  "The IT department is full of computer geeks." Urban Dictionary Defined:

Yet it has some how become a catch-all for every idiot who has even slightly more knowledge than the person they represent. I remember this group from the late 90's. Most were webmasters then; and it appears they have little more knowledge today.

Even though I wear many hats and have worked internet servers, and a BGP network for over 10 years there is no way I want to be referred to as a IT guy. Nor do I plan to be a webmaster anytime soon. Inspite of the fact I have developed and manage several web sites. So you got a degree in Informantion Technology, yet it appears from my experience after talking to people daily with support issues who have no concept of the basics.

If you don't know just say you don't know. If you do know please don't try to impress someone with your vast experience. You will likely find that ego's are the root of this problem in the first place.
Tip: Don't start your IT guy conversation with something is wrong with your server to the administrator. Likely you will get negitive results. Perhaps something like: I am having a problem with; "Define the Problem". Will certainly produce better results.

Typically client services and administrators only want to know the facts. Likely they do not have much time for your vast knowledge to be revealed really. Nor will they likely be impressed, since they are doing machine administration everyday.

Tip: Don't be a IT guy and put your corporate mail server on a dynamically assigned IP address. Dynamic DNS is a great service but really can have negitive results for a mail server.
Tip: If you are on a windows DC please make sure the DC dns has had some root servers added. Certainly before you tell someone else there is something wrong with their dns.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment's botched attempt to stop unauthorized music copying has cost the company another $4.25 million.

Two days after reaching settlements worth a combined total of $1.5 million with Texas and California, Sony on Thursday agreed to pay another 40 states the money to end investigations into its use of two copy protection programs: First 4 Internet Ltd.'s XCP (extended copy protection), and MediaMax, written by SunnComm International Inc.

In a statement, Sony said it was pleased with Thursday's settlements. More than 12 million Sony BMG CDs shipped with this software last year, according to a statement from the Massachusetts Attorney General.

Sony's trouble began in late 2005, when a computer science researcher disclosed that XCP used dangerous "rootkit" techniques to cloak itself after installation.

Later, investigators found that even users who declined to install the MediaMax program would have software placed on their computers, and one version of the program created a security issue, the Massachusetts statement said.

Sony has reportedly also reached a tentative settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in the matter, although nothing relating to that investigation was announced Thursday. Sony settled a class-action lawsuit over the software in May.

As with the California and Texas agreements, residents of the 40 states that settled with Sony are entitled to up to $175 in refunds for damages that may have been caused to their computers. The settlements also limit the ways that Sony can use copy protection software in the future and require that the company notify consumers if it uses this kind of software.

President George W. Bush has signed legislation directing the Environmental Protection Agency to study energy use in data centers.

The bill, passed by the Senate on Dec. 8, authorizes the EPA to analyze the growth of energy consumption at data centers. The issue is a growing concern to companies that operate large groups of servers, storage devices and other computer equipment. Many data center operators find that the cost of electricity and  air conditioning that keeps servers cool rivals the cost of the servers themselves.

The EPA study should help to promote more energy-efficient solutions across the high technology industry, said Steve Kester, manager of the government relations division at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), a maker of server processors and one of several high technology companies endorsing the bill.

"We're very pleased that the administration sees this as important," Kester said. The EPA study is expected to take about six months and could result in the agency's establishing measurements to judge the energy efficiency of servers, processors and other data center equipment.

AMD hosted a forum Dec. 6 at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., with the U.S. Department of Energy  and representatives of major technology companies, including Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Intel Corp. The DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy called the gathering a "tech industry working group" to exchange ideas on energy conservation.

Google overtook Yahoo as the second most popular Internet destination for Web surfers worldwide in November, while Microsoft held on to the top spot, industry tracker ComScore reported.

Slightly more than 736 million people around the world traveled the Internet last month, with 475.5 million of them visiting Google websites and 475.2 million going to Yahoo online properties, according to ComScore.

Websites of Redmond, Washington-based software giant Microsoft were visited by 501.7 million people, the rating tally revealed.

Hot video-sharing website YouTube placed 10th in the ComScore Media Metrix rankings but showed the largest surge in visitors, with the number catapulting by more than 2,000 percent to 107.9 million.

Google's results did not include visits to YouTube, which it bought in October.

The popularity of Google websites was up nine percent from the same month a year earlier, while visits to Silicon Valley rival Yahoo grew by five percent and to Microsoft by three percent in the same comparison.

Online auction pioneer eBay was ranked in fourth place, with the number of visitors slipping by one percent from November 2005 to 250.8 million. Time Warner Network site visits also notched down one percent, totaling 222.1 million.

The feature that protects against fraudulent Web sites, new in IE 7, in some cases could bog down computers running Windows, according to an article on Microsoft's support site published Tuesday. This could happen when a Web page contains many frames or when a user browses many frames in a short time, the company said.

"When you use Windows Internet Explorer 7 to visit a Web page, the computer may respond very slowly as the Phishing Filter evaluates Web page contents," according to Microsoft. "Internet Explorer 7 evaluates the whole Web page when you browse a frame. Therefore, CPU (central processing unit) usage may be very high."

Sarah Deutsch is steaming. The attorney for Verizon Communications regularly scours the Web from her Arlington (Va.) office and finds hundreds of new sites that use variations of Verizon's name. A mid-December browse uncovers a constellation of Verizon-inspired domains such as verizonpicture.com, vorizonringtone.com, and varizoncellularphone.com.

What angers Deutsch is that none of the sites have anything to do with Verizon. Instead, they're registered by companies like Nassau (Bahamas)-based Wan-Fu China and Pompano Beach (Fla.)-based Moniker.com. They're engaged in a little-known activity called "domain tasting," a legal practice that lets registrars snatch up Internet domains for five days at no cost. Typically, these companies jam the borrowed Web sites full of ads and pull in money as visitors click on the ads. Because they can use the Web sites for no charge, these firms are registering mass quantities of domain names each day, getting under the skin of companies trying to protect their brands online. "Domain tasting is destabilizing the entire domain name system," says Deutsch. "People are purposefully exploiting trademarks and misleading consumers."

The practice has soared in the past two years. In late 2004, roughly 100,000 domain names were tested on any given day, and now, the number has ballooned to 4 million, according to Jay Westerdal, chief executive officer of the domain consultancy firm Name Intelligence. Experts estimate that less than 2% of the sites that are tried out for a few days are ultimately purchased by registrants. It's a bit like being able to get clothes from a store, wear them for five days, and then return them at no charge.

With an ever-expanding menu of domains on offer, tasting will likely continue its exponential growth. There are more than 250 suffixes besides ".com" to choose from, and more companies are getting in the game of domain registration. Today search engine giant Google announced it will work with top registrants GoDaddy.com and eNom to register addresses ending in ".com," ".net," ".biz" and ".info."

It began on Mar. 10, 2004, when a computer programmer from Oak Park, Calif., named Michael Anthony Bradley arrived at Google's offices for a prearranged meeting with the company's engineers, according to a criminal indictment filed two years ago in the U.S. District Court in San Jose. Bradley, then 32, proceeded to demonstrate new software, dubbed "Google Clique," designed to generate false clicks on Google ads. Bradley claimed his program could force Google to pay millions of dollars on false clicks and threatened to release it to others unless Google paid him approximately $150,000, according to the indictment.

Law enforcement, tipped off earlier, taped the meeting from the room next door and soon arrested Bradley. It appeared Bradley would become the first person criminally prosecuted for charges related to click fraud, the Achilles heel of the Internet-advertising industry, which costs marketers as much as $1 billion a year.

One would think that a proper way to validate clicks could be created. An option would be return a minimum of a 10% discount to all pay per click customers of all search engines. This case is pointing at google but it is known that pay per click has had its share of fraud with others as well. Why would the search engine care after all it is not hurting them? In fact they get paid either way so it does not matter to their bottom line at all. In fact it might be the reason the fraud exsits in the first place. Many businesses models do not even have a 10% margin, it would certainly not hurt the pay per click model. Full Story

I recieved a request how do I block my child from going to a specific site. They did not want to load any software or block their childs use. They just wanted stop them from spending hours on MySpace. Well I kind of thought sorry for the kind but it is easy. Just a simple edit to the Host File in this path will make the URL call go right back to the source machine. The example below I added *. so that no matter what the URL of myspace.com they call, it will never leave their local machine. Many kid's would not be fooled by this! However most would just be mad at their parents and give up. This gives the path to where the file is located to edit with notepad and save. It will only trash Myspace.com if you have a list add them.

The search giant announced that it is entering into a partnership with 176 newspapers in the U.S. to share content and advertising, The New York Times is reporting.

Yahoo will index and tag content from seven major newspaper chains and make the news content from 38 states available on the web. Yahoo will also power local events listings, maps and search technology on the local newspapers' websites. The partnered newspapers will also use Yahoo's advertising platform to sell and host the targeted local ads on their websites. The ads will largely be powered by Yahoo Local.

The newspapers will test the waters by posting their employment classified ads on HotJobs, Yahoo's classified ad site for job listings. That first part of the deal was reported by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. (the article is behind the WSJ's paywall)

Yahoo's partnership with the newspaper industry comes on the heels of Google's Novemeber 5 announcement that it was allowing AdWords advertisers to purchase printed advertisements in several large-market local newspapers like The New York Times and the Washington Post.

Web sites that publish inflammatory information written by other parties cannot be sued for libel, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday. The ruling in favor of free online expression was a victory for a San Diego woman who was sued by two doctors for posting an allegedly libelous e-mail on two Web sites.

Some of the Internet's biggest names, including Amazon.com, America Online Inc., eBay Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. took the defendant's side out of concern that a ruling against her would expose them to liability.

In reversing an appellate court's decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides broad immunity from defamation lawsuits for people who publish information on the Internet that was gathered from another source.

"The prospect of blanket immunity for those who intentionally redistribute defamatory statements on the Internet has disturbing implications," Associate Justice Carol A. Corrigan wrote in the majority opinion. "Nevertheless ... statutory immunity serves to protect online freedom of expression and to encourage self-regulation, as Congress intended."

Unless Congress revises the existing law, people who claim they were defamed in an Internet posting can only seek damages from the original source of the statement, the court ruled. The case centers on an opinion piece sent via e-mail to Ilena Rosenthal, a woman's health advocate who runs various message boards and promotes alternative medicine.

The scathing missive, written by Tim Bolen, accused Dr. Terry Polevoy, of Canada, of stalking a Canadian radio producer and included various invectives directed at Polevoy and Dr. Stephen Barrett, of Pennsylvania. The two doctors operated Web sites devoted to exposing health frauds.

After Rosenthal posted the piece to two newsgroups, Polevoy and Barrett sued her, Bolen and others for libel. The lawsuit accuses Rosenthal of republishing the information after being warned it was false and defamatory.

In a previous article we pointed at how MS stated to control the port delegation as the link will outline the process.

In IIS6 you can also do this :
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=555022

However it has come to our attention there is another twist which has been observed on a number of machines. Having done this I know first hand on one day I have a machine which can do Passv mode without issue. Then out of the blue the machine suddenly cannot do passive mode and clients who depend on it were left out in the dark, and the complaints come in. I was dealing with a complaint like this where I was sure the lady was going to kill me. Though I must say she is a good person and worked with us till I found the cause of the problem. In most cases it will not end this friendly.

While the edit is working correctly the Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service seems to be the cause the failure. It is supposed to work where after the client issues a passv command, the server responds with one of its transient ports used as the server-side port of the data connection. After a data connection command is issued by the client, the server connects to the client using the port immediately above the client-side port of the control connection.

However the service Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) is also involved in the process and has been verified as the part which is blocking the return and thus the passv command will be ignored or denied. I have personally observed that simply restarting the service will resolve the problem. A warning if you are connected via remote desktop, when restarting the service your desktop session might be lost. Though I have personally only noticed a freeze up for a bit and returns to normal.

In a significant acknowledgement of the viability of Linux as a desktop OS, Microsoft Corp. today announced a deal with Novell Inc. to support Suse Linux on machines that run Windows.

Microsoft will offer sales support for Suse Linux and also co-develop technologies with Novell to make it easier for users to run both Suse Linux and Microsoft Windows on their computers.

As expected, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the news in a San Francisco press conference. As part of the deal, Microsoft also will agree not to assert rights over patents to any software technology that might be incorporated into Suse Linux.

Microsoft has been relenting lately on its tight hold on patents through a program called its Open Specification Promise. Through the program, Microsoft has promised not to take any legal action against developers or companies that want to use specifications for a host of technologies for which it has patents.

The deal between Microsoft and Novell will certainly be a blow for Red Hat Inc., the second in as many weeks. Last week, Oracle Corp. said it would begin selling technical support for Red Hat Linux, a plan that both validates Red Hat Linux while undermining Red Hat's own support and maintenance business. Red Hat is the leading supplier of Linux and the biggest rival for Novell's Suse Linux distribution.

Novell built its business on the back of its NetWare network operating system, but the appearance of Windows NT on the scene as a viable alternative was a primary reason for NetWare's ultimate demise. In recent years, Novell has rebuilt itself into an open-source software company through purchases of companies such as SUSE Linux AG and Ximian.

The deal also will not only pit Microsoft and Novell against Oracle and Red Hat, but also IBM, which was an early supporter of Linux, particularly Red Hat's distribution.

AMD has made the east German city of Dresden its manufacturing capital. Except for a small number of chips produced by a Singapore contractor, all of AMD's microprocessors for PCs, laptops, and servers come from two plants there, including one that came on line last year.

In fact, since spinning off a plant in Austin, Tex., last year, AMD no longer mass-produces chips at all in the U.S., though it continues to employ 2,000 people in Austin who work in design, marketing, and other functions. AMD will have invested some $8 billion in Dresden by the end of 2008, making it one of the largest foreign investors in the region and generating an estimated 7,000 jobs directly or indirectly.

For Germans, AMD's Dresden operations provide much-needed affirmation that the nation still projects industrial prowess. Indeed, on Oct. 24, no less than German Chancellor Angela Merkel, an East German herself, came to the famously firebombed city to mark the 10th anniversary of AMD's operations there. "You can all be unbelievably proud of what you've achieved here," she told AMD workers.

Why Dresden? Originally, AMD was attracted by generous subsidies from German and European Union authorities eager to boost employment in the region, which struggled to make the transition to a market economy after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. In addition, Dresden had served as the center of semiconductor technology in the Soviet bloc and offered a large pool of skilled people badly in need of jobs.

After AMD broke ground in 1996, though, it discovered something else: German engineers are unmatched when it comes to mastering the hugely complex and precise task of making semiconductors, which can require 800 manufacturing steps. "Germans are known for engineering aptitude, and we have seen it in action," says Thomas Sonderman, AMD's director of manufacturing systems.

For example, AMD's Dresden team figured out methods to allow new chip designs to go into mass production immediately, rather than first being produced in limited numbers while engineers perfected the manufacturing process. AMD Dresden was also the first to market with so-called dual core chips, which cram more functionality on to a single chip and permit computers to handle more tasks at the same time.

In the semiconductor industry, it's imperative for companies to recoup fast the $3 billion it costs to build a chip plant. "Time to market is the No. 1 priority," says Hans Deppe, general manager of AMD in Dresden. "If I double people's wages but get half the time to market, it pays off." The workers in Dresden also have never organized a worker's council, the usual venue for labor union influence, even though doing so is extremely easy under German labor law.

As AMD grows, Dresden won't remain the only production site. In June the company announced plans to build a $3.2 billion plant in Luther Park in upstate New York. The project, which will receive an estimated $1 billion in grants and other aid from New York State, won't begin production until 2013 at the earliest.

And as AMD builds the New York plant, it plans to send managers and engineers to Dresden for training. Says Sonderman: "The Dresden team will be part of AMD for a long time to come."

Apple Computer is offering a firmware update that the company claims will help alleviate random shutdown issues with its MacBook notebooks.

The Cupertino, Calif., computer maker posted the update—MacBook SMC Firmware Update 1.1—on its Web site Oct. 26. The update, according to Apple, will help a MacBook's internal monitoring system and stop the computer from shutting down at random.

"The SMC Update improves the MacBook's internal monitoring system and addresses issues with unexpected shutdowns. This update is recommended for all MacBook systems, including those that received warranty repair," according to the company's posting.

In August, the Web site macbookrandomshutdown.com began calling attention to the fact that several users of MacBooks had experienced problems with their notebooks.

The site is now receiving about 5,000 visitors a day and has totaled 100,000 page views since it launched on Aug. 15, according to site creator Matthew Swanson, who lives in Atlanta. Swanson started the site after his wife bought a new 2GHz MacBook for her business. About a month after the purchase, the MacBook began suffering from what Swanson calls "RSS"—Random Shutdown Syndrome.

After looking at the update, Swanson said he finds it interesting that Apple is offering a firmware update to fix what had been thought to be a hardware problem. The only thing we can think of is the firmware update will allow the MacBook to bypass recognizing there is a physical issue and let the OS continue running without 'randomly shutting down'—so our question is, Does this really fix the underlying problem?

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. today announced third-quarter financial results that beat analysts' estimates. It reported net income of $134 million, or 27 cents per share, on revenue of $1.33 billion, as it continues to pressure No. 1 chip maker Intel Corp.

AMD's results for the quarter that ended Sept. 30 topped analysts' consensus estimates of earnings per share of 24 cents on revenue of $1.31 billion. The company's latest results are an improvement over net income of $44 million, or 18 cents per share, on $1.52 billion in revenue in the same quarter a year earlier, and 2006 second-quarter net income of $89 million, or 18 cents per share, on revenue of $1.22 billion.

When sales of memory products are excluded, AMD's sales grew 9% from the previous quarter and 32% from last year's third quarter, said Robert Rivet, AMD's chief financial officer. However, AMD's operating margins slipped in the third quarter to 51.4%, down from 55.4% in the year ago quarter. AMD attributes the decline to lower average selling prices for processors used in desktop computers. AMD has been taking semiconductor market share away from rival Intel in the past year with new dual-core processors, forcing Intel into a defensive posture.

It's Level 3's turn to make a big acquisition. On Oct. 17, the company announced plans to buy telecom provider Broadwing for $1.4 billion. The deal gives Level 3 local telecom operations and technology for efficiently transporting data traffic around the Internet. It improves Level 3's balance sheet, although it also makes it a more expensive acquisition candidate.

Level 3 sells telecom services to a number of big Internet companies, including Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and YouTube. The telecom company also sold Google about $300 million worth of fiber-optic capacity about one year ago, says analyst Donna Jaegers of researcher Janco Partners. The Net companies use Level 3 telecom services to connect their servers to the telecom and cable companies that sell Internet access directly to consumers. Level 3 also provides services to corporations and telecom companies.

While an acquisition looks unlikely, at least in the near future, Google and Level 3 may forge closer commercial ties during the coming years. If anything, the Level 3–Broadwing deal may decrease the odds of a buyout by Google. The Level 3–Broadwing deal is complex and requires a lot of integration. Companies rarely do such deals if they believe they are going to be bought out.

Level 3 will reduce its debt level by acquiring Broadwing, a step that could make it more attractive to an acquirer. Its debt level will fall from 9.7 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to about 7.7 times EBITDA. But that reduction still could be high enough to discourage a buyer.

Level 3 is expensive, with a market cap of $7 billion and $6.5 billion worth of debt. That means Level 3 would cost $13.5 billion, before an acquirer paid a premium. In all probability, Level 3 will remain independent for the present. The Broadwing deal, at least, makes that easier. In addition to improving the balance sheet, Level 3 is acquiring Broadwing's cash flow, which will be useful as the company's debt matures. It is due to pay off $140 million in 2008, $360 million in 2009, and the remainder of its debt between 2010 and 2013. The Broadwing deal will put more traffic from big corporate customers on the combined Level 3 network. That could improve operating profit margins from about 50% to the 60% to 65% range.

Cameraman poses a question to Chad Hurley, 29, and Steve Chen, 27, that goes unanswered: "What does (the deal) mean for the user community?"

That's what thousands of YouTubers are wondering. Will YouTube 2.0 still have room for the bedroom video makers that created the site's billion-dollar identity? Or will the little guy be crowded out by advertising and corporate involvement?

"We could have never built this without the community. That is what we're fiercely protecting," Julie Supan, the senior director of marketing at YouTube, said Wednesday. The YouTube community is also very protective -- including Richard Stern, better known as LazyDork, a rapping, dancing, opinion-spewing defender of the site's grass-roots nature.

"The Wild West feel of YouTube is already slipping away, and within a few weeks it likely will be gone altogether," says Stern. YouTube isn't as lawless as the old West, but it has served as the gateway to a new online frontier. Since its start in February 2005, YouTube has become the pre-eminent site for internet video, drawing a worldwide audience of 72.1 million in August.

After reading this type of thing in many places around the web, I have to ask these people so concerned about YouTube. What is it about YouTube you have personally paid for? How this much bandwidth was paid for at all still amazes me, not to mention the machines and infrastructure YouTube is riding on. Oh that's right I forget, everything on the internet is supposed to be free!

Since it was the `people' that made YouTube, why aren't they being paid billions?" wrote a user named winofiend. This is just too funny!

Three alleged software pirates face criminal copyright infringement charges for selling illegal copies of popular software titles on Craigslist. If convicted, the three New York-area men each face up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. All three are free on bail.

"I and other agents have observed numerous advertisements for the unlawful sale of pirated computer software over Craigslist ". FBI agent Michael Petronella stated in the complaint.

In each case, the defendants supplied a file with the software that contained the serial numbers for the program. Yesser went so far as to warn the undercover agent not to register the titles with the manufacturer. Instead, he told the agent how to install the software using "cracked keys" that came with the title.

Cracked software has been stripped of its internal copyright protections. The DoJ said in a statement Yesser also told the agent he worked with a group in Romania that cracked software and that "he could get anything."

In selling his illegal software, Lnu told an undercover agent his titles required not only the serial numbers he provided but also a key generator used to gain unauthorized access to a software title.

"I spoke to a representative of…Macromedia and provided the serial numbers for the Macromedia products (Lnu) sold and was informed by the representative that these serial numbers were pirated and not generated by Macromedia," the undercover agent stated in a deposition.

www.baltimore.com has run for two years since its last reboot, and has the longest time since reboot of any Windows 2000 site we find on the Internet.

Baltimore was an early evangelist of enterprise Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and briefly a FTSE-100 company during 2000. Although its business has considerably reduced in size, the www.baltimore.com site, which Alexa ranks in the busiest 50,000 sites on the internet, will have seen a considerable volume of traffic since it was last rebooted.

The web site's reliability is enabled by "a stable power source, good physical security, a webmaster who cooperates with the networks team and a proper screening firewall," said Keith O'Byrne, a network engineer with Baltimore Technologies.

Baltimore Technologies is based in Dublin, Ireland and provides security products and services to manage user identities and access, and assure the integrity of transactions through digital signatures.

Port80 Software, a Microsoft partner, has released a new survey showing that the Microsoft Internet Information Services 6 Web server has overtaken the Apache open-source Web server among Fortune 1000 Web sites.

In the survey released on Oct. 11, Port80 Software said IIS 6 more than doubled its market share over the last year, to 27 percent. However, IIS 5 remains the most popular Web server among Fortune 1000 users, according to the survey.

The Port80 survey also showed that Microsoft ASP.Net application server environments are used on 48.4 percent of Fortune 1000 sites.

Other platforms, including Java application server environments like IBM's WebSphere, BEA Systems's WebLogic, Sun Microsystems' JSP (JavaServer Pages), the open-source Tomcat platform, and technologies such as PHP and ColdFusion all combined to account for only 21.2 percent of Fortune 1000 site deployments, the survey said.

Port80's most recent and other surveys going back to 2003 can be found here. Also included Netcraft stats for October which take in all world wide stats and not just the Fortune 1000. It shows the same information and if nothing else can be said; It seems now a two server game, Apache or IIS and the others have dropped to barely a blip on the screen.

Juniper Networks on Oct. 18 2006 will seek to silence critics who complain about the company's lack of an Ethernet edge aggregation switch for service providers by launching its new X-Series product line.

The X-Series switch/router is built to optimize both Layer 2 and Layer 3 functions and provide high-density Ethernet interfaces. The 14-slot X960 chassis can accommodate up to 480 Gigabit Ethernet ports through a 40-port line card. It can also support 48 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports through a four-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet line card, according to sources close to Juniper, who asked not to be identified.

The product line is aimed at shoring up Juniper's position among Metro Ethernet service providers. The financial analysts are all over Juniper's back to get into the Layer 2 switching space.

It also provides a range of QOS (quality of service) features, including support for up to eight queues per port and up to four scheduling priorities as well as per-port shaping. The X960 will run the Junos operating system software.

Juniper is also planning to add a six-slot chassis to the X-Series line that can accommodate existing X960 line cards and other components. Also in the works for a later release are fine-grained queuing line cards supporting per-VLAN (virtual LAN) queuing. Further down the road, Juniper also plans to add support for SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) interfaces as well as a 32-port Gigabit Ethernet line card, sources said.

CBS Corp. and top online video site YouTube Inc. said on Monday they have struck a strategic content and advertising partnership.

The deal calls for CBS to offer YouTube users a variety of short-form video programming including news, sports, and entertainment divisions beginning this month, the companies said.

YouTube and CBS will share revenue from advertising sponsorships of CBS Videos, they said.

Google Inc. has laid the speculation to rest -- it is buying YouTube for $1.65 billion in a stock transaction announced Oct 9, 2006.

YouTube operates a wildly popular Web site showing original videos that range from amateurish to professional. It will continue to operate independently after the Google acquisition "to preserve its successful brand and passionate community," Google said. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Although YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley had earlier insisted that YouTube wasn't for sale, that view changed because Google will allow YouTube to operate independently, he said during a conference call to explain the acquisition.

Bringing YouTube into the ever-growing Google empire will mean that users have a "better, more comprehensive experience" when they upload, watch and share videos, Google said. It will also provide more opportunities for professional content owners to get their work out to a wider audience, Google and YouTube executives said.

The two companies have similar corporate values in that they are both committed to users first and also to innovation, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said. "Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service," he said. The deal is "an exciting next step" for Google, he said, adding that the company expects other deals that are related to providing video over the Internet. YouTube has "built a remarkable team" that is "a perfect example of the kind of people we like to work with."

YouTube will benefit from Google's global reach and technology know-how, Hurley said. "We're excited by this announcement and thrilled to join forces with the Google team," he said. The acquisition will boost YouTube's new video content platform, which is expected to launch in the next month, he said.

The US Government stunned the online gambling industry over the weekend by passing laws that effectively ban the services from their biggest market.

The $US6 billion ($8 billion) industry went into meltdown over the news, with shares in UK-listed PartyGaming, 888 Holdings and SportingBet - which has operations in Australia - plummeting in early London trading overnight. Also in the line of fire is Betcorp, which is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and, like the UK-listed companies, counts on US customers for most of its business.

The US Senate, which was expected to block the legislation, sneaked the bill through early Saturday morning US time, following some last-minute manoeuvring ahead of the Senate break for mid-term elections. The bill outlaws the processing of bets for online gaming companies, effectively preventing US banks and credit card companies from doing business with the operators. It could be signed into law by President Bush as early as this week.

The bill excludes US-based online betting on services like horse racing and lotteries and has no impact on American casinos and other gambling operations. The US Government has been in a tussle with the industry for more than a decade, dating back to when foreign operators accepted bets from US citizens over the phone from offshore operations in the Caribbean.

These online sports betting, poker and casino operators have been drawn to the London Stock Exchange, where investors have profited from the explosive growth in US internet wagers, despite their questionable legal status. That is expected to change. According to UK reports, 888 Holdings, PartyGaming, and SportingBet are expected to halt their US-facing operations. Shares in PartyGaming slid 64.5p, or 59 per cent, to 43.5p in early London trading. SportingBet shares were down 69 per cent to 58p and 888 Holdings 48 per cent to 76p.

The latest move is not entirely surprising given the hard line already being taken by US authorities. SportingBet's former chairman, Peter Dicks, was arrested last month on a warrant issued by Louisiana State Police, but was released by a New York court recently. Mr Dicks faced being extradited to the state on charges that include gambling by computer, a charge that could land him a year in jail.

Billionaire investor and dot-com veteran Mark Cuban had harsh words on Thursday for YouTube, the online site that lets people share video clips, saying only a "moron" would purchase the wildly popular start-up.

Cuban, co-founder of HDNet and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, also said YouTube would eventually be "sued into oblivion" because of copyright violations. "They are just breaking the law," Cuban told a group of advertisers in New York. "The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue."

YouTube, based in San Mateo, California, specializes in serving up short videos created by everyday people. Its popularity, with more than 100 million video showings daily, has spurred speculation the firm will be sold or taken public. YouTube company representatives were not immediately available to respond to Cuban's comments.

YouTube, which has nearly one-third of the U.S. Web video audience, three times that of Google Inc., or twice that of News Corp's MySpace, has been working on signing licensing deals with music companies and TV networks to ensure they are paid when users view their content.

This month YouTube unveiled its first deal to distribute music videos legally from a major music company by agreeing a deal with Warner Music Group, home to pop stars James Blunt and Madonna.

In other remarks, meanwhile, the often-controversial Cuban also told advertisers that the reach of YouTube is limited, particularly when it comes to user-generated videos.

Six men have been charged with orchestrating a phishing scheme that targeted AOL users, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.

The men are accused of harvesting thousands of AOL e-mail addresses and then infecting victims' PCs with malicious software that would prevent them from logging on to AOL without entering their credit card numbers, bank account numbers and other personal information. Under the scam, victims would receive fake e-mail greeting cards that would silently infect their computers with the log-on software, according to a grand jury indictment. Victims were also spammed with phoney e-mail messages that claimed to have come from AOL's billing department.

Due to a central server meltdown, your credit card information was lost," one such e-mail read, according to the indictment. "In order to enjoy your AOL experience and keep your account active, you must enter your credit card information within 24 hours." Some of the fake greeting cards claimed to come from Web sites such as Hallmark.com or BlueMountain.com, the indictment states.

AOL users appear to have been the primary targets of the fraud, but others may also have been targeted, according to Tom Carson, a spokesman for the United States Attorney's office for the District of Connecticut. "The investigation is ongoing," he said. "I think we can say the bulk of those targeted were AOL users, but we can't say with 100 percent certainty that they were the only victims," he said.

The accused are believed to have defrauded thousands of individuals, U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said in a statement. "These are insidious crimes that wreak havoc on the lives of victims, and we will seek strict terms of imprisonment." The alleged scam was conducted over a two-year period, beginning in 2004, the U.S. Attorney said. Proceeds from the crime were used to purchase gaming consoles, laptop computers and gift cards, the indictment states.

The men were actually indicted on fraud charges last week by a federal grand jury in New Haven, but the charges were not made public until Wednesday, when three of the men pleaded guilty.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is doing more harm than good and must be overhauled, Alan Greenspan told a technology audience in Boston. Sarbox requires the CEO to certify the financial statement. That's new and that's helpful. Having said that, the rest we could do without. Section 404 is a nightmare." Greenspan's remarks came at a meeting of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council here on Sept. 25. Greenspan was Chairman of the Federal Reserve board for 18 years, having retired in early 2006.

He said the evidence is clear that Sarbanes-Oxley strictures are driving initial public stock offerings away from the New York Stock Exchange and to the London Stock Exchange. Increasingly, he said, people recognize that Sarbanes-Oxley must be changed. "The pressure on getting 404 significantly altered is rising and is taking on a critical mass." But he added, "You do not get a bill altered when the two names [Sarbanes and Oxley] are in the process of retiring. People are waiting until they are gone. Then, hopefully, changes will be made. Any bill that passes both houses almost unanimously, cannot be a good piece of legislation."

Greenspan addressed other technology and business issues including the state of the economy. He said the recent tapering off does not indicate a recession. "The American economy is slowing down," he said, noting high inventories and the contraction of the housing market. However, he said the recent decline in gas prices was good news and on balance, a recession is not imminent. "We're not as good as we were in recent years, but the signs of this thing folding just aren't there," he said.

"Globalization is a critical determinant of economic activity. We're no longer a separate economy. Formerly, everything was here. That is not the case today." The single greatest force in the new global economy is China, he said. "China has been moving toward capitalism without ever mentioning that's what they're doing. They've invented euphemisms to describe what they're doing as not capitalism, and they're failing.

"The jobs we are losing to China are in obsolescent industries. We ought to be doing what we do best, which is conceptual. …The value of intellectual skills is rising, and the value of manual labor is contracting." Although that trend favors the United States for now, he said our educational system isn't producing enough people at the highest levels.

"The educational system is in deep trouble. I think we've gotten very sloppy in how we're teaching math and science." One remedy would be to open up immigration for high-tech workers, he said. "It is psychologically inconceivable to me that someone who gets a Ph.D. in the United States has the psychology to be a terrorist."

AT&T announced a strategic move last week that might be a win-win for US workers and AT&T home broadband customers. The telecom giant announced that it will do away with its foreign call centers that have long been ridiculed by customers and will instead create 2,000 new unionized jobs in the United States to handle customer support calls.

The new customer support positions will pay $30,000 a year and employees will receive benefits. AT&T will begin filling the new positions in mid-2007 so customers still have another 8 or 9 months to deal with the foreign call centers. Information Week reports:

But customer pressure to improve service may also have been a factor. Users of AT&T's home DSL service frequently pillory the company on online bulletin boards and blogs. A poster on DSLreports.com complains that AT&T's "India tech support doesn't know anything." AT&T's spokesman declined to identify the vendor currently handling the company's offshore DSL support.

Intel cutting around 10,000 of its employees.  As expected, the company today announced that it will be laying off 10,500 jobs, which is around 10 percent of its work force. Intel hopes it can save around $5 billion over the next two years -- and the job eliminations are a critical part of the company's restructuring. Almost 5,000 of the affected jobs have already been eliminated.

Intel is hoping to turn around sinking profits while trying to raise efficiency in its battle to take back market share from AMD. Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said “These actions, while difficult, are essential to Intel becoming a more agile and efficient company, not just for this year or the next, but for years to come.”

Most of the job cuts by the Santa Clara-based company will impact the management, marketing and information technology departments, according to Intel. Manufacturing, design and other departments will suffer job cuts sometime in 2007. Intel expects severance costs to total around $200 million. This is going to be the largest number of job cuts by Intel in 21 years.  Even though the loss of 10,500 jobs is bad, analysts expected numbers in the 15,000 range.

In 1954, Popular Mechanics showed its readers what a home computer might look like by the year (2004). I am sure that everyone will get a kick out of this blast from the past.

ATT1.jpeg (122.63 KB)

We were going to post an article of my experiences with just how bad Fedex and UPS service has become. We have recently had a problem with UPS saying they could not find a place of business in a downtown district of Spokane Washington of all places. I ask the lady on the phone to give me directions to the UPS building and I would pick it up. So she gives me the directions from our place of business to the UPS depot.

We could not even believe it! How can you give me directions from a place you cannot find to yours?..........

Fedex is too good to believe. For years I thought this was one of the best run companies in the United States. I had a hardware issue with the new Woodcrest Xeon machines which is another story one I will post later. But I have an RMA on the server and SuperMicro did their job and shipped the machine striaght away. They clearly missed the cut off for that day with Fedex. The product was shipped over night.

So we are in our fourth day now waiting for their overnight service. The product started in San Jose California. Which could have made it in two day's by truck easy to Spokane Washington. But No, Fedex in their brilliant wisdom fly's it to Tennessee, Fedex hub. It sits there doing nothing all day Fedex claiming it was a weather delay. Which checking weather between to two points shows nothing that could stop air traffic like this. So I check commerical airlines for delays between the two points and not a single one is reported.

The fact is that it seems very common that Fedex will use weather delay as their excuse for incompedence.

Please Comment: "Tell your horror stories, We know how many of them are out there"! Perhaps thousands of them might drive the point home.

British police arrested a man and woman in London on Saturday as part of a wide-ranging investigation into holiday Web site fraud that has left nearly 3,000 people out of pocket.

The woman in her thirties, and the man in his 60s, were detained at separate addresses in London and are being questioned by fraud squad officers, the Metropolitan Police said. The fake Web sites; sunmedresorts.com, unbeatableholidays.com, holidaydaysforunder200pounds.com, holidayrez.com and holidayez.com were all used in the con.

The fraud worked by enticing people to buy non-existent holidays and then disappearing with the cash. The Association of British Travel Agents has warned people to be careful about buying trips online. The organization advises people to check its own Web site or that of other affiliated organisations like Air Travel Organisers Licensing to make sure any holiday firm is bona fide. 

We would recommend NatureTrek for wildlife holidays...

As you should know, on Windows 2003 Server, CDONTS was deprecated and CDOSYS is the new one Microsoft email sender component (read more on Microsoft Website)

However, some ASP scripts will require CDONTS and customers can need CDONTS installed.

So, to install CDONTS

1) First, be sure IIS Simple SMTP server is installed or MailEnable. Make sure it is running.
2) Download and unzip cdonts.zip (172.02 KB) to C:Windows\System32 folder
3) Register the CDONTS.DLL component on your server by clicking start >> run >> type :
regsvr32 c:winntsystem32cdonts.dll >> ENTER

Boeing Co. on Thursday said it will close its loss-making, high-speed broadband communications service, Connexion by Boeing, taking charges of up to $320 million in the second half. The closure, which was widely expected, marks an expensive retreat for Boeing's six-year project to put satellite-based Internet connections on its commercial jets.

Most airlines, especially in the United States, held off buying the service in the hope that cheaper, cellular network-based Internet services will end up dominating the market. In June, a unit of U.S. low-cost carrier JetBlue Airways Corp. was one of two companies that won licenses to supply wireless airborne communications services.

Boeing said it will take a pretax charge of about $290 million in the third quarter and the balance in the fourth quarter, as it writes down assets of the unit and pays termination fees to customers. Germany's Lufthansa, Scandinavian carrier SAS, All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines and Singapore Airlines were the only major carriers offering the service on flights.

Have you ever wondered why phone companies don't seem interested in trying to prevent the theft of mobile phones? If you have ever lost, or had one stolen, and if you are on a plan, you still have to pay the plan approximately up to 24 months, and you have to buy another handset and enter into another contract. This is more revenue for the phone company.

There is a simple way of making lost or stolen mobiles useless to thieves and the phone companies know about it, but keep it quiet.

To check your mobile phone's serial number, key in the following on your phone:

star-hash-zero-six-hash ( * # 0 6 # )

and a fifteen digit code will appear on the screen. This is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it safe. Should your mobile phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset, so even if the thief changes the sim card, your phone will be totally useless.

You probably won't get your phone back, but at lease you know that whomever stole it can't use / sell it either.

If everybody did this, there would be no point in stealing mobile phones.

The best way of finding out your optimum MTU is by pinging your ISP with packets of data to see what size you can send without the data being fragmented.

The ping command you will need to use is: ping -f -l [packet size] [www.Domainname.com]
where [packet size] is the size of the packet
start at say 1472, and work your way down until you get a responsive ping from the highest number you can.

"Packet needs to be fragmented but DF not set" indicates that the packet size is too large.
In the example above it shows that my highest responsive ping is 1402.
From this we need to add on 28 to get the maximum MTU figure.
(28 being the header size for IP + ICMP)

Do not go above 1472. (1472 + 28 = 1500 MTU) since 1500 is the maximum MTU.

syntax  PING [options] destination_host

Learn More Here.

Power usage at fast-growing server farms became an issue for Congress last week. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring a federal study of ways to improve the energy efficiency of servers and data centers.

The legislation, backed by IT vendors and approved by a 414-4 House vote, now goes to the Senate. If enacted, it would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to recommend incentives and voluntary programs to cut power consumption at data centers in the federal government and the private sector.

Rep. Michael J. Rogers (R-Mich.), the bill's sponsor, said that he hopes the EPA study will build support for energy efficiency ratings for servers modeled on the Energy Star ratings for home appliances. It may also lead to incentives for users who buy energy-efficient servers and to rules governing servers bought by federal agencies, Rogers said.

Major IT vendors are already working on a specification for measuring the energy efficiency of servers at different performance levels so buyers can comparison-shop. In May, Standard Performance Evaluation Corp., a nonprofit standards group in Warrenton, Va., set up a committee to prepare a standard for ratification sometime next year.

"There needs to be a standard way of measuring so customers can compare efficiency between servers," said Andrew Fanara, a team leader for the EPA's Energy Star program. "Right now, they can't do that in any standardized way."

But it remains to be seen whether energy ratings will alter the buying habits of IT managers, who may be constrained by business requirements for processing speed.

YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its "snack-sized" video fare.

Since springing from out of nowhere late last year, YouTube has come to hold the leading position in online video with 29 percent of the U.S. multimedia entertainment market, according to the latest weekly data from Web measurement site Hitwise.

YouTube videos account for 60 percent of all videos watched online, the company said. Videos are delivered free on YouTube and the company is still working on developing advertising and other means of generating revenue to support the business.

In June, 2.5 billion videos were watched on YouTube, which is based in San Mateo, California and has just over 30 employees. More than 65,000 videos are now uploaded daily to YouTube, up from around 50,000 in May, the company said.

Stevens, the chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, was speaking perhaps metaphorically during a rambling argument against a net neutrality amendment to a broadband bill. Stevens' apparent point: The Internet could be easily clogged with junk, and broadband providers should be able to separate their own content from streaming video and huge personal e-mail files.

In part, Stevens, an Alaska Republican, said, "The Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes." Stevens continued: "And if you don't understand that those tubes can be filled, and if they're filled when you put your message in it, it gets in line, it's gonna be delayed by anyone who puts into that tube enormous amounts of material." Stevens went on to say that his staff sent him an "Internet" that was apparently delayed by Net congestion. (He may have meant that his staff sent him an e-mail.)

On an 11-11 vote, the committee rejected the amendment, which would have prevented broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from charging extra based on the type of content transmitted by Internet-based companies.

Stewart's riff on net neutrality is currently on YouTube.com. (Warning: Stewart uses a bit of off-color humor, as usual for him.) Stevens is also parodied in a techno dance mix making the rounds on the Internet.

A bit of controversy erupted this week when the blog and community Web site MySpace.com, owned by conservative businessman Rupert Murdoch, pulled another song parody, but the song was back on the site as of Thursday.

Top 10 cities for the tech sector:

1. Seattle • City population: 570,430 • Companies that call it home: Amazon, RealNetworks, AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile • The details: The June 2006 Dice Report ranks Seattle No. 10 in available jobs, with 1,901 listed, up over 300 from one year ago. Indeed.com ranks Seattle No. 4 in number of tech jobs per capita, with 13 jobs per 1000 people. And a WashTech/CWA report issued this week calls Seattle a "bright spot" of technology growth in a recovering market.

2. Atlanta • City population: 419,122 • Companies that call it home: Cingular, EarthLink, Internet Security Systems • The details: The June 2006 Dice Report ranks Atlanta No. 9 in available jobs, with 2,366 listed. Indeed.com ranks Atlanta No. 1 in tech number of jobs per capita, with 17 per 1000 people.

3. Boston • City population: 569,165 • Companies that call it home: Akamai Technologies, EMC Corp., CMGI venture capital • The details: The June 2006 Dice Report ranks Boston No. 7 in available jobs, with 2,699 listed, up over 400 from one year ago. Indeed.com ranks Boston No. 5 in the number of tech jobs per capita, with 11 per 1000 people. WashTech/CWA, in a report issued this week, gives Boston props for holding its own in IT job creation after the recession.

4. Washington, D.C. • City population: 553,523 • Companies that call it home: Sprint Nextel, America Online (nearby), Computer Sciences Corporation • The details: The June 2006 Dice Report ranks Washington No. 2 in available jobs, with 2,548 listed. Indeed.com ranks Washington No. 3 in the number of tech jobs per capita, with 14 jobs per 1000 people. WashTech/CWA, in a report issued this week, gives Washington props for holding its own in IT job creation after the recession.

5. Dallas • City population: 1,210,393 • Companies that call it home: Aspen Communications, CompUSA, Electronic Data Systems, Kinkos • The details: WashTech/CWA, in a report issued this week, gives Dallas props for hold its own in IT job creation after the recession. Dallas is home to the "technology corridor," the source of nearly 100,000 jobs before the recession.

6. Philadelphia • City population: 1,470,151 • Companies that call it home: Unisys, SAP America, Verizon • The details: The June 2006 Dice Report ranks Philadelphia No. 6 in available jobs, with 3,345 listed, up approximately 500 from one year ago. Indeed.com ranks Philadelphia No. 13 in the number of tech jobs per capita, with eight jobs per 1000 people.

7. Chicago • City population: 2,862,244 • Companies that call it home: Accenture, US Robotics, Telephone and Data Systems, Click Commerce, Motorola (nearby) • The details: The June 2006 Dice Report ranks Chicago No. 5 in available jobs, with 3,648 listed, up almost 700 from one year ago.

8. Orlando • City population: 205,648 • Companies that call it home: Lockheed Martin, Symantec, Electronic Arts (nearby) • The details: Indeed.com ranks Orlando No. 9 in the number of jobs per capita, with 10 technology jobs per 1000 people. Joel Kotkin, a writer on economic and political trends, lists Orlando among areas ripe to become the next Silicon Valley, noting its quick economic and population growth, and according to Inc. Magazine, among the reasons is that Florida has a job growth of 9.6 percent between 2001-2005, the third highest in the country.

9. Los Angeles • City population: 3,845,541 • Companies that call it home: DirecTV, Belkin, Univision, Memorex • The details: The June 2006 Dice Report ranks Lose Angeles No. 4 in available jobs, with 5,218 listed, up over 700 from one year ago. NimbleCat.com, a tech job-tracking service, finds that Los Angeles comes in first place in tech job creation.

10. Charlotte • City population: 651,359 • Companies that call it home: SPX Corporation, Time Warner Cable, Bank of America • The details: Indeed.com ranks Charlotte No. 7 in the number of tech jobs per capita, with 10 technology jobs per 1000 people. Inc. Magazine in its Boomtowns '06 report calls Charlotte the 11th best place in the United States to do business. The cost of living in Charlotte is 30 percent lower than in the San Francisco Bay Area.

While some countries operate a rather censored internet specifically China. It seems the greed of some US broadband providers think the logical approach is toll roads or preferred routes. Speaking at the World Wide Web conference in Edinburgh on Tuesday morning, Berners-Lee gave his views on the growing battle over Net neutrality.

It's better and more efficient for us all if we have a separate market where we get our connectivity, and a separate market where we get our content. Information is what I use to make all my decisions. Not just what to buy, but how to vote, Berners-Lee told journalists.

During a conference call on Wednesday, representatives from Amazon.com, Google, universities participating in the Internet2 project and liberal advocacy groups all called for strict laws that would prohibit what they view as a two-tier Internet.

"Tomorrow is a very important day for the future of the Internet," said Paul Misener, an Amazon vice president. He warned that phone and cable companies will run roughshod over their customers "unless Congress acts to stop them" by approving alternative legislation prepared by Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota.

I work for a cable telecommunications operator. As I read the article "Power Struggle" [April 3], I noticed some things that remain popular in data centers but have long since been abandoned in our facilities:

1. Raised floors: In any facility older than five years, they will be full of unused cable. Since the cables are hidden, no one removes them. We've gone to overhead cable racks. All cabling must be dressed when installed, is visible at all times and is easily removed. The use of this as an air plenum was identified in the article.

2. Closed racks: Where we have controlled access, we use open-frame racks, whether 23-in. C channel for telephony equipment or 19-in. cabinet style for data and CATV. No tops, no doors, no sides (except on each end of the bay), no fans (except in the equipment itself). Again, it forces you to be neat with wiring: It's all in view. The front of the bay gets the air from overhead, while the rear (wiring side) gets the return air draw.

Full Article Here

Though the cable guy has two points I personally find true, the issue of  3. AC power is not on the list for good reason. I think the cable guy should read this article coming from some experts about doing this with servers. I personally am part of the other school of thought on this issue for good reason. The other 2 telco issues I would agree however. See Article here

In the article mentioned below you can gain insight to how noise is just as important as the Megapixel value when deciding what camera to purchase. Many novices think that the high megapixel count is the only factor in purchasing a camera. Yet noise is just as important, one must not forget that everyone is a camera expert. I have seen many people start web sites claiming to be a photographer. They own a single digital camera no lights no studio nothing else that would indicate they are a photographer. There is more to being a photographer than buying a camera and building a web site. The fact is as every photographer will tell you experience helps. A digital camera makes it easier to gain experience in that the more shots you take the better you should become. But too many think photography should be nothing more than point and click.

Read Article here

The agreement (click for PDF) covers anyone who bought, received or used CDs containing what was revealed to be flawed digital rights management (DRM) software after Aug. 1, 2003. Those customers can file a claim and receive certain benefits, such as a nonprotected replacement CD, free downloads of music from that CD and additional cash payments.

The court action picked up last fall when security researchers discovered vulnerabilities posed by two pieces of software, First4Internet's XCP and SunnComm's MediaMax, which are automatically installed on a user's computer upon loading certain Sony BMG music CDs. The software's presence was masked by a "rootkit" that can make the PC more vulnerable to viruses and other hacker attacks.

The software also allegedly transmitted information about the listener's computer use back to Sony BMG, although a company-commissioned privacy assessment later determined that it collected only "non-personal information tied to a particular album and its usage."  "Full Article"

What is hard to understand, is how a corporation can get away with this and no one goes to prison?

Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented and then gave away the World Wide Web, warns that Internet crime and anti-competitive behavior need to be fought tooth and nail. A lot of new technology to make the Web smarter and easier to use is becoming available after many years.

Tim Berners-Lee personal view is that a lot of it is coming together now. That is very gratifying to see. We're moving into another mode with established technology. The whole industrial environment is more exciting. We had the bubble and the burst, but now you see a low of young companies again. There's renewed enthusiasm among VCs (venture capitalists) to invest in start-ups. I get a feeling of upsurge in activity.

Elements are already filtering through, such as web sites that do not have to be refreshed entirely when only parts are being updated. A new query language, SPARQL (pronounced "Sparkle"), is designed to make Web pages easier for machines to read, allowing all sorts of different data to be put to work on the Web. 

Full Article

Of course, nobody knows more about the difficulties communicating with non-technical people than the help desk staff.

Many tech's are guilty of using jargon they are comfortable with. Clients often say, when you talk about technology, you use jargon. Sure, the jargon is effective, but it's not second nature to others! Tech people literally have to throw out the jargon [to effectively communicate].  Which is often difficult since the novice user does not even understand that this is what it is referred to daily world wide. Even simple terms like 'protocol' can seem daunting for the novice. Word's like browser or even mail client can toss them over the edge.

Even users with a greater amount of technology, or terminology knowledge pose their own set of difficulties.

There are still other users that think they know what's going on and when you correct them, they often get offended. You have to find a way to make them comfortable and relaxed so they'll trust you so that their ego does not get in the way. Often this group do not easily work with a female tech no matter how sharp she may be. This has been observed many times and female tech's are then understandly on the defense as well.

In addition, not all clients are interested in increasing their knowledge. Some people just don't want to learn and are very comfortable just getting others to fix things. Others are more interested in learning.

Even beyond jargon, communication between Tech's and clients can also be negatively affected by hurried interactions. Tech people who fix the problems for clients take the learning out of the process, in the end create more work for themselves. Though at the time it seem's that it is quicker to simply do it. A call will certainly happen again 6 months from that day with some reference about something you fixed last time. As if you will remember them, and that day when moving quickly putting out fires.

Both sides need awareness of how the other half thinks. Tech people often have trouble getting into the heads of their users. This causes stress, and from psychology we know that the more stress you are under, the less you are able to perform. At the same time, an ongoing theme in complaints from tech people is the unrealistic expectations from clients.

Computer guys are smart and can fix a tremendous number of problems daily. There's no way for them to know everything however. Nor can they force Microsoft to bring back the Office tool bar. Nor can they stay with you on the phone, while you rebuild your machine.

Users most often do something to "break" their computer but don't want to admit it. Like there will be some form of punishment for their error. No one will get grounded or recieve the paddle it is only an mistake! Techs typically refer to this as a EUE, or 'End User Error'. However, both sides make errors or mistakes, and allowing the ego to get in the way only removes our ability to laugh at our own simple mistakes.

My favorite user complaint is that somehow their password was changed. Tech's say don't tell anyone, but whenever we have free time, our favorite game is to randomly change user passwords—like we really have time to do that. [Just] tell me you forgot or lost your password. It happens and it's nothing to be ashamed of, or is it anything new. The tech's have likely heard it all.

Tech's typically should be glad the average user is ignorant, If clients ever figured out how easy this is they would be without a job.

The California earthquake of April 18, 1906 ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time. Today, its importance comes more from the wealth of scientific knowledge derived from it than from its sheer size. Rupturing the northernmost 296 miles (477 kilometers) of the San Andreas fault from northwest of San Juan Bautista to the triple junction at Cape Mendocino, the earthquake confounded contemporary geologists with its large, horizontal displacements and great rupture length. Indeed, the significance of the fault and recognition of its large cumulative offset would not be fully appreciated until the advent of plate tectonics more than half a century later. Analysis of the 1906 displacements and strain in the surrounding crust led Reid (1910) to formulate his elastic-rebound theory of the earthquake source, which remains today the principal model of the earthquake cycle.

Grand Challenge. In 2001, Congress set a goal that by the year 2015, one-third of military combat ground vehicles must be capable of driving themselves autonomously. In other words, only on-board computer control without any human input or assistance is used. Unlike the Mars Pathfinder and Predator Drone that transmit video back to a screen at some remote location and a human then decides what to do, autonomous vehicles must possess all of the sensory and intelligence capability to make their own decisions. The motivation for this Congressional action was simple - to save soldiers' lives. While the entries were no doubt faced with many challenges along the way the fact is the prize was won.

In the months leading up to the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, Sebastian Thrun, the head of Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Lab, could not know whether his team's robotic vehicle, nicknamed Stanley, would triumph. Given the disheartening results of the 2004 Grand Challenge, in which no competitor had even made it through a quarter of the course, Thrun might well have been only cautiously optomistic. Yet when interviewed by NOVA producers Jason Spingarn-Koff and Joe Seamans, this robotics enthusiast was brimming with excitement, confident that the 2005 race would herald a new era of vehicles that drive themselves.

Driverless vehicles compete in a 130-mile race across the Mojave Desert. NOVA site

If you ever wanted a place to organize your playlists and pod casts listen anywhere in the world.

This is absolutely a brillant idea! Though it is currently in beta, we have been playing with it for days and it is seems flawless so far. If the idea even remotely attracts your attention then go sign up for your own portable playlist it is all free.  No ads all over the place, simple well layed out interface which just works. PortablePlaylist.com

Hollywood, Interrupted reports that sources inside Paramount and South Park studios say  the scheduled repeat of one of my fave South Park episodes, "Trapped in the Closet" - the one that satirizes Scientology and has R. Kelly singing to  Tom Cruise to "come out of the closet" - was pulled due to Cruise threatening parent company Viacom. Cruise reportedly threatened to pull advertising for his upcoming film, Mission: Impossible: 3  if the South Park episode was aired. 

In their long history with Comedy Central, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have never been censored, not even for their infamous "Bloody Mary episode", but Cruise throws his weight around and suddenly the boys have their mouths duct-taped? Following the news that Scientologist Isaac Hayes, who voiced The Chef on the show, quit because he was offended by the Scientology spoof, this story, if it proves to be true, doesn't really serve to make Hollywood Scientologists look like good sports, eh?

South Park has poked fun at every single religon on the planet in their bits. Did Hayes and Cruise get their panties in a twist over any of those episodes? Nope. But when Parker and Stone turn their lens to an examination of the foundations of Scientology and put Tom Cruise and John Travolta in a closet together, Cruise suddenly brings on the threats? The irony is that you can view the funnier parts of the episode on Comedy Central's website anyhow or in flash here. Parker and Stone are rumored to have been muzzled by the big dogs on the truth around the episode being pulled, but knowing those two, I wouldn't expect them to just take this sitting down. I smell a South Park episode with Cruise as a Scientology terrorist coming around the bend...

The US Department of Justice and the Toronto Police have busted a major child pornography network, leading to the arrest of 27 individuals in England, the US, Canada and Australia.

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a press conference that undercover investigators had infiltrated an internet chat room being used to trade images of child pornography.

The content included live streaming video of adults sexually molesting children and infants.

"The behavior in these chat rooms, and the images many of these defendants sent around the world through P2P file sharing programs and private IM services, are the worst imaginable forms of child pornography," said Gonzales.

"This investigation is an example of how American law enforcement can and will work side-by-side with our international law enforcement partners to shut down these rings and protect young, vulnerable victims from the horrors of sexual abuse."

Gonzales added that those arrested had not yet been convicted, but that the department intended to prosecute them and others engaged in similar practices " to the fullest extent of the law".

Seven of the abused children have been identified and rescued, one as young as 18 months old. One chat room member who called himself 'Acidburn' had streamed live abuse over the internet.

The US hosts 40 per cent of the world's child pornography, according to figures released last week by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Russia was the second most used country, hosting over a quarter of such images. 

Peter Robbins, chief executive of the IWF, praised US internet providers for reacting promptly when notified and taking down sites and message boards hosting such content.

He added that so much content is posted in the US because of the country's freedom of information laws.

"It is difficult to see abusing children as freedom of speech," he said. " Most US ISPs will take content down, but there's a huge amount of work to do in Russia."

If you are anything like me, nothing will put a frown on your face like an automated phone system. This site has the solution for many of these stupid ill thoughtout phone systems that do little but make their customers angry.

Our goal is to improve the quality of customer service and phone support in the US. This free website is run by volunteers and is powered by over one million consumers who demand high quality phone support from the companies that they use.

We will soon publish a list of the best and worst mass-market consumer companies in the US based on how long it takes to get to a human on the phone and on the quality of support received.

Please help us grow our customer support ratings database by taking a moment to rate the quality of support you receive when calling a consumer company you use: "GET A HUMAN"

Google Inc.'s shares fell to their lowest levels in 4-1/2 months on Friday as analysts bemoaned recent communication miscues and its refusal to be more open about its finances.

Though analysts say they are confident of the growth outlook for Google's search advertising business and its place in the industry, they fear that public perception is turning negative for the company, which once seemingly could do no wrong.

The company has made a series of stumbles that have confused investors over whether the company is suffering from slowing growth. When a company has invested as much as google has in infrastructure as of late, it seems few remember that this type of investment takes some period to even deploy.

Google's stock touched an intraday low of $331.55 on Friday, a new low since its upward momentum was broken in January. It closed down $5.50, or 1.6 percent, at $337.50.

Analysts are forecasting a deceleration of Google's growth rate to still highly respectable levels of 50 to 60 percent for 2006 and around 40 percent in 2007. While this adjustment has many people running it is more like following the cattle. Long term growth is likely on target and in this model there will be oversurges and take the money and run investors.

But Google's do-no-evil image has come under siege by critics from many directions over the compromises it made to enter the Chinese market and the handling of its communications with Wall Street in the wake of last week's analyst meeting.

Among the missteps was the apparently unintentional disclosure of future product plans and financial targets in a Wall St presentation last week. The company has instructed investors that the financial targets were outdated and reemphasized its policy of not commenting on its outlook. This was exacerbated by hints of slowing growth that Google Chief Financial Officer George Reyes made in late February.

I have had a few requests for a bat file that can rename an zip archive as a scheduled task with the date that it renamed it. Below is the results of my effort since it worked so well I thought I would post it. This method actually does Month, Day, Year, though simply rearranging the three date blocks between the % % will give you what you want.

@E:
@cd "E:\Archive\bak_logs\"
ren Log_archive.zip %DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%-%DATE:~10,4%-log.zip

At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. The FBI is charging him with carrying weapons of math instruction. Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Gonzalez said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'there are 3 sides to every triangle'."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes".

The complex development of the reseller hosting business, and the relative ease with which just about anyone can create private-labeled hosting company has created a great deal of healthy competition within the industry - a situation that tends to benefit the average hosting customer. Unfortunately for that average customer, the ease of setting up a Web hosting business means that there is also no shortage of pretenders.

And for every unqualified or unreliable Web hosting company, there are dozens - at least - of dissatisfied customers, many of them inclined to believe that Web hosts are thieves, guilty of false advertising, poor performance and unreliable support.

Many of those customers are guilty, too, of failing to research before making their purchases, or being sucked in by low prices. The "buyer beware" principle applies in Web hosting as much as in any other business.

But as buyers do become more aware, even well-meaning Web hosts may discover that they set off alarms for some of those researching customers, coming close to making claims that are becoming more commonly recognized as literally too good to be true. If someone offers everything but the kitchen sink for $4.95 per month you will get exactly what you pay for.  Just take a moment to think how much time this company can provide for $4.95 per month.  Full story

After several years of what some considered VeriSign's (verisign.com) bullying of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (icann.org) through lawsuits, the two reached a settlement this week.

The deal, which ICANN passed in a 9-5 vote, allows VeriSign to raise the cost of .com domain by 7 percent per year through to 2012. Critics say the deal, which was negotiated as part of a settlement regarding legal action between the two companies, essentially gives VeriSign a monopoly over the domain name market.

This overrides VeriSign and ICANN's former contract that would have maintained the current pricing on .com domain name registration until it expired in November 2007.

The settlement has sparked an outcry from much of the Internet community, particularly from domain registrars like BulkRegister (bulkregister.com) and Godaddy (godaddy.com). Both companies made announcements voicing their indignation over the passing of the .com agreement.

Leading the opposition is the Coalition for ICANN Transparency (cfit.info), a group of individuals, organizations and companies concerned about the lack of visibility into the activities and operations of the Internet governing body.

"CFIT played an extraordinary role and continues to play an extraordinarily important role as an organizing influence," says CFIT spokesperson John Berard. "We consider ourselves the whiteboard for the industry in thinking through its concerns and potential solutions."

CFIT has criticized the .com agreement since its proposal last September, calling it just one of the many clear-cut reasons why ICANN cannot operate fairly on behalf of consumers and other intranet stakeholders.

We think that the contract should run its course, that the contract should be put up to bid, and that there should be no linkage between settling litigation and assigning the .com registry name."

The only people who didn't have any objection to [the .com] agreement were the other registries like .info and .uk and .us," says Berard. "They figured that if VeriSign got these sweetheart arrangements, they would get them as well."

Despite the passing of the .com deal, Berard says that CFIT is not finished fighting. It will continue its efforts against the agreement on Capitol Hill and at the Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice.

CFIT's suit against ICANN and VeriSign will certainly continue especially in light of the fact that the judge in the case has upheld our antitrust claims.

The organization may have a long road of litigation ahead of it, but things are looking somewhat hopeful. US District Court Judge Whyte issued his final order on Tuesday supporting CFIT's antitrust claims and dismissing VeriSign's motion to dismiss for lack of venue. 

Increasing prices without justification, allowing a monopoly to expand without review and giving VeriSign perpetual ownership of the .COM registry were wrong when they was first proposed and they're still wrong!!!

The .COM money scam. A monopoly for VeriSign. What to do when $450 million is not enough?

Here’s a quick and light .COM registry economics lesson.
This article will help you understand the enormity of the scam about to be pulled off by VeriSign – the .COM registry operator.

First, there are four players involved here:

1. ICANN. This acronym stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. They approve registry and registrar deals. The have the ability to approve or disapprove the pending .COM deal.
2. Registry. For each type of domain name (i.e. .COM, .NET, .ORG, etc.) a registry exists and it’s operated by a company like VeriSign. VeriSign operates .COM and .NET. The registry maintains the Internet routing systems, domain availability lookups and basic records. They have no end user (i.e. registrant) contact and deal only with registrars and ICANN.
3. Registrars. These companies (GoDaddy.com is a registrar) act as a go between with the various registries and the registrants. They provide registrants with customer service and also other products that enable the use of their domain names.
4. Registrants. That’s you. You’re the user of the domain name and it’s your money that pays for all of the above. It’s really important that you read this. Unless we get this turned around, you’re about to be taken – again!

The economics lesson starts here.
It’s important to first realize that it costs VeriSign, the .COM registry operator, next to nothing to add each new .COM name to the registry, because unlike registrars, VeriSign:

• Does not have to provide customer service to registrants — that’s provided by registrars like GoDaddy.com.
• Is not under any competitive pressures whatsoever to reduce prices – each registry has a monopoly until the registry contract is re-bid.
• Has everything handled by an automated process. The costs of operating these automated processes (i.e. bandwidth, storage, etc.) have been and are expected to continue to decline. Click on the link here to see historical charts.       "Full Article here"

AT&T Inc. said on Sunday it would buy BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion to expand its reach into the southeastern United States and acquire the rest of Cingular Wireless it does not already own.

Together, AT&T and BellSouth would have a national long-distance telephone and data network, residential customers stretching from Florida to California and business customers comprising more than half of the Fortune 1000, analysts have said.

BellSouth shareholders will receive 1.325 shares of AT&T common stock for each common share of BellSouth. Based on AT&T's closing stock price on March 3, that equals $37.09 per BellSouth common share, a 17.9-percent premium.

The new AT&T, which was formed in November when SBC Communications Inc. completed its acquisition of AT&T Corp., also said it would repurchase at least $10 billion of its common shares over the next 22 months.

The companies have a combined market capitalization of $165 billion and annual revenue of about $64 billion. The next largest telephone company, Verizon Communications, which bought MCI Inc. last year, has a market capitalization of $99 billion and 2005 annual revenues of about $75 billion.

The deal would bring ownership of Cingular Wireless, the No. 1 U.S. wireless telephone company, under one roof, which Wall Street analysts have said would streamline management and allow one parent company to enjoy all of the financial benefits.

AT&T currently owns 60 percent of Cingular, while BellSouth owns the remaining 40 percent. Despite its heft, Cingular has been losing marketshare of the most lucrative, post-paid customers to its main rival, Verizon Wireless.

At the completion of the deal, which is expected to close within a year, all the landline and wireless businesses will exist under the sole brand name of AT&T, the companies said.

A purchase of BellSouth would recombine the former "Ma Bell" with four of the seven original Baby Bells regional telephone companies. AT&T was broken up in 1984, with the parent controlling the long-distance assets and its seven offspring controlling regional local telephone services.

As traditional landline phone businesses have been hurt by a shift to e-mail and wireless phones, telephone carriers have shifted their focus to faster growing businesses such as wireless and data services.

AT&T and other major telephone companies also have been upgrading their networks to offer subscription-television services to thwart competition from cable TV operators, which are offering phone services. AT&T in January began offering video in Texas and plans to expand service to 21 cities in its home territory this year.

Recently, Skype and Intel have announced a deal that would limit Skype's functionality on all but specific Intel processors. Currently, Skype 2.0 offers 10-way conference calls only on Intel's latest dual-core CPUs, while other chips, including all AMD chips, will only allow for 5-way conference calls. Maxxus.com now has posted an version of Skype that integrates a patch and allows users with non-Intel dual-core processors to engage in conference calls with up to 10 participants.

Details about the pathc as well as the doanload can be found here.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on January 31, 2006, accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications.

In December of 2005, the press revealed that the government had instituted a comprehensive and warrantless electronic surveillance program that ignored the careful safeguards set forth by Congress. This surveillance program, purportedly authorized by the President at least as early as 2001 and primarily undertaken by the NSA, intercepts and analyzes the communications of millions of ordinary Americans.

In the largest "fishing expedition" ever devised, the NSA uses powerful computers to "data-mine" the contents of these Internet and telephone communications for suspicious names, numbers, and words, and to analyze traffic data indicating who is calling and emailing whom in order to identify persons who may be "linked" to "suspicious activities," suspected terrorists or other investigatory targets, whether directly or indirectly.

But the government did not act-and is not acting-alone. The government requires the collaboration of major telecommunications companies to implement its unprecedented and illegal domestic spying program.

AT&T Corp. (which was recently acquired by the new AT&T, Inc,. formerly known as SBC Communications) maintains domestic telecommunications facilities over which millions of Americans' telephone and Internet communications pass every day. It also manages some of the largest databases in the world, containing records of most or all communications made through its myriad telecommunications services. Full Article

British telecommunications firm Cable and Wireless (C&W) said it would axe 2,000 to 3,000 of its British workers by 2010 in a radical restructuring that will slash customer numbers by 90.0 percent.

C&W currently employs a total of 5,500 workers in Britain, of which 350 are to leave the group before the end of March 2006, the group said in an official statement. The group, which is suffering from fierce competition from the likes of BT, also said it would cut its customer base from 30,000 to just 3,000 customers as it sought to concentrate on simplified products for larger companies and institutions.

"Cable and Wireless expects that, by concentrating on fewer, larger customers and reducing complexity in its products, systems and processes, it can set new standards for customers' service experience while, at the same time, reducing costs," C&W said Tuesday.

"As part of the reduction in costs, the company expects that UK headcount will fall from more than 5,500 to between 2,500 and 3,500 over the next four to five years." By the end of September this year, the measures would result in a 9.0-percent reduction in monthly operating expenses, while customer numbers in Britain would drop to around 18,000, the group added Tuesday.

C&W also repeated its long-term goal of generating annual revenues of 2.0 billion pounds and "double-digit" operating profit margins. In reaction to Tuesday's news, the share price of C&W was showing a fall of 1.38 percent in early afternoon London trading as analysts questioned whether the long-term targets could be achieved. The British capital's FTSE 100 index, on which the group is quoted, fell by 0.44 percent to 5,850.20 points.

America Online said on Tuesday it had filed lawsuits this week against three identity theft gangs, seeking combined damages of $18 million and using a new law against so-called "phishers."

The online division of Time Warner Inc. said it had filed three civil suits in Alexandria's U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, charging phishing gangs with tricking its members with fake Web sites of legitimate companies to fool them into giving up personal information.

The suits were filed under Virginia's new anti-phishing statute, the Federal Lanham Act, a trademark law, and the Federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, an anti-spam, or junk mail law. AOL said they were the first suits filed by an Internet service provider under the Virginia law passed in July 2005.

The company is targeting gangs that they believe reside in the U.S., Germany and Romania that created "hundreds and hundreds of Web sites to mislead consumers." AOL also said it has stored "tens of thousands" of phish e-mails sent by these gangs. I am sure they are scared to tears over this civil case.

Today AOL kicks off their pay to send them commercial email program. I think at AOL you can have it their way no matter what.

After spending the last decade building its brand around a cartoon character named Jeeves, Ask.com wants everyone to forget the dainty butler and remember its long-overlooked internet search engine as the next best thing to Google.

To make its point, Ask.com is jettisoning Jeeves as its corporate mascot on Monday and unveiling a retooled website that's designed to make it easier to find and use its search technology.

Does anyone really care about the butler? Doubt it! Sorry but that was not the reason at all that people used other alternatives. When will you guys get it? Your behavior in the other side of the business of collecting demograph information and the other side of ad ware was the cause people would typically give for walking away from ASK.com.

This hardly has anything to do with the silly butler images as if that was the reason. Ask.com could argue the point until they run out of air. Most of their arguments sound alot like Clinton saying I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Though it is a bit like Sony saying we did not crash millions of computers. Hey maybe not who knows? Just one opinion which we have for awhile yet.

The competition has been so fierce that they relatively hit a price floor," said Robert Schult, analyst with TeleGeography, which tracks the fiber-optic telecommunications industry. Schult sees indications of further recovery ahead as internet traffic levels increase and operators of telecommunications networks upgrade their capacity.

But, in the beaten-down fiber-optic cable business, the concept of price stabilization should be taken with a grain of salt. Current revenues don't come close to compensating for the billions spent in the late '90s to build out fiber-optic networks. The building boom led to a massive oversupply of fiber capacity and culminated in most builders filing for bankruptcy a few years later.

Today's prices, barely cover the administrative cost of running the network. But while prices remain low, encouraging signs are emerging in the markets for "lit" fiber, which is already equipped to carry internet traffic, and unlit or "dark" fiber, which can be equipped to carry traffic. Chief among these indicators is a recognition that the fiber glut cannot last forever.

We've known for a long time that the opportunity we've had for the last three or four years really was, in essence, an artifact of a very pronounced economic downturn in the telecommunications industry," said Steven Corbato, a managing director at high-speed network Internet2.

FiberCo, a fiber holding company and subsidiary of Internet2, has facilitated the purchase of over 10,000 route miles of dark fiber by the research and higher education community. Though prices were quite low and not likely to stay that way.

Large telecom service providers, have shown seemingly renewed interest in purchasing fiber. Google said it also sees dark fiber factoring in to its long-term plans.

Earlier this month, Broomfield, Colorado-based Level 3 Communications bought an unprecedented 300 GB of transatlantic capacity from the Apollo Submarine Cable System network, and also acquired rival internet network operator WilTel in December.

While today, there is more than enough lit fiber to satisfy the most gluttonous bandwidth users, demand is growing. Internet traffic across the Atlantic, for example, rose by about 40 percent last year.

Sometimes a photo is worth only a few words--a few very revealing words. That was apparently the case recently when The Washington Post accidentally left clues to the identity of a confidential source in an article about hackers.

The story was about a 21-year-old hacker identified as "0x80" who claimed to have broken into 2,000 PCs around the world and to have used the hacked PCs to send out spam. The article revealed that "0x80" smokes, has a southern accent and lives in a small town in Middle America. "The nearest businesses are a used-car lot, a gas station/convenience store and a strip club," the article said.

Fairly innocuous details unlikely to offer much in leading to the source's identity. But the article ran with a modified photo of 0x80, at which some of the people at Slashdot took a closer look. The metadata inside the photo apparently revealed when and where the photo was taken, who the photographer was and even what kind of camera was used.

According to Slashdot, the photo was taken in December in Roland, Okla., a city of 2.6 square miles and a population of 2,842.

Using the other clues provided in the article makes if awfully easy to narrow down the list of suspects, as Slashdot users pointed out.

America Online Inc., seeking to encourage its subscribers to sign up for high-speed connections, is raising the price of its main dial-up plan to equal that of its new broadband offerings.

That means most subscribers will pay $25.90 a month for either dial-up or broadband beginning March 9, although AOL is offering discounts to dial-up subscribers who commit to a year. AOL currently charges $23.90 a month for unlimited dial-up access.

"We're doing this because a majority of AOL members will be able to get high-speed connections and access the AOL service for this new price," spokeswoman Anne Bentley said Tuesday. "Hopefully it's an encouragement for them to get high-speed connections."

Although AOL has been shifting its focus to providing free articles, video and other materials on its ad-supported Web sites, the company sees paid broadband accounts as key to making that strategy work.

Personally I love it when a company this big rarely understands why a customer is even on dial-up in the first place. Most are in rural areas which broadband is either difficult if not impossible. The giant lacks understanding of a number of issues, and this is but another which will only cause people to make the right choice. What I personally fail to understand is why people on dial-up from AOL in the first place when others are already much cheaper.

One Chinese blogger stays on the move, uses multiple blogs, and says the demand for non-corrupt political officials is the real foe of censorship.

Li Xinde has no First Amendment to protect him as an investigative reporter in China. But he does have a knack for finding stories of corruption and abuse that make their way even to state-run media outlets. "I can still spread news across the whole country in just 10 minutes, while the propaganda officials are still wondering what to do," Li told Reuters.

He described how he has to work to avoid arrest, by shuttling around to different Internet bars in rural China: "It's what Chairman Mao called sparrow tactics. You stay small and independent, you move around a lot, and you choose when to strike and when to run."

On the topic of businesses like Yahoo and Google choosing to yield to censorship requirements in order to operate in China, Li said he understands the business reasons, but, "morally it's wrong to sell people's freedom."

His freedom has become more difficult to maintain over the past two years, the article noted. Though he isn't famous, he has built enough of a reputation that he is something of a marked man.

Still, he has reason to fear. Evidence prosecutors obtained from Yahoo in China has contributed to the jailings of two journalists, and others who have published stories on the Internet also languish in prison, the report said.

As more Chinese citizens move online, their interest in the habits of politicians could be the ultimate undoing of censorship and media suppression:

Li said Chinese people's demands for clean, accountable officials, and their salacious curiosity about bad ones, were the censors' ultimate enemy.

"Our party always said revolution depended on the gun and the pen -- the military and propaganda," said Li, echoing a slogan of Mao's. "The gun is still firmly in the party's hands, but the pen has loosened."

Microsoft Corp. has reported a problem with one of its security patches released yesterday that requires some users to take additional steps to ensure it installs properly.

The problem affected patch number MS06-007, which fixes a TCP/IP vulnerability in several versions of Windows that could allow a denial-of-service attack. Microsoft called the patch important but not critical, and said users should install it as soon as possible. It was one of several patches released yesterday (see "Microsoft issues seven security patches").

Soon after its release, Microsoft discovered a problem for users who tried to install MS06-007 through the following channels: Automatic Updates, Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and Systems Management Server 2003 when used with the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates (ITMU), the company said.

Customers using Automatic Updates don't have to take any action because the patch will install properly with their next scheduled update, Microsoft said.

However, Microsoft Update and Windows Update customers who visited those sites before 8:30 p.m. Pacific Time yesterday need to revisit them and accept the security updates being offered, the company said.

Likewise, WSUS and Systems Management Server 2003 administrators who synchronized their servers to obtain the updates before 8:30 p.m. Pacific Time yesterday should manually synchronize their servers and approve the new updates, Microsoft said.

A would-be hacker was being investigated by police Monday after threatening to attack the internal computer network of the Turin Olympics organizing committee.

The man — a technical consultant for the TOROC committee — illicitly gained access to off-limits sections of the network, police officer Fabiola Silvestri said.

"This consultant — who is now a former consultant — said in a very strong way that he could do certain things to the network," TOROC spokesman Giuseppe Gattino said. "Nothing has happened and all the passwords have been disabled."

Officials declined to reveal the consultant's identity, and Gattino said he didn't know the reasons for his threatening behavior. No charges were immediately filed against the man.

In a separate case, police found that a Turin antiques dealer had acquired five Internet domains that had similar names to Olympic Web sites. If accessed, the domains redirected users to the dealer's Web site, which also carried Olympic logos and other copyrighted material, Silvestri said.

Once he had been told that what he was doing was illegal, the dealer deleted the material and redirected users from his domains to Olympic Web sites.

Microsoft Corp. has won backing from major cellular networks for a new generation of phones designed to transform mobile e-mail from executive accessory to standard issue for the corporate rank-and-file.

The partnerships, with operators including Vodafone and Cingular, to be announced Monday at a mobile industry gathering in Spain, could spell more trouble for the embattled Blackberry and other niche e-mail technologies, analysts say.

Unlike the Blackberry and its peers, phones running Microsoft's latest Windows Mobile operating system can receive e-mails "pushed" directly from servers that handle a company's messaging — without the need for a separate mobile server or additional license payments.

As costs fall, Microsoft is betting companies will extend mobile e-mail beyond top management to millions more of their employees.

Vodafone Group PLC is to sell the phones under its own brand, in a joint marketing deal, targeting companies that already run Microsoft's Exchange software on their servers. Exchange is the collaborative glue behind Microsoft's popular Outlook application, which manages appointments and electronic address books in addition to e-mail.

Together with Cingular Wireless, Orange and T-Mobile, Vodafone will also deliver phone software upgrades to subscribers who are already running the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system on their smart phones.

Microsoft laid the groundwork for its e-mail offensive with an October update to Exchange — which led the server software market last year with 48 percent of global sales, according to technology research firm Gartner.

 Microsoft Corp.'s plans to rebrand its free e-mail, instant messenger and Web search products under the name "Live" could be interpreted as a sign that MSN — the unit that previously housed those products — is a sinking ship.

But John Nicol, the executive recently put in charge of MSN, insists that isn't the case. In an interview Thursday, he said the changes will allow MSN, Microsoft's Internet portal, to focus more on providing content such as entertainment and even home videos.

Nicol, a longtime Microsoft executive who took over as general manager of MSN about three months ago, said the revamped MSN will include more opportunities for users to contribute their own content, such as posting their own videos or rating hotels on the unit's travel site.

A major focus will be on providing more video content online, aiming to go beyond just rebroadcasting television. As an example, he cited an MSN Web site, launched last summer, that complemented a reality show search for a new lead singer for INXS.

(In a separate arrangement, The Associated Press is launching an ad-supported online video news network using technology and advertising support from Microsoft.)

Two of the world's biggest e-mail account providers, Yahoo Inc. and America Online, plan to introduce a service that would charge senders a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox without first passing through junk mail filters, representatives of both companies said Sunday.

The fees, which would range from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity-theft scams. In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed their messages won't be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients they're legitimate.

Both companies have long filtered e-mail by searching for keywords commonly contained in spam and fraudulent e-mail. AOL also strips images and Web links from many messages to prevent the display of pornographic pictures and malicious Web addresses. Both practices sometimes falsely identify legitimate messages as junk mail, making life difficult for businesses that rely on e-mail.

"We were hearing not only from members but also e-mail partners that they wanted a different way of delivering e-mail that would stand out in the inbox and would guarantee them delivery," said spokesman Nicholas Graham, adding that AOL, a division of New York-based Time Warner Inc., will start offering the service in the next two months. Company spokeswoman Karen Mahon said Sunday Sunnyvale-based Yahoo will begin offering a similar service in the coming months.

This is too funny, let's get this straight... You want to charge people to not do anything to their mail which has proven unreliable due to your filters which do more harm than good???? If you had built a proper mail system, as we have been stating for months and put this control in the hands of your users none of this would matter. What is so complex about putting the white-listing in the hands of your users where it belongs.

If you developed this software in house the team should be fired. If you paid an outsourcing company to do it, you should get refund. People talk bad about MS when they make a mistake of any kind. Now AOL and Yahoo can dictate whatever foolish policy they want and people say nothing. Where are the M$ Zealots when there is something like this happening right out in the open?

"Full Article Here"

AnonymizerR Inc., the leader in online identity protection technology and software solutions, today announced that the company is developing a new anti-censorship solution that will enable Chinese citizens to safely access the entire Internet filter-free, and also free from oppression and fear of persecution or retribution. This new program expands upon Anonymizer's history of human rights efforts which provide a censor-free Internet experience for those in oppressed nations. Anonymizer's new anti-censorship solution for Chinese citizens will be available before quarter's end. The solution will provide a regularly changing URL that users can access to open the doors to unfettered access of the World Wide Web. In addition, users' identities will be protected from online tracking and monitoring by the Chinese government. 

The communist government has taken a hard line against freedom of the press and access to information on the Internet. Google and others have been forced into a box by the Chinese government's strict requirements, but Anonymizer stands firm on the issue of protecting civil liberties. The company has been protecting basic liberties for more than a decade. It enabled safe Internet communications for families split on either side of the Kosovo conflict; it was used previously by the Voice of America to ensure that news Web sites were not blocked by the Communist government in China. Anonymizer also works in conjunction with the Voice of America today to bring safe Internet access to Iranian citizens. 
       
   Its Web site is home to the world's most popular Internet privacy service, Anonymous Surfing, which defends users from the most prevalent Internet privacy and security threats. Anonymizer identity protection solutions have been used to protect billions of Web pages since the company's inception in 1995. Anonymizer is privately held and headquartered in San Diego, California. (anonymizer.com)

AT&T is slashing its monthly fee for high-speed Internet access to an all-time low: $12.99.

The telecom company had been charging $14.95 a month for its lowest-priced digital subscriber line plan. The new deal, which goes into effect Friday, is aimed at customers who sign up online. It requires a one-year contract.

"This ($12.99 offer) will have a negative impact on cable TV companies, who don't seem to be reacting yet," said Jeffrey Kagan, an Atlanta-based telecom analyst.

AT&T has focused on the low end of the broadband market with its cheap DSL plans. The new $12.99 plan -- like the $14.95 plan before it -- offers a slower service than pricier plans. But it's still seen as an improvement over dial-up services, and AT&T is aggressively trying to convert dial-up users to DSL.

The strategy appears to be working. The company, formerly named SBC Communications, added 1.8 million high-speed Internet customers in 2005. That's the most among phone and cable TV companies.

The company added 425,000 DSL customers in the fourth quarter alone. Three-quarters of them opted for the $14.95-a-month plan.

Verizon Communications which once criticized AT&T for slashing DSL prices too quickly, has been following AT&T's lead. That company added 613,000 broadband customers in the fourth quarter. Fifty percent of them signed up for its lowest-cost offer, also $14.95.

WesternUnion quietly announced; Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.

In a final irony, Western Union, which flashed good and bad news to Americans in distinctive yellow envelopes for a century and a half, quietly announced its decision to end the service on its website.

The announcement, effective on January 27, consigned the telegram, which told generations of Americans of births, deaths, or the loss of a loved one on a foreign battlefield, reflects the new era of communications on the Internet, by email, and with mobile phones and fax machines.

Western Union's parent company was formed in 1851, and the firm adopted its now famous name five years later. By 1861 it was providing coast-to-coast telegraph communications during the American Civil War.

Telecommunications service provider AT&T Inc. on Thursday posted a profit of $1.66 billion in its first quarterly report since it was formed by SBC Communications' purchase of AT&T Corp. last November.

The results were boosted by an increase in customers for AT&T's broadband Internet service and strong customer growth at Cingular Wireless, the AT&T venture with BellSouth Corp. that posted earnings earlier this week.

Like peers BellSouth and Verizon Communications, AT&T Inc. depends on services such as wireless and broadband Internet service for growth as traditional local phone lines decline.

The company said that on a reported basis, including its 60 percent stake in Cingular, it earned 46 cents per diluted share. In the year-ago quarter, SBC alone earned $688 million, or 21 cents a share.

Level 3 Communications announced that it has acquired Progress Telecom, a provider of wireless and land-line phone services in the Southeastern United States, for about $137 million in cash and stock.

Under the terms of the deal, Level 3 will pay $68.5 million in unregistered shares of its stock and $68.5 million in cash to Progress Energy and Odyssey Telecorp, the joint owners of Progress Telecom.

Level 3, which operates one of the nation's largest IP-based fiber-optic networks, said it will not take over some assets of Progress Telecom's wireless tower attachment business, as well as some of the company's interests in marketing distributed antennae systems and providing tower services to other mobile carriers.

The company has also reserved the right to pay cash in lieu of providing common stock as part of the deal, which is expected to close some time during the second quarter of 2006.

Progress, which recorded 2005 sales of roughly $20 million, controls an estimated 9,000 miles of land line, including 29 metropolitan networks ranging from Miami to New York, along with 31 wireless switching hubs in the Southeast. The firm, which primarily serves regional wireless services carriers, also provides connections to international cable landings in Florida.

Walt Disney Co. is in serious talks about an acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The newspaper report said terms under discussion would have Disney pay a small premium to Pixar's current stock market value of $6.7 billion. The deal would be a stock transaction and make Pixar Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs the biggest individual shareholder in Disney, the newspaper reported.

The talks are at a sensitive stage and other options are possible, including an agreement for Disney to distribute Pixar movies, the report said, citing people familiar with the situation.

The companies have been partners since Pixar began making feature films with "Toy Story". Currently Pixar and Disney split costs, and Disney effectively has sequel rights to Pixar films.

Google Inc. is continuing to expand its advertising capabilities beyond the online world, agreeing to buy a company that automatically connects advertisers with radio stations. The price could top $1.2 billion.

The company, dMarc Broadcasting Inc. of Newport Beach, Calif., creates an automated platform that lets advertisers more easily schedule and deliver ads over radio and keep track of when they air. On the broadcaster side, the dMarc technology automatically schedules and places such advertising, helping stations minimize costs.

Under the deal, announced Tuesday, Google would pay dMarc at least $102 million in cash. If performance targets are met, Google would make additional payments of up to $1.14 billion over three years.

The up-front cash payment will make only a small dent in Google's reserves. Through September, Google had $7.6 billion in cash and marketable securities, though it has since committed to making a $1 billion investment in Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit.

Google said it plans to integrate the dMarc technology with its highly successful Google AdWords platform, in which third-party Web sites share revenues with Google for carrying the Mountain View., Calif., company's highly profitable search ads.

"Google is committed to exploring new ways to extend targeted, measurable advertising to other forms of media," said Tim Armstrong, Google's vice president for advertising sales.

Everyone has no doubt tried the previous version of thunderbird. We sure many of you came away seriously dissappointed. The biggest complaint was that it could not deal with multiple SMTP servers very well. We thought what is the deal, did they fall asleep or what? There are a couple of new features in the client besides the fact that it has been corrected. I am sure that everyone will come away with the same conclusions we did. "Thunderbird enhances the overall e-mail experience, adding anti-phishing capabilities to help keep people safer, while also integrating and simplifying access to new technologies, such as RSS [Really Simple Syndication]. The improved Thunderbird offers such new features as a built-in "phishing" detector and support for listening to podcasts.

After testing the new version, we are happy to report they finally have a mail client which stacks up well against many commercial mail clients. Though it still lacks calendaring and many of the features Outlook people are used to. We feel that it is better than most other free email clients. Also there is one place where Outlook could take a lesson. Thunderbird defines where the attachments are to be saved. So many people abuse the mail client with hundreds of attachments, it was refreshing to see someone had thought about this.

Anthony Scott Clark, 21, of Beaverton, Oregon, and accomplices collected over 20,000 zombie computers that allowed them to attack the nameservers of eBay.com, causing a denial of service for legitimate users of the targeted system.

Clark, also known by his alias name, "Volkam", was found, and pleaded guilty to knowingly damaging a protected computer. He now faces a maximum statutory penalty of a find or $250,000, 10 years imprisonment, according to the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California. The sentence following conviction will only be imposed by the court, after considering the US Sentencing Guidelines and Federal Statutes governing imposition of sentences.

Clark, along with his accomplices, infected over 20,000 computers using a worm program which took advantage of a vulnerability in the computers running the Windows Operating System.

The collected "zombies" were passed on to a Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server protected by passwords, where they logged and stayed put for further instructions. After getting instructions from Clark and his accomplices, these bots launched the DDOS attack on computers or their corresponding network connected to the Internet.

The prosecution resulted after investigation from agent of US Secret Service's Electronic Crimes Task Force. This force is overseen by US Attorney's Office's Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) Unit. The Assistant US attorney who was prosecuting the case, Christopher P. Sonderby is the Chief of the CHIP Unit.

A cut fiber-optic cable knocked out Sprint Nextel Corp. service Monday for almost a third of the geographic United States, according to an alert issued to customers. All calls initiated west of the Rocky Mountains were affected.

After several hours, service began to be restored, the company said. According a memo, a fiber cable was damaged in the line between Phoenix and Palm Springs, Calif., midday.

At the same time, Sprint performed emergency maintenance to its fiber network near Reno, Nev., which required the temporary routing of traffic through the Phoenix network. These two actions resulted in a "dual" fiber cut for traffic passing to and from the western parts of the country.

Customers initiating calls west of the Rocky Mountains received busy signals or an automated message that all circuits were busy.

The outage affected Sprint's wired and wireless customers, including long distance and local services.

Overclocking mad man and explosive AMD Duron. Kids don't try this one at home, seriously no computing can be practicle using this approach.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5393904704265757054

Holiday shoppers in the United States had spent $25 billion online during one week ending 16 December and electronics and clothing items were their favourites. This represents a 25 per cent increase over the same period in 2004, according to a survey.

The survey, covering 1,000 adults carried out by Goldman, Sachs & Co., Nielsen/NetRatings and Harris Interactive for the Holiday eSpending Report, said shoppers bought computers and consumer electronics worth $3.75 billion and $3.67 billion respectively, the two items together accounting for 28 per cent of online spending.

Clothing items accounted for $4.68 billion, an aspect, which the surveyors said, indicated that more and more people are becoming accustomed to online buying of apparel. Some of the brands that have become popular are Gap and Eddie Bauer, while department stores like Macy's seem to have made an online presence, the surveyors said.

The report said toys and video games were not favourite items and only 7 per cent of the spending went for these items -- $1.91 billion. This is possibly because the shoppers are waiting for the new video game consoles, which are expected in the market soon. This adversely affected the sales of new game titles.

The surveyors said sales during the week ending 16 December as the biggest sales week for the holiday shopping season, which started 1 November.

The Sony BMG rootkit fiasco (aided and abetted by DRM vendors) as the tech blunder of the year. If they do not want to take the award as a blunder then I seriously question their true intent.

It was a security gaffe, creating a major vulnerability. It was a storage screw-up, corrupting users' file systems. It was an offense against developers, misappropriating open-source code. It was an abuse of networks, covertly installing phone-home code.

Then to release an online fix to the problem which only opened you up with the Active-X object that is needed to do it all in a browser. I have to ask are they asleep at Sony or are they drunk? This is a company which once brought fantasic products. Now the question really is if this was a small company, would they have been shut down? Likely all the people at the top would be in jail.

The Sony brand name was already in trouble—it lost 16 percent of its value between 2004 and 2005. This blunder puts their name on everyone's lips though in a rather counterproductive way.

Seagate Technology on Wednesday said it would buy rival computer disk-drive maker Maxtor Corp. for $1.9 billion in stock, aiming to cut combined costs and drive development of new products.

In the deal, expected to be completed in the second half of 2006, Maxtor shareholders will receive 0.37 shares of Seagate common stock for each Maxtor share they own.

At current prices, the transaction is worth about $7.25 a share for Maxtor investors, a premium of more than 60 percent to its closing price on Tuesday. Maxtor's stock has not traded in that range since June 2004.

Maxtor shares rose 52 percent in premarket trade, according to Inet.

Seagate shareholders will own about 84 percent and Maxtor shareholders about 16 percent of the new combined company.

The combination is expected to add 10 to 20 percent to Seagate's cash earnings per share after the first full year of joint operations, Seagate said in a release.

Semi-protection of a page prevents the newest X% of registered users and all unregistered users from editing that page. Semi-protection is only applied if the page in question is facing a serious vandalism problem. It is not an appropriate solution to editorial disputes of any kind since it may restrict some editors and not others. Administrators apply semi-protection in the same manner as current full protection against vandalism is applied — either on their own initiative or following an alert on an article's talk page, requests for page protection, the administrators' noticeboard, or some other relevant page.

Semi-protection is only to be applied as a response to serious vandalism and not as a pre-emptive measure against the threat or probability of vandalism, such as when certain pages suddenly become high profile due to current events or being linked from a high-traffic website. Only when there is evidence of a serious problem of vandalism should semi-protection be applied.

To request that semi-protection of an article be lifted, a simple note on the article's talk page or the administrators' noticeboard should be sufficient, but the requests for protection page can be used if necessary. Requests to lift semi-protection should generally be unnecessary in the same way that unprotection after simple vandalism at present is generally swiftly seen to by either the protecting admin or another.

Articles that are semi-protected are indicated with {{sprotected}} and listed at WP:PP in the same way as protections are at present.

Semi-protection:

• Is not intended to prohibit anonymous editing in general.
• Is not intended for pre-emptive protection of articles that might get vandalized.

For Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, the decision was a tough one. And he's going to change the ground rules for the popular anyone-can-contribute encyclopedia because of it.

The posts are everywhere as if people did not know any idiot with a connection and a little savvy can write any garbage they want in Wikipedia. It has been my personal problem for sometime. It has nothing to do with true information though it is set as if it is the online answer book. Growing Pains    Wiki Prank

Chase also found that he was slowly being cornered in cyberspace, thanks to the sleuthing efforts of Daniel Brandt, 57, of San Antonio, who makes his living as a book indexer. Brandt has been a frequent critic of Wikipedia and started an anti-Wikipedia Web site in September after reading what he said was a false entry about himself. Wiki Watch

Though it seems Mr Brandt also has his own issues. Asside from that it is clear that after some examples have been pointed out. The term credible information simply is mute with people anonymously posting like this.

Personally I feel the change can only improve credibility which was always near zero in my mind. The other problem I had was all the scraping and posting of links back to Wikipedia as if they were some authority. I honestly feel anyone who posts should be willing to accept the outcome. After all any encyclopedia company would be accountable even for a misprint.

New York Stock Exchange members Tuesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of its deal to buy electronic trading company Archipelago Holdings Inc., the Big Board said, which will turn the 213-year-old Exchange into a for-profit, publicly traded company and give it clout to compete with nimble electronic rivals.

The deal creates NYSE Group Inc., which will begin on the Big Board under the symbol and is valued at $9.6 billion at current prices.

Support from members has been given a large boost by a huge run-up in NYSE seat prices, currently trading at a record $4 million. NYSE members will take home $300,000 for each seat and will share 70 percent of the shares in the new company.

Microsoft Corp. said Friday that some people who use its Hotmail and MSN e-mail services are not receiving e-mail sent from Comcast Corp. accounts and other Internet service providers.

Brooke Richardson, a group product manager with Microsoft's MSN online division, said the problem appears to be due to an increase in e-mail volumes, which it is attributed in part to the Sober Internet worm.

She said the high volumes are causing e-mail to either be delayed or not make it to MSN and Hotmail users at all.

Richardson said the problem began earlier this week. She would not name the other Internet service providers besides Comcast whose users were encountering the same problem. She also couldn't say when the problem would be fixed.

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said the problem is only affecting Comcast e-mail being sent to the MSN and Hotmail accounts, and that other e-mail is getting to recipients without delay. She said the company is working with Microsoft to resolve the problem.

Expect more spam. Lots more. It's a recurring theme seemingly as inevitable as Christmas carols and fruitcake, as internetnews.com has reported in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Security experts at anti-spam and anti-virus vendor AppRiver expect the volume of spam to double during the holidays. The irritating messages accounted for 81 percent of all e-mails its customers saw in August. But spammers pull out all the stops for the holiday deluge, with good reason.

One of the trends AppRiver officials see with spam is that while many of the offers feature the generic replica watches, weight loss pills and the like, spammers are including name brand items to give the e-mails a hint of legitimacy.

The expected spam surge also likely coincides with the recent rash of viruses spreading throughout the Internet.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released an advisory Tuesday warning consumers of e-mail purportedly coming from the agency but are in fact spoofed e-mails (define)containing a variant of the Sober virus.

The spoof claims the FBI has tracked the user's IP address to a number of illegal Web sites and tells them to open an attachment containing what the e-mail states are a list of questions to answer.

 

The new facet can be found at www.live.com, which Microsoft uses to deliver some of its software products. The Live.com Web site debuted about three weeks ago.

At Live.com, Microsoft now supplies e-mail and instant messaging features for any Internet domain (addresses used to network computers).

Analysts felt Microsoft is also trying to fend off challenges from Google Inc. and other competitors that have already adopted the same "live" view on software.

But it means a departure from Microsoft's historical way of offering services: licensing the applications to computer manufacturers or selling them to consumers on disks.

Has the time come where people really think their own machines and applications are best managed by someone else? I still remember people scoffing at Larry Ellison when he made statments about network applications years ago. Have the weaknesses of the OS and browser created yet another market? Was it a case where MS could take on Oracle and Sun easily. When the word Google is spoke they seem to respond in turn. 

 Please note that the $100 laptops—not yet in production—will not be available for sale. The laptops will only be distributed to schools directly through large government initiatives.

The MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created. The initiative was first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.

Learn More

Poor Skype. They started out last week with the best of intentions, releasing what they called an independent security evaluation of their VOIP product, and ended up with egg on their virtual faces as high risk security vulnerabilities came to light.

Skype, based in Luxembourg, has positioned its VOIP product as superior to any one else's in the field because the voice data is encrypted. Since Skype hasn't made its encryption scheme public, this has led to some questions on just how secure it is (and how much of a Calera backdoor was built in.) The author of the report, Tom Berson of Anagram Labs, is well respected in the security field and would seem to be a good choice to author such a reassuring effort.

Of course, to make matters worse, vulnerabilities in the code showed up at the same time as the report's release. Skype says that the vulnerabilities affect Skype software for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Pocket PC. Skype goes on to say, "Skype can be made to execute arbitrary code through a buffer overflow when Skype is called upon to handle malformed URLs that are in Skype-specific URI types callto:// and skype://." Also, Skype could launch malicious code "during importation of a VCARD that is in a specific non-standard format."  "Full Article"

Ira Winkler: Author of "Spies among us" wrote a opinion article which should make you concerned. When you read this, it almost sounds like the plot of a cheesy science fiction novel, where some evil uberhacker is seeking world domination, while a good uberhacker applies all his super brain power to save the world. Sadly, this isn't science fiction, and we don't typically have uberhackers on our side.

Talk of these hacks is going on within the intelligence and defense communities in the U.S. and around the world. The attacks were even given a code name, Titan Rain, within the U.S. government. The attackers appear to be targeting systems with military and secret information of any type. They are also targeting the related technologies. "Full Article"

After watching Qrio dance, there is no doubt Sony is not just playing with toys here.

According to the WebWatch report, released Wednesday, 80 percent of all American Web surfers are at least somewhat concerned about the threat of identity theft posed by engaging in online activities.

As a result of those concerns, at least 30 percent of the 1,500 people interviewed for the survey said they have reduced the amount of time they access the Internet.

In addition to going online less frequently, 53 percent of the respondents told WebWatch that fears of ID theft have stopped them from giving out their personal information to Web sites and online marketers, while 25 percent said they are no longer purchasing items from e-commerce sites.

Americans are also increasingly skeptical regarding images they find on the Web, with 47 percent reporting that they have viewed what they believed to be manipulated pictures online. Despite that trend, 67 percent said they trust online news sites to use genuine photographs.

While this data is concerning to anyone who owns a web based business. The upside is that it appears that many people are becoming more savvy. With this the first reaction is of course to simply avoid all on line transactions. It is clear that with doubt that everything you see or read might not actually be true. Let's hope that people will learn that going out in town can be equally dangerous. Where ever your credit card is handed to someone who walks to the register with it the same dangers of the web are also present.

Some level of paranoia is a good thing to protect your identy from theft. Making informed decisions about when to offer their trust to a specific web business is very important. I personally like the injections about blogging web sites being untrustworthy. It would seem that the people are smart enough to form their own opinions.

October's round of patches proves how easily people become gun shy about going to get these patches first. Microsoft must understand that these slip ups like October produced makes people take a wait and see approach again. This simply is not in the best interest of MS, making people apprehensive about patching their machines.

While I have read MS position on the first error with MS05-051 the excuse that these things are complex. They went on to explain that we have a difficult job matching the time to deliver the fix against any possible errors. While this is complex for MS; imagine what it is for your mother or grandmother who has no idea what MSDTC is and why they need it, or want it in the first place.

Only a "limited" number of customers have been affected by this problem, and customers who received Update MS05-050 automatically or who correctly followed the steps in Microsoft's security bulletin won't be affected, Microsoft said. More information about the problem can be found here. 

In addition, there has been a significant increase in computer scanning activity -- apparently by hackers looking for targets to attack once an exploit becomes widely available. If you run Windows 2000, you should be very concerned.

The search engine Jux2 has put itself up for sale on the auction Web site eBay, a sign of the times for the hyper-competitive search industry. Winning bid: US $101,100.00

Why are we selling? We started jux2 in our spare time as a research tool to answer questions we had about search. jux2 succeeded both as a research tool (generating thousands of searches per day and providing rich data that answered our questions) and with the search cognoscenti. We felt honored to receive critical acclaim and favorable reviews from many power searchers. To do justice to the opportunity ahead of jux2 would take more time than any of us has right now. So, we’re hoping this auction will put jux2 into the hands of someone who can take it to the next level.

Buying jux2 is a great way to get into the rapidly growing Internet search industry. This auction’s winner will receive sole ownership of a fully operational meta-search engine, including the following:

• The software code running the jux2 meta-search web site

• Written instructions on how to maintain and add to the code

• The graphic files for updating the UI (including a design for adding a fourth search engine)

• The legal rights to the jux2 brand name

• Ownership of the www.jux2.com URL

The winner will not receive any of jux2’s physical assets. You’ll need your own servers, hosting facilities, etc. Also, in the future, we cannot guarantee jux2 will have access to search results from Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. You’ll have to negotiate your own search result access deals.

Great Britain's Cable & Wireless and Sweden's Telia are viewed by experts as the most likely suitors for the U.S. assets of bankrupt carrier PSINet. While Canadian carrier Telus signed a letter of intent with PSINet to acquire all of the fallen carrier's assets in that country, no buyer has yet emerged for any of the U.S. assets — mainly the company's backbone and Web hosting facilities.

Events following PSINet's Chapter 11 filing suggest that those assets will be significantly devalued by the time any offer materializes.

Last week, Cable & Wireless temporarily disconnected from PSINet's pipes, claiming that PSINet is not holding up its end of their peering bargain, which calls for equal bandwidth exchanges. "We notified PSINet 60 days ago that we have seen a precipitous drop in the amount of traffic hosted in the network, the flow becoming unequal," said Chad Couser, a spokesman at Cable & Wireless.

The move is a prelude to PSINet's loss of tier 1 status for its backbone, a somewhat nonscientific category applicable mostly to large carriers that barter their long-distance Internet Protocol traffic. If PSINet can't peer with Cable & Wireless as an equal, its traffic requirements are likely not up to par with other backbones, which means it would have to buy transit from larger carriers.

It's likely that the move could cost PSINet some big customers such as EarthLink, which buys PSINet's wholesale dial-up service. EarthLink's connection with PSINet was down for two days recently before being restored, with PSINet signing a letter of intent saying it would meet Cable & Wireless' peering criteria by increasing traffic flows.

Cable & Wireless itself has been pegged by many in the financial community as a potential acquisitor of PSINet assets. Another potential buyer is Telia, which put together a bid on ZipLink's backbone last year, according to financial industry sources. Another potential buyer of PSINet assets is U.S. up-and-comer Velocita. UUnet founder Rick Adams is also rumored to be interested in the company's Web hosting assets.

Network operator Cogent said Friday that rival Level 3 "has taken the necessary actions" to once again carry its customers' Internet traffic, a sign that days old service disruptions for a significant number of Internet users are over, for now.

It has been reported, Level 3 Communications, has since Wednesday refused to make room for traffic from rival Cogent because of an ongoing dispute about financial arrangements. The nasty turn has disrupted Internet service for a significant number of cogent customers since about Wednesday.

On Friday afternoon, Cogent said Level 3 has restored all peering connections. Level 3, in a statement, said it's done so in order to let Cogent customers make alternative arrangements. "We will maintain this connection until 6:00 a.m. ET, November 9, 2005," Level 3 wrote in a statement.

The apparent turn for the better in the spat follows an outcry for the U.S. government to regulate traffic-swapping arrangements between major communications providers.

These agreements, as the experiences of the last few days shows, are so key that they can bring Internet traffic to a halt for significant amounts of people. Critics contend that more of these spats between operators will erupt, cutting off even more people.

Such spats also highlight arguments from a number of European governments that are calling for the United States to relinquish its unilateral control over Internet governance, in favor of a new body. The United States opposes the changes.

In the beginning telecom firms who owned the fiber optic networks didn't like the idea of selling their services as a commodity. Some made the case that not all networks perform equally well. In addition, most preferred to negotiate prices with customers, rather than be stuck with a one-size-fits-all pricing scheme.

"Carriers have never been big fans of bandwidth trading, because honestly, "They want customers to be confused about pricing."

There's just too much capacity out there and too little demand." On average prices for bandwidth have declined between 30 and 50 percent in the last 18 months. On certain key routes, the freefall is more pronounced. According to RateXchange's Samuels, for example, the price of a standard contract for carrying data traffic between New York and London has declined from $30,000 to $5,000 over the past nine months.

Bandwidth sellers also fear they may have much to lose by dumping excess capacity at bargain prices on an open exchange. One concern is that customers who paid more for the same contract when prices were higher may come back demanding discounts.

Admittedly few ISPs and telecom firms want to use a commodity-style exchange to sell contracts. Deals tend to be negotiated over the phone, often with a broker who gets a fee for arranging the transaction.

Eventually bandwidth will be sold through a commodity-type market, it won't happen overnight. Latest estimates are that it will take three to five years to develop a healthy and viable business for trading bandwidth contracts.

Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; their blog index is continually updated, so you'll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well.

There are a few different ways you can get to Blog Search:

• blogsearch.google.com (Google-style interface)
• search.blogger.com (Blogger-style interface)
• The Blogger Dashboard

I am still seeing my OLD DNS information can you fix my problem?? Heres the fix.

Run/CMD: ipconfig /flushdns This should do the trick if it is not being cached by your ISP. This works if your machine is just refusing to go take another look. It could have the wrong path cached and believes it is the correct answer.

The plan calls for a reorganization of Microsoft into three large divisions led by individual presidents, each reporting to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive.

•  Jeff Raikes will head up the company's Business division, which will house Microsoft's Information Worker group (which includes its Office product line), and its Business Solutions packaged applications group.

•  Kevin Johnson and Jim Allchin will be co-presidents of the Platform Products and Services division, which will comprise Windows Client, Server and Tools and the MSN division. Microsoft said Allchin will hold that new position until he retires, once the company ships Windows Vista at the end of next year.

•  Robbie Bach will be president of the Entertainment and Devices division, which will oversee games and mobile device development.

The huge reorganization is designed to streamline the company's decision-making process and improve product development, Ballmer said in a statement.

In the past several months, some insiders and former employees have said that Microsoft has become too bureaucratic and process-driven to compete with nimbler competitors such as Google.

"Our goal in making these changes is to enable Microsoft to achieve greater agility in managing the incredible growth ahead and executing our software-based services strategy," Ballmer wrote in an e-mail sent to employees on Tuesday.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs vowed Tuesday to repel "greedy" record companies' demands for higher music download prices, warning that any such move would encourage piracy.

Jobs, speaking before the opening of the Apple Expo in Paris, said some music majors were pushing for an increase in prices on Apple's online iTunes Music Store.

Apple's co-founder and CEO said record companies already earn more profit from songs sold through iTunes — cutting out costs of manufacturing, marketing and returns — than from those sold on CD.

"So if they want to raise the prices it just means they're getting a little greedy," he said.

As their contracts with Apple come up for renewal, music companies are seeking to improve their take from sales through the U.S. iTunes site, which charges 99 cents per song. Prices are typically higher in Europe, Japan and other regions.

A "social" Web browser, called Flock, has been created to meet the needs of a new generation of web users who want to edit, comment on and share web content, rather than just peruse it.

Of course this is a double edge sword; While I assume it matters little to someones blog. The concept is certainly not for commercial web sites. It is clear the web should support more methods of direct interaction. "New Scientist" 

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said few of the company's recent hires have been as significant as Cerf, widely regarded as one of the internet's creators because of his seminal work developing the network's essential communications protocols, TCP/IP, at Stanford University in the 1970s.

"He is one of the most important people alive today," said Schmidt, who has been friends with Cerf for more than 20 years. "Vint has put his heart and soul into making the internet happen. I know he is going to jump right in here and start shoveling out new ideas for Google."

When he starts work at Google on Oct. 3, Cerf's official title will be "chief Internet evangelist," but he is determined to be more than a figurehead or detached visionary.

"What I have done in the past is not going to be important at Google," Cerf said, "What's important at Google is what you are doing today and what you going to do tomorrow. That's the metric I will be measured by."

Cerf will remain chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the oversight agency for internet domain names.

He also will continue as a visiting scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he has been focusing on a very Google-like project — trying to figure out a way to connect the internet to outer space. He said working at Google is "really my dream job."

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Oracle Corp. Monday agreed to acquire Siebel Systems Inc. for $3.61 billion in cash and stock, putting to rest long-running speculation on Wall Street about Siebel's future.

The deal values shares of Siebel, which makes software used by companies to manage their customer relationships, at $10.66 each, a 17% premium to Friday's close at $9.13.

In early Monday trading, San Mateo, Calif., Siebel's stock leapt $1.16, or 13%, to $10.29 on heavy volume of over 39 million. Shares have ranged from $7.37 to $10.85 over the last 52 weeks and had an average daily volume of 9 million over the last 10 sessions.

Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif., saw its shares gain 15 cents, or 1.1%, to $13.43. Germany's SAP AG , another rival of Oracle, saw its U.S.-listed stock tack on 18 cents, or 0.4%, to $44.51.

The companies put the total value of the transaction at $5.85 billion, a figure that reflects Siebel's $2.24 billion in cash on hand. They expect to close the deal, which has already received the approval of Siebel's board, in early 2006 after Siebel shareholder approval.

The deal doesn't require the approval of Oracle shareholders.

eBay Inc. (EBAY)(www.ebay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration. The acquisition will strengthen eBay's global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant new monetization opportunities for the company. The deal also represents a major opportunity for Skype to advance its leadership in Internet voice communications and offer people worldwide new ways to communicate in a global online era. Skype, eBay and PayPal will create an unparalleled ecommerce and communications engine for buyers and sellers around the world.

"Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community," said Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay. "By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net."

Founded in 2002 by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Skype offers high-quality voice communications to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world. The Skype software is easy to download and install, and enables free calls between Skype users online. Skype's premium services provide low-cost connectivity to traditional fixed and mobile telephones. Skype's software also offers a robust set of features, including voicemail, instant messaging, call forwarding and conference calling. Upcoming product innovations include Skype video, expressive content such as avatars, and customized toolbars for Outlook and Internet Explorer.

Today a friend ask me; How do  I do a complete NSLookup? I said just go to LogicalPackets and get the answer. He said no I want to do it in command prompt. Since this is a question I am asked from time to time, I thought it better to just post it to the blog so I can just say look at the blog.

So as you can see the command is: nslookup -type=any domainname.com

An independent spyware analyst is accusing Yahoo of supporting spyware companies by distributing Yahoo Search Marketing ads to them.

Consultant Ben Edelman faulted Yahoo for not letting its advertisers know where their ads might end up.

"We know people pay very high pay-per-click fees when they think they're getting traffic from Yahoo, because advertisers think Yahoo users are more valuable," Edelman told internetnews.com. "Whatever their value actually is, advertisers who are buying the stuff should be told what they're getting."

Adware is free ad-supported software that users can download at no charge. But in his blog, Edelman documented how the software is installed without clear notification.

Justice Murray Wilcox of Australia's Federal Court ruled largely in favor of music labels, including Universal, Sony, Warner and Festival Mushroom, which had argued that the Kazaa software--owned by Australian-based Sharman Networks--was used to undertake copyright infringement on a massive scale. The labels had also targeted United States-based Altnet, which provides a search technology for Kazaa and is a close partner of Sharman.

Wilcox also ordered respondents Sharman Networks, LEF Interactive, Sharman CEO Nicole Hemming, Altnet and Brilliant Digital Entertainment boss Kevin Bermeister to pay 90 percent of the music industry's court costs.

The judge dismissed the music industry's claims the Kazaa parties had contravened Australia's Trade Practices Act and engaged in conspiracy, as well as dismissing as "overstated" the industry's allegation that Kazaa's managers were engaged in copyright-infringing behaviour themselves. "The more realistic claim is that the respondents authorized users to infringe the applicants' copyright in their sound recordings," he said.

Kazaa can remain in operation, Wilcox said, if the software maker meets either of two conditions. First, "non-optional key-word filter technology" would need to be included in current versions of the software received by new users and in future versions of the software and if "maximum pressure" was exerted on existing users to upgrade to a new version containing the technology. The other option was that the Altnet search software--called TopSearch--be restricted to providing lists of non-copyright-infringing works.

   While it has become clear that most of the news in America has only become a mirror of the wire services, and called reporting. I am simply appalled by their handling of the Hurricane Disaster in the Gulf Coast. I sit and watch the network "pretty girls" spitting out words which are misused; almost as if they have no concept that they are talking about Americans.

I am sorry but listening to the reference of "VICTIMS or SURVIVORS" as "Refugees" or better yet MSNBC is referring to them as both "OUTCASTS" and "Refugees" is unacceptable. I will not even state my views of our government's lack of response to this Disaster. I cannot imagine anyone in the media would refer to any of their friends or family in this way. These are all Americans first, and should be treated as such by both media and our government. They are people who have lost it all by a disaster. I am sorry but did these media people even go to school? What has happened to a reporters / journalists in this country anyway?

This whole event should make every government offical and agency embarrassed by the way they handled this. Being referred to by many world news papers and media as "Third World America" was shocking at first. We spent a fortune on this group called Homeland security. Security what a joke!

People only behave badly if there is no law and order. I admit that the New Orleans Police have never had a good record. But please, to take 5 days to get any type of order is something that our government should be totally ashamed of. You can do air drops of food and water to an enemy, but cannot help people in your own country. SHAME ON YOU!

I have high hopes that one day we can again live in a country where a journalist; even after reading a stupid teleprompter; would question the use of the words "OUTCASTS" and "Refugees". Is that too much to ask for? They spend millions of dollars to fly these reporters to the scene. Could someone please buy them a dictionary? I will note one "orginal article" however which seems correct.

This is a quote from a 70 year old victim.

"What took you so long? I’m extremely happy, but I cannot let it be at that. They did not take the lead to do this. They had to be pushed to do it."

The creator of software designed to surreptitiously observe individuals' online activities has been indicted for allegedly violating U.S. federal computer privacy laws, local and federal authorities said Friday. If convicted, Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara could face a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison and fines of up to $8.75 million. His current whereabouts are unknown. Four individuals who purchased the Loverspy software to illegally spy on others were also indicted. His indictment was returned on July 21 by a federal grand jury sitting in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego but wasn't unsealed until last week.

"This federal indictment -- one of the first in the country to target a manufacturer of 'spyware' computer software -- is particularly important because of the damage done to people's privacy by these insidious programs," John Richter, acting assistant attorney general of the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division, said in a statement. "Law enforcement must continue to take action against the manufacturers of these programs to protect unsuspecting victims and seek punishment for those responsible for wreaking havoc online."

Perez-Melara, 25, was indicted on 35 counts of manufacturing, sending and advertising a surreptitious interception device (the Loverspy program), unlawfully intercepting electronic communications, disclosing unlawfully intercepted electronic communications and obtaining unauthorized access to protected computers for financial gain. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

Perez-Melara advertised and sold Loverspy and EmailPI software over the Internet for $89 a copy to people looking to secretly monitor another computer user's e-mail, passwords, chat sessions, instant messages and the Web sites they visited. Purchasers of the program could log into a Loverspy Members Area on the Loverspy or EmailPI Web sites and choose an e-card and greeting that would be sent to the victim.

A deadline has been extended that could have left tens of thousands of people without their Internet phone service next week.

The Federal Communications Commission said Friday it would delay a Monday deadline for providers of Internet-based phone calls to obtain acknowledgments that their customers understand the problems they may encounter when dialing 911 in an emergency.

Providers of the phone service, known as Voice over Internet Protocol or "VoIP," had been told by the FCC that they should disconnect service by Tuesday to people who had not responded.

The agency extended the deadline to Sept. 28. If by that time a provider still has not received confirmation, then the company should disconnect a customer's phone service, according to the FCC order. "Full Article"

       Moroccan authorities arrested Farid Essebar, age 18; and simultaneously, Turkish officials arrested Atilla Ekici, age 21, both in connection with a global investigation into the outbreak of the Zotob network worm discovered just over two weeks ago. Louis M. Reigel, FBI Assistant Director for the Cyber Division, told reporters this afternoon that Essebar is believed to have been the sole author of the Zotob strain.

"The Moroccan was responsible, [it is] our belief, at this point in the investigation, for writing the code," A.D. Reigel stated. Referring to the suspect by his country of origin, he continued, "Moroccan has a financial relationship with the Turkish individual, Mr. Ekici. We believe that there was financial gain on the part of Moroccan in relationship to the writing of the code." However, Reigel added, the FBI had not seen official charges against the two suspects from their respective governments.

Essebar is also suspected, the FBI confirmed, of either writing or co-writing two other major instances of obtrusive and destructive code: The Mytob mass-mail attachment worm, discovered last February, to which Essebar is believed to have contributed, exhibits similar behavior to Zotob but is communicated in a different way. Zotob attacks systems through an unmonitored network port reserved for Universal Plug and Play, in order to exploit a deficiency in Windows 2000 which fails to authenticate traffic over that port.

Also being attributed to Essebar is the Rbot strain of worms, first detected in June 2004, for which anti-virus provider Sophos reports hundreds of known variants. Rbot manifests and distributes itself in a variety of ways, although it usually attempts first to attack Windows computers by exploiting open ports reserved for NetBIOS and Microsoft Directory Services traffic, passing itself off as legitimate network share traffic using a weak administrator password. Like both Mytob and Zotob, once a system is infected, Rbot changes some System Registry keys in order for it to run automatically at system startup, and then tries to communicate with an un-resourced (unnamed) IP address using Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol.

There has been quite a bit more discussion about an upcoming Google IM client, I find the entire concept amusing. Being an avid user of Skype since the early beta. How on earth can everyone be so jazzed over a search engine company offering something based on the old Jabber technology will be better than Skype. The only way it could be better is if it washed the car or something. I guess some people are totally Googled. If so here's your "google".

"Google Talk seems to be the name that all the tipsters are pointing too and some have even hinted that VoIP will be built right in (but with a name like Google Talk, how could it not include voice chat?). It’s not yet known if the voice features will be limited to PC-to-PC, but we’re hoping for the SkypeOut like ability to call home. "

Personally I feel that Google is a fantasic search engine. But really why re-invent the wheel yet again? I think that the 154 million downloads at skype speak for themself.

Plenty of speculation on the web today over Google being poised to compete with Microsoft and produce an alternate computing platform for PC users. Here is the eweek spin.

So let's do a simple compare just with the way their respective lawyers have done their jobs. While everyone thinks we all need desktop search features I question opening my computer up to either of these two companies to ralley at their sides and give away or put my computer more at risk than it already is.

What does Google Desktop do with the information on my computer?

So that you can easily search your computer, the Google Desktop application indexes and stores versions of your files and other computer activity, such as email, chats, and web history. These versions may also be mixed with your Web search results to produce results pages for you that integrate relevant content from your computer and information from the Web.

Your computer's content is not made accessible through Google Desktop to Google without your explicit permission. For more information about what Google Desktop can do, please see the Product FAQ.

What information does Google receive?

If you choose to enable Advanced Features, Google Desktop may send information about the websites that you visit to provide enhanced Google Desktop functions, such as personalizing news displayed in Sidebar. Enabling Advanced Features also allows Google Desktop to collect a limited amount of non-personal information from your computer and send it to Google. This includes summary information, such as the number of searches you do and the time it takes for you to see your results, and application reports we'll use to make the program better. You can choose to enable Advanced Features during installation and you can change your mind at any time in Desktop Preferences.

MSN Collection of your Personal Information

This MSN Privacy Statement applies to data collected by Microsoft through its MSN sites and services; it does not apply to data collected through other online or offline Microsoft sites, products or services. Other Microsoft sites and services linked to from this Web site, including microsoft.com, MapPoint, WindowsMedia.com and Xbox.com have their own privacy statements which can be viewed by clicking on the links.

This Statement contains a section with specific details regarding personal information collected from children. Click here to read more. In order to sign in to MSN services, you will be asked to enter an e-mail address and password, which we refer to as your MSN credentials. If you access our services via a mobile phone, your credentials will consist of your telephone number and a PIN. As part of creating your MSN credentials, you may also be requested to provide an alternate e-mail address, and questions and secret answers, which we use to verify your identity and assist in resetting your password. Some services may require added security, and in these cases, you may be asked to create an additional security key. Finally, a unique ID number will be assigned to your MSN credentials which will be used to identify your credentials and associated information.

If you have an e-mail address that has been provided by MSN (e.g. those ending in msn.com, hotmail.com, or webtv.net) that e-mail address and the associated password are your MSN credentials. You may also use any other Microsoft Passport Network credentials to sign into most MSN services.

At some MSN sites, Microsoft collects personal information, such as your e-mail address, name, home or work address or telephone number. We may also collect demographic information, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests and favorites. Information collected on MSN may be combined with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies.

After reading this legal speak. I will say they paid well to make sure every end user will have no clue what they are on about. It is simple they are marketing companies and they want your information. Thinking otherwise would honestly be as misleading as all this legal babble. Can anyone say anything simple anymore? Am I giving you the right to collect information from my machine or not? Google did a fair job of removing the ambiguity untill we get to the part about enabling the Advanced Features. Then as quick as a whip they too take us off to the color gray.

This article was pubished on 8-8-2005. Thinking this article might be usefull. I go to the source SpamButcher which sells yet another anti-spam application for only $29.95. Which I am sure it is as good as any though I did not test it. Since SpamBayes is my personal choice as it is a plug-in to the outlook client and is free. I was still interested in the article none the less it might prove useful.

The article starts with this quote. "This document is intended to help people with relatively little networking experience identify if they have a spam zombie problem and provide some basic strategies for dealing with them."  Let's cut to the chase, and find how we can get rid of the bad guys.

So, what should you do?

1. Disconnect the system from the network - do this now!
2. Backup any important data (just get your data- try to avoid copying any installers or executables that could've been the source of the zombie or exploit)
3. Format all drives

This may seem a bit extreme, but is generally a good idea. The best practice in any situation you've had a security compromise that you can't account for 100% is to "level" the computer in question."

We can make it much simplier than a five page article. The statement was that there are millions of hacked and zombied sytems. Everyone who has an infected computer format and start from scratch. Also don't worry about a backup just reinstall everything from scratch. This way you can be certain you are not inserting mal-ware. Also make sure you do the same for all the infected machines in your LAN. Inject dry humor here.

I personally view having to format your disks as a a bit of a pain. So can we look at the menu again, perhaps another option?

So many times I get the question about putting a large disk in a windows box that is not seen as the proper size. Whether it is windows 2000 or XP we can point you to the proper page at MS but after that you are on your own. If you are terrified by regkey edits call someone who can do this for you.

XP   http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

Win 2000  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305098

Sterling Energy Systems announced an agreement with Southern California Edison on Thursday to build a solar power facility capable of generating 500 megawatts of power. It will be installed over 4,500 acres in the Mojave desert north of Los Angeles.

The system calls for the installation of the company's 37-foot-high dishes which reflect sun into a tube of a Sterling engine where hydrogen is kept. The heat from the sun is focused on hydrogen, which expands and creates enough pressure to turn a piston and crank shaft.

Sterling Energy Systems is testing another installation with Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. The Deal.com reports more on the people and business model behind the Phoenix-based start-up.

More commonly used solar installations use photovoltaic cells to convert the sun's energy to electricity.

Meanwhile, FedEx turned the switch on a large solar installation in Oakland, California last week. According to an article in RenewableEnergyAccess.com, the FedEx-owned installation will 904 kilowatts of electricity and be the largest corporate-owned solar installation in California.

Apple executives insisted that Mac OS X would only run on x86 chips used in Apple-developed hardware. Intel PCs distributed to Apple developers with the x86 version of Mac OS X used a security chip to prevent developers from copying Mac OS to other Intel PCs, according to several reports this week from Mac enthusiast sites.

However, several enterprising hackers have figured out ways to bypass the security chip and run the developer's version of MacOS for x86 on any x86-based PC, according to a posting on the Web page of The OSx86 Project. Posters on that site, as well as other sites within the Mac community, claim to have used the instructions to run Mac OS X on their Intel or AMD PCs, with some posting pictures and videos of x86 PCs booting Mac OS X.

The process requires a copy of Mac OS X version 4 (Tiger), VMware's virtualization software, the PearPC emulator that can run operating systems written for PowerPC on any architecture, Apple's Darwin 8.0.1 software, an x86 processor that supports SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2), and two files created by an independent developer that can be downloaded using the BitTorrent file-sharing system.

As of Friday afternoon, detailed instructions were available in a wiki created by The OSx86 Project. Another site had posted instructions for installing Mac OS X without using VMware's software.

AP Photo: Scott Levine, left, of Florida, the owner of the now defunct e-mail marketing contractor Snipermail.com,...

A Florida man was convicted Friday of stealing information from data-management company Acxiom Corp. in what prosecutors said was the largest federal computer theft trial ever. The jury convicted Scott Levine, the owner of defunct e-mail marketing contractor Snipermail.com, on 120 counts of unauthorized access to data, two counts of access device fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. Jurors cleared Levine of 13 counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer, one conspiracy count and one count of money-laundering. Statutory maximum sentences for his convictions total 640 years in prison and fines of $30.7 million, though his punishment likely will be much less under federal sentencing guidelines. Sentencing was set for Jan. 9.

Prosecutors said Levine and his company stole 1.6 billion customer records — the equivalent of 550 telephone books filled with names, e-mail and postal addresses. The government did not charge anyone with identity theft. "We're very pleased with the outcome. We think it's the appropriate verdict," U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins said outside U.S. District Court. "These are very serious crimes, a huge amount of data that was stolen for monetary gain and he should be held accountable. The jury apparently saw it that way." Six Snipermail employees pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and testified against Levine in the case. In the trial, Levine's lawyer, David Garvin, claimed Levine's employees were guilty of the unauthorized downloads and tried to pin them on their relatively computer-illiterate boss.

While Spammers might anger you and frustrate, with the daily barrage of endless garbage. We seriously doubt that murder is the right answer to the problem. In Russia though, it appears to be the answer. The image was the product of a contest urging Russians to kill the spammer in question.

Russia’s most (in)famous spammer, Vardan Kushnir, 35, was dead in his apartment in downtown Moscow on Monday, July 25. Someone repeatedly smashed his head with a heavy object, authorities say, and then ransacked his entire apartment. The authorities have obviously got no clue as to who that someone might have been.

And, as a matter of fact, they don’t seem to really care: every day between 10 and 20 people meet a violent death in Russia’s capital, and a significant part of those crimes remains unsolved (Russia’s Interior Ministry reports 1,935 unsolved murders, 73,000 burglaries and 11,400 robberies between January and May in this year alone). There is no reason for Moscow’s law enforcement officials to give Kushnir’s case any special treatment, so they most probably won’t. But the Moscow-based media is awash with comments and speculations, expounding one simple, albeit largely irrational, theory: someone (ranging from God almighty to an irate IT office worker) finally punished Vardan Kushnir for his seemingly unstoppable spamming activities.

Full Article

Apple Computer Inc.'s neglect of the humble mouse is over. It now offers a model that's nimble.

Apple introduced on Tuesday its first computer mouse with multiple buttons, including four sensors and a tiny scroll ball. Although a departure from the company's traditional mouse, the "Mighty Mouse" looks very similar to the single-button model Apple has long produced.

The most obvious difference is the relatively tiny scroll ball at the mouse's head, which can move cursors diagonally as well as up and down across display screens and can be pressed to "click" functions.

Find out More

  Mozilla Foundation has set up a commercial subsidiary to cash in on the Firefox browser.

The open-source group on Wednesday announced a major reorganization that includes the creation of the Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit subsidiary to ride the Firefox gravy train.

Mozilla Corp., which will operate out of the Foundation's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, has been set up as a wholly owned commercial subsidiary to generate revenues to support development, testing, and productization of the various Mozilla open-source technologies.

"The broad adoption of Mozilla Firefox has created significant economic value both in Firefox itself and in a commercial ecosystem that is developing around Firefox," Mozilla said in a statement.

Mitchell Baker, who has served for the past two years as "chief lizard wrangler" at the Mozilla Foundation, will assume the title of president of Mozilla Corp. All 36 employees at the Foundation will immediately move over to the Corporation.

Brendan Eich, a co-founder and longtime technical leader of the Mozilla project, is now the chief technical officer of the new corporation, while the board of directors will remain the same except for the addition of Reid Hoffman, chief executive of social networking service LinkedIn Corp.

"[The] purpose is not to generate a return on investment in the financial sense. It is not an investment vehicle or an IPO candidate. It is completely owned by the Mozilla Foundation," Baker said in a blog entry detailing the reasons for the reorganization.

Following what many viewed as an unimpressive first showing of the then "Longhorn" OS at this year's WinHEC, Wednesday's release of Windows Vista Beta 1 began to show hints of the Aero interface that will play a large role in the new operating system. Microsoft also confirmed Wednesday that a feature complete version of the interface will not be included until Beta 2, not due until early 2006.
Most notably, Vista users will notice that windows are now translucent with more animation when opening and closing windows. "Because it is visually intuitive, the glass helps users focus on the task at hand, whether reading a document, viewing a Web page or editing a photo," Microsoft says.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey quizzed online users about their familiarity with Internet buzzwords such as spam, firewall and Internet cookies. The results reflect how many of those terms have worked their way into mainstream consciousness. It appears a few of the latest Internet trends still have a long way to go:

• Only 9 percent of respondents said they had a "good idea'' of the definition of RSS feeds, which lets people who enjoy reading blogs, or online diaries, subscribe and receive the latest post as soon as it is published.

• About 13 percent knew the term podcasting, or programs such as radio shows that are broadcast through the Internet and downloaded onto digital-music players, most commonly the Apple iPod.

• And 29 percent were familiar with Internet phishing, which occurs when unsolicited e-mails pretend to come from a business or a trustworthy person -- such as a missive that purports to be from your bank -- and try to get the users' personal data.

A startup security firm is taking the fight to spammers by enlisting end users to create what's called a Do-Not-Intrude registry whose purpose is to make it too painful for junk mailers to operate.

If a spammer sends you spam, you have a right to complain, said Eran Reshef, the chief executive of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Blue Security. If they send you one spam, you complain one time. If they send you a thousand spams, you can complain a thousand times.

It's the volume on which spam operates and Blue Security's plan hinges.

Starting Monday, users can download Blue Security's Blue Frog client and sign up with the Do-Not-Intrude registry. Once the software's installed, users can register up to three e-mail addresses to monitor for spam. Blue Security, however, watches not only those addresses but up to a dozen accounts it sets up for that act as additional "honeypots," or accounts designed to attract spam.

Blue Security analyzes the messages it receives from the users' accounts (as well as all others who sign up), then follows the links inside the spam to (hopefully) the originating site where, for instance, products or services pitched by the junk mail are sold. There, forms are identified that accept text -- an order form, perhaps, or a customer service form -- and its fields are automatically filled with a message demanding that the e-mail account's address be removed from the spammer's list.

"I kindly ask that you cease sending me or other registered users spam," the message reads.

The idea, said Reshef, is to punish the spammer for his actions. Although the scheme doesn't generate mail to the spammer -- spam for spam, so to speak -- the volume of Web traffic should be enough to cripple the spammer's Web site.

"The sheer amount of complaints going to the spammer's site is going to make it hard [for that site] to do anything else, said Reshef.

Spam is analyzed by Blue Security staff, said Reshef, who investigate the spam, verify that it violates the federal CAN-SPAM Act, trace the message to a Web site, and pinpoint a form on the site that can be used to complain. The Blue Frog handles everything else for the end-user.

The opt-out complaints are synchronized, so that all users whose accounts are monitored file simultaneously.

Although Reshef repeatedly said that the practice was not illegal, the end result is very close to a denial-of-service attack, in which a collection of computers simultaneously try to access a Web server with the intention of bringing it down under the sheet volume of traffic.

Reshef aggressively defended the concept and rejected the idea that it was a DoS in disguise. "We have a right to complain," he said. "The spammers have the right to send us spam, and we cant say anything? No, thats not right.

"Were not creating any harm. Were not trying to shut down any Web sites. But we have the right to complain, one for one," he added.

Other fight-back tactics against spammers have failed in the past. Last year, Lycos Europe rolled out a screensaver that conducted DoS attacks against known spammers. Within days, however, Lycos buckled under pressure from security groups -- which called it vigilantism -- and ISPs, who worried that attacks originating from their members would make them liable to legal action on the part of spammers.

"Our effort is completely different from what Lycos did," said Reshef. "Lycos used a hit list of spammers. We're only responding to actual spam. And each user is responding only to the spam he or she received."

Some may see it as a difference in semantics. But Reshef sees it as effective.

"We've already seen it work," he said. "The spammers don't like what we're doing, and some of them during our tests tried to modify their site on the fly to keep out complaints." Two other sites that he declined to name, he said, have agreed to stop sending spam to the real and honeypot accounts.

"We need a critical mass of users for this to work," Reshef acknowledged. "If enough people abandon the idea of passively filtering spam and realize that unrelenting action is required, we can together stand up for our online rights."

Once its built up a sufficient community of users to ding spammers' Web sites, Blue Security plans to offer the service to enterprises for a fee.

The Blue Frog client can be downloaded free of charge from the Blue Security Web site.

An email worm is recruiting computers for a coordinated attack on antivirus vendor Symantec's website.

Since Friday, 7-15-2005 email filtering vendor MessageLabs has intercepted 13,717 copies of the worm, dubbed Breatel.A-mm, and has issued a medium-level warning.

The worm travels as an email attachment, under the subject lines: "Message could not be delivered", "Error", or "Mail Delivery System".

If the attached file is opened, the computer connects to a botnet — a network of thousands of hacker-controlled computers used for illegal activity – and begins to send data to the Symantec website in the hope of crashing it.

According to antivirus company F-Secure, the worm attachment contains a message to Symantec that says: "easy to talk but hard to work :)  what about working in symantec? :P  it is not only a mass mail worm it is also a lsass worm :)"

A Symantec spokesman said that the company's infrastructure was built to withstand such attacks.

The first copy of the worm was sent from Northern Ireland, MessageLabs said.

EFF: Fighting for Bloggers' Rights If you're a blogger, this website is for you. EFF's goal is to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected. To that end, we have created the Legal Guide for Bloggers, a collection of blogger-specific FAQs addressing everything from fair use to defamation law to workplace whistle-blowing. We also invite you to join us on July 19th for our BayFF gathering to talk about bloggers' rights.

In the past week I personally experienced a case where a bit of anti-spyware I had running on my machine lost its database. As a result of that, it decided to go about editing all my registry key values. Oh boy! Every time it said it would edit this value I told it no do not do that. Well this is a very "smart application", which smart application only means it thinks it is protecting you. NOT! Since this happened to me, I figured it has and could happen to other people.

In my case the anti-spy ware actually removed all the file association attributes in the system. Though it was not so bad as to prevent me from rebooting the machine. Every icon on the machine had no way of knowing where it was pointing. It was pretty bad, it did not even know where notepad was or how to open it. Every bit of third party software in my machine had no way of knowing where it was or how to get at it. One could sit there for days resetting the paths but sorry life is too short for that.

Without a backup people would be facing a catastrophic event. With a backup you would simply restore the system state from the last back up and be no big deal at all. Doing a repair did not help really, as the repair made the same mess we had. Boot to last known good did not work either as it too was toast.

We are constantly told by clients and users that they have no idea how to do a proper backup of their machine. It is hard to understand why people do not understand this. We will now go through the complete process with screen shots. It simply makes no sense to have a machine and not have any proper backups.

Windows Backup Made Simple!

Microsoft's rationale for changing the default recommendation of four Claria applications -- Dashbar, Gator, PrecisionTime, and Weatherscope -- saying that published criteria for defining spyware and adware required it to review how AntiSpyware treated the quartet.

"We decided that adjustments should be made to the classification of Claria software in order to be fair and consistent with how Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) handles similar software from other vendors," the letter continued.

Also late Friday, a Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged that after Microsoft acquired Giant Company Software, the developer of what became AntiSpyware, but before publishing its adware/spyware criteria, the Redmond, Wash.-based company "received lots of vendor disputes."

"A few of these came from Claria," the spokesperson said.

Some anti-spyware vendors have similar policies in place for settling disputes with adware vendors. Computer Associates, for instance, which markets Pest Patrol, used such a policy in late March to re-evaluate Claria's adware, and found it met its requirements for detection.

"After review, Microsoft found that Claria['s adware products] still needed to be detected, but decided to make changes in the recommendations made to the users. It did this to be fair, to treat Claria the same way it treated other software vendors," the spokesperson said.

Before March 1, Microsoft AntiSpyware recommended "Quarantine" for the four Claria adware programs, which essentially removed them from the PC. After March 1, Microsoft's software recommended "Ignore," which if followed by the user leaves the adware in place.

What is it? A small, self-replicating application— most often created by a vandal rather than a corporate spy—that infects a host computer and then copies itself to every other computer attached to the host. Most network worms can saturate a network in hours or days because they grow logarithmically—every infected computer represents not one but an array of other possible victims, so that 10 infections become 100, which become 1,000, which become 10,000, and so on.

Isn't this just a regular worm? Yes, but there is more than one meaning for "regular."E-mail worms and viruses are designed to spread by using the e-mail system itself as a carrier. A network worm is more insidious. It might arrive via e-mail, but could also slip in attached to files in a portable hard drive, a flash-memory stick, a PDA or, increasingly, a cell phone.

Why the distinction? Because it's possible to screen out most, if not all, e-mail worms and viruses using virus scanners at the firewall or on the e-mail servers. But network worms can come in via pathways that become more numerous with every advance in mobile computing, wireless networks and smart phones. Many companies aren't sufficiently aggressive about virus screening inside the firewall. So network worms not only have more ways to get into a corporate network, but once they're in, they're more likely to be free to operate uninterrupted.

How does a network worm attack? Most simply copy themselves to every computer with which the host computer can share data. Most Windows networks allow machines within defined subgroups to exchange data freely, making it easier for a worm to propagate itself. Some worms can also lodge in the startup folder of a networked computer, launch when that computer is restarted and reinfect a network that may have already been cleaned out. A worm that lodges in a server can infect every user who logs on to that server.

Full Article here:

We are often overwhelmed by the number of people who say they do not know how to zip and have windows XP. This is so simple and requires no software out of the box to do this. In the screen shot example I have selected the files and they will be compressed to their own folder in the root folder space. You could also compress the entire folder in this example the root folder on the left would be Merak. So compressing folders or files is quite simple.

If you are on windows 98, ME, or 2000 these have no zip functions build into the OS. Here is a download for a free utility that will offer the same features.  Get it here. Though if you have to be told this one would question a need for more powerful tools Like Win Rar or Win Zip which will allow you to backup and zip protect files on your system running a bat file. We have offered the links to our personal favorites anyway.

More that 90 percent of Internet users in the United States have altered their online behavior significantly to counter the threat of spyware programs, according to a study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The Pew report (PDF file), written by associate director Susannah Fox, highlights the increased awareness of privacy and other threats presented by adware and spyware programs.

Overall, the project's survey found that nine out of 10 of Internet users have made at least one change in their online behavior to avoid unwanted software programs.

These behavior changes include not opening e-mail attachments unless they are sure these documents are safe or not visiting specific Web sites that they fear might deposit unwanted programs on their computers.

Full Article Here

Deep Impact Kicks Off Fourth of July With Deep Space Fireworks
After 172 days and 431 million kilometers (268 million miles) of deep space stalking, Deep Impact successfully reached out and touched comet Tempel 1. The collision between the coffee table-sized impactor and city-sized comet occurred at 1:52 a.m. EDT.

"What a way to kick off America's Independence Day," said Deep Impact Project Manager Rick Grammier of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The challenges of this mission and teamwork that went into making it a success, should make all of us very proud." "This mission is truly a smashing success," said Andy Dantzler, director of NASA's Solar System Division. "Tomorrow and in the days ahead we will know a lot more about the origins of our solar system."

Great Movies and Pictures

    The Justice Department seized hundreds of computers and arrested four people in an international crackdown on Internet pirates illegally distributing copyrighted video games, software and movies, such as the latest episode of ``Star Wars.''

Agents executed 90 search warrants in the United States and 10 other countries as part of Operation Site Down. The raids, which began Wednesday, shut down at least eight major online distributors and seized pirated works worth more than $50 million, authorities said.

At a news conference Thursday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales credited the busts with ``striking at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain.'' Gonzales said the piracy rings are responsible for providing ``the vast majority of the illegal digital content now available online.''

Online piracy rings are known as ``warez,'' pronounced ``wares.'' They function as underground cyberspace co-ops, in which members swap the latest copyrighted material. Warez groups are notoriously difficult to penetrate. Many are based overseas and users are tech-savvy, communicating in encrypted messages and requiring codes and passwords.

The federal operation targeted ``first-providers,'' or those who provide the copyrighted work to the groups.

Arrested were: William Venya, 34, of Chatsworth; Chirayu Patel, 23, of Fremont; Nate Lovell, 22, of Boulder, Colo.; and David Fish, 24, of Watertown, Conn. Criminal complaints charged each with copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

The four have been ordered to appear July 14 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Howard R. Lloyd in San Jose.

Microsoft Corp. has filed a suit against a company in Germany that it alleges is at the center of a network of companies in the U.S. and Ukraine distributing unsolicited e-mail.

The company, which is registered in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, is the source of millions of unsolicited e-mail messages, or spam, Microsoft said Monday in a statement issued on its German-language Web site.

Microsoft declined to disclose the name of the company.

The English-language spam messages promote companies offering Web site design and development services, in addition to online casinos and pornographic Internet sites, according to Microsoft. Some users of Microsoft's Hotmail service have received thousands of unwanted advertising messages from Internet companies located in North Rhine Westphalia, the U.S. software company said.

The owner of the company at the center of the spam ring operates numerous Web sites, which he uses to send unsolicited e-mail for a fee or to sell addresses, according to Microsoft.

The owner, who now resides in Germany after having lived for a long time in the U.S., denies the allegations, claiming his partners are out of control, Microsoft said.

Whether Microsoft can halt the flow of spam spewing from companies in Germany remains to be seen, however. Currently, the country has no law against spam distribution.

To sidestep this legislative hole, Microsoft is seeking an injunction to shut down the alleged spammer in North Rhine Westphalia under German fair-trade laws.

LONDON -- Two men have been sentenced to a total of 10 years in prison for their roles in a wide range of online fraud activities, U.K. authorities said this week.

Douglas Harvard, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, was arrested by the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) in Leeds earlier this month during an investigation into a conspiracy by Eastern European crime syndicates.

Upon his arrest, police found documents, correspondence and equipment for creating false identities, as well as evidence that he was being assisted by a second man, British citizen Lee Elwood.

Elwood, who is 25 and based in Glasgow, was arrested a few days later and charged with conspiracy to defraud after police found a large quantity of forged bank documents, credit card holograms, computers and other equipment, according to the NHTCU.

Both men were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to launder money. Harvard was given six years in prison, while Elwood was given four.

The pair's extensive online fraud activities led authorities to warn about the growing rate of cybrcrime. Both men were heavily involved in Web sites that promoted and facilitated a range of criminal activities, according to the NHTCU.

The men stole at least $1.37 million over a 10-month period and they may have banked as much as $11.8 million over two years, the NHTCU estimated.

Harvard and Elwood were moderators on the Cardplanet and Shadowcrew Web sites, which gave them the ability to monitor, approve and post articles to newsgroups. Once the suspects contacted each other over the Internet, they exchanged stolen information and counterfeit documents, authorities said.

Harvard admitted to receiving a large amount of credit card and password information from individuals in Russia, according to the NHTCU. He and Elwood used the information to buy goods and then had other people sell them at online auction sites and deliver the bulk of the proceeds back to them. After taking their cut, the men would send the remainder of the money back to their contacts in Russia, the NHTCU said.

Advanced Micro Devices, which filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel on Tuesday, envisions a day when Intel no longer dominates the PC market.

AMD's suit, filed in Delaware, alleges that its larger rival wielded its financial and market clout illegally in order to artificially limit AMD's market share and maintain its own PC processor monopoly. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. also seeks restitution, but declined to offer specifics. Intel Corp., in a statement, denied any wrongdoing.

The changes, AMD believes, would result in far more AMD-based PCs and open opportunities, such as a possible AMD-Dell Inc. deal. AMD also would be able to use its newfound agility to compete on price and technical terms to earn more wins in business-oriented notebooks, desktops and servers from large, brand-name companies, AMD executives said. Right now, of the largest PC makers in the United States, only Hewlett-Packard Co. offers AMD-based systems to businesses. Dell, Lenovo Group Ltd. and even Gateway Inc. use only Intel in their business systems.

"We deserve to have a significantly larger share of the market than new already have. The only thing that's keeping us from achieving those numbers are the illegal, monopolistic actions of our competitor," Hector Ruiz, AMD's CEO, said in a teleconference with analysts and reporters Tuesday afternoon.

AMD bears the burden of proof, however. A company must use its dominant position to maintain a monopoly before it violates the law. Thus AMD must first prove that Intel has a monopoly, a slam dunk in the opinion of AMD executives, as well as show that it abused that position.

"AMD needs to show that Intel has effectively impaired competition in the PC market. It's not enough to show that Intel is just a behemoth and a monopolist. AMD has to prove that Intel's practices have resulted in less competition or higher prices," said Hillard Sterling, an antitrust lawyer at Freeborn & Peters LLP, in Chicago.

News Story by Jeremy Pelofsky

JUNE 27, 2005 (REUTERS) - The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that cable companies don't have to provide rivals with access to their high-speed Internet lines, a victory for the cable and telephone industries, which are seeking deregulation.

The justices by a 6-3 vote overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that cable high-speed Internet service has a telecommunications component and is subject to traditional telephone network-access requirements.

The Supreme Court backed a 2002 Federal Communications Commission decision that said cable broadband Internet service is an information service -- and is thus free from most telephone rules, including requirements to lease network access to competitors.

FCC officials had argued the move was necessary to spur more investment in high-speed Internet services. But consumer groups and independent Internet service providers such as EarthLink Inc. expressed concern that consumers would have few choices for Web access without some FCC safeguards.

The high court decided that the FCC's decision was reasonable under the Communications Act and that the appeals court didn't extend sufficient deference to the FCC as the expert agency to make its decision. Justices Antonin Scalia, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

The Bush administration has been pushing broadband deployment as an economic booster, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin opened the door to using the court decision broadly. "This decision provides much-needed regulatory clarity and a framework for broadband that can be applied to all providers," Martin said.

The decision could also benefit telephone companies that offer digital subscriber lines (DSL), an analyst said.

"It says some of the uncertainty is lifted about continued investment in broadband services like cable modems and DSL," said Craig Moffett at New York-based Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. "In that sense, it's a win for the telcos [telecommunications companies] as well, whose DSL services are still regulated as telecommunications services."

Cable companies such as Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Inc. are locked in a fierce battle with Internet service providers and telephone companies that offer their own high-speed Internet service and plan to provide with video service. The cable industry has about 21 million high-speed Internet access subscribers. Despite somewhat slower downloading speeds, DSL services have been gaining on cable and now have about 15 million lines.

"It will simply mean that price-gouging cable companies can keep ratcheting up prices and limiting Internet service options for consumers," said Gene Kimmelman, director of Consumers Union of the United States Inc.'s Washington office.

"This lack of choice limits the future deployment of innovative voice, video and data services beyond just those offered by the local cable company," said Dave Baker, vice president of law and public policy at Atlanta-based EarthLink.

On Monday morning, the Supreme Court ruled that peer-to-peer companies could be held liable for the widespread copyright infringement of their users. It's bad news for file-swapping services and, maybe, for the broader technology industry. More Details of the case.

Internet file-sharing services will be held responsible if they intend for their customers to use software primarily to swap songs and movies illegally, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting warnings that the lawsuits will stunt growth of cool tech gadgets such as the next iPod.

At issue was whether the file-sharing services should be held liable even if they have no direct control over what millions of online users are doing with the software they provide for free. As much as 90 percent of songs and movies copied on the file-sharing networks are downloaded illegally, according to music industry filings.

The entertainment industry said it needed protection against the billions of dollars in revenue they lose to illegal swapping. Consumer groups worried that expanded liability will stifle the technology revolution of the last two decades that brought video cassette recorders, MP3 players and Apple's iPod.

Companies will have to pay music and movie artists for up to billions in losses if they are found to have promoted illegal downloading.

Two lower courts previously sided with Grokster without holding a trial. They each based their decisions on the 1984 Supreme Court ruling that Sony Corp could not be sued over consumers who used its VCRs to make illegal copies of movies.

The lower courts reasoned that, like VCRs, the file-sharing software can be used for "substantial" legal purposes, such as giving away free songs, free software or government documents. They also said the file-sharing services were not legally responsible because they don't have central servers pointing users to copyright material.

But in Monday's ruling, lower courts could find the file-sharing services responsible by examining factors such as how companies marketed the product or whether they took easily available steps to reduce infringing uses.

Typically we would not cover anything political in our blog, but please.. Our government now has the right to take your land due to some developers plan for 'economic development'. For some time, it has appeared that Americans were asleep. Now we should question, if they have been drugged. Our supreme court basically has taken this part of 5th amendment and thrown it in the trash. Case Law Rules!!

In the midst of argument in Kelo v. New London—a critically important case about the government's right to condemn private land and give it to private developers—the lawyer for the city of New London, Conn., pulls out an actual prop. In response to a query from Sandra Day O'Connor as to whether there's a concrete development plan for what would replace the handful of homes being condemned, Wesley W. Horton hauls out a big poster board with the whole proposed community laid out. Condos here, marina here, yank out this crappy little Victorian house and the health club will go there, he enthuses.

At the losing end of these forced transactions are homeowners who don't want to sell. Justice Clarence Thomas, another dissenter, said these are disproportionately likely to be African Americans, who are more likely to own properties the government wants cleared away. But their rights to their homes are supposed to be the same as anyone else's.

This sort of "economic development" is generally banned in Washington. Our 1889 constitution says, with a short list of exceptions: "Private property shall not be taken for private use."

Your house cannot be condemned for a Costco, a Nordstrom or a Sheraton Hotel. Under the rules of Connecticut, it could.

The town of New London claimed that its seizure of property was necessary for economic development. The ruling now puts every church, small business, or home at risk of condemnation. This land is your land! Doubt it....

Anti-virus vendor Symantec is ending its relationship with online market research company ComScore, which makes the "Marketscore" spyware program.

Symantec Corp., of Cupertino, Calif., is in the process of severing its e-mail scanning services from ComScore Networks Inc.'s online behavior-tracking programs, according to Genevieve Haldeman, a Symantec spokesperson.

The relationship had raised the eyebrows of anti-spyware activists critical of ComScore's programs, which capture and store information from online sessions, including encrypted traffic from sensitive online transactions.

Marketscore, also known as OpinionSquare, NetSetter and JDCouncil, is a Web proxy agent that directs all Web traffic from computers it is installed on through servers operated by ComScore, before forwarding the traffic along to its final destination.

ComScore collects data from insecure browsing sessions and encrypted sessions, possibly including online shopping baskets, banking sessions or interactions containing health information, according to disclosures in the Marketscore privacy statement.

Full Article

Yahoo has closed all of its user-created Internet chat rooms amid fears that adults are using the sites to lure minors into sexual acts.

"We began implementing the changes to Yahoo Chat user rooms in the past week," spokeswoman Mary Osako, said. "We are working on improvements to enhance the user experience in compliance with our terms of service."

She said Yahoo planned to resume the service some time in the future.

The user-created chat rooms were shut down not long after a series of reports last month by a Houston television station revealed that adults were using the sites to lure young children for sex.

Yahoo requires users to agree not to "harm minors in any way" or make available any content that is "unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous or otherwise objectionable, " according to its Web site.

However, chat rooms set up and maintained by Yahoo remain open, Osako said.

Osako refused to say whether the report led to the Sunnyvale company's decision, but several big named advertisers did pull the plug on their ads that appeared in the chat rooms.

According to the Houston television station, KPRC, those chat rooms were named with blatant sexual overtones, including "Girls 13 and under for older guys" and "Girls 13 and up for much older men" and were all listed under "education chat rooms."

When blue-chip advertisers PepsiCo, Georgia-Pacific and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance discovered their ads were running on some of the same sites featured on the television news report, they yanked the spots.

"We were completely unaware that our ads were associated with these chat rooms in any way," Dave DeCecco, a spokesman for PepsiCo, said in a statement. "As soon as we were aware we worked with Yahoo to immediately remove them."

The telecom giant formed from the merger of Sprint (Quote, Chart) and Nextel (Quote, Chart) will be known as Sprint, but the Nextel name won't disappear altogether.

"The companies are in the enviable position of possessing two incredibly valuable brands with overwhelming positive and powerful equity in the marketplace," Mark Schweitzer, designated chief marketing officer for the new company, said in a statement.

The Nextel name will be affixed to a line of business-oriented products and services, including the instant, nationwide, digital walkie-talkie service.

Services sold under the Nextel brand will be aimed at selected businesses and government among others.

Sprint and Nextel announced their intention to merge in December. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year pending approval from shareholders and regulators.

Executives expect $12 billion in synergies from the combined company, mainly from their wireless networks and operations. The company will maintain executive headquarters in Nextel's Reston, Va., building, and operational headquarters in Sprint's Overland Park, Kan., facility.

SPANISH police have arrested 'P. Power', one of the most renowned code-crackers on the internet, following a nine-month inquiry.

Armed with a simple modem connection, a decrepit computer and standard software P. Power had broken security codes and hacked his way into costly professional computer programs, the interior ministry said.

Spanish authorities have not released the identity of P. Power, known only by his Internet pseudonym, but they did say he was a 26-year-old engineer.

After meticulously unassembling programs, analysing their weak points and then stripping them of their protection, the hacker broadcast messages to the internet saying he was the unique code-cracker and was sending out the codes for free, according to the interior ministry.

The ministry added it was impossible to put a price on the damage caused to firms using the programs pirated, or to say how many internet users had downloaded the codes for free.

Google's top executive confirmed on Tuesday that the company is planning to expand into broader online payment services but said it will not compete with a PayPal-like service.

In a company-issued statement, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company does not plan to offer what he called a "person-to-person stored-value payments system."

One of the main features of PayPal, a division of eBay Inc., is the ability for consumers to store balances in order to make e-commerce payments.

Following a story by the Wall Street Journal published on Friday, speculation ran rampant about Google offering a PayPal competitor.

Instead, Schmidt said that Google is looking to expand its current online payment services, which is largely used to handle payments from advertisers and to Web publishers in Google's popular online advertising programs.

Schmidt stopped short of offering details about Google's next online payment plans or when the Mountain View, Calif., company will introduce a broader service.

"The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs, which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers," Schmidt said in the statement. "We are building products in the area to solve new problems in e-commerce."

I was reading an article this morning and though on face value I pretty much agree with the article.  Click Here 

I must say I personally have some serious questions about trusting your business to this type of development, or for that matter even a call center.

On the the projects you want developed off shore. I have but a couple of questions here. A small company in Phoenix AZ SmarterTools has developed a three outstanding apps SmarterMail, SmarterStats, and Smarter Tickets.  Now the point here is if someone is a good code writer. We all know the need for good applications are really high. Why then are none of these applications coming out of India, and Eastern Block countries?

For them, a software company in any third world country. It makes more sense to simple write a few good apps than to do web development for small, medium and large companies? After all everyone within their organization is familar with the code and can do some level of support for it. My guess is that likely their software would prove their capabilities and likely most would not fair well.

I honestly start to wonder if by working beneath the wire so to speak. They can easily leave any back door or questionable security problem exposed. I am not saying that this might be the intent. However, working with people you know would never know where to look kind of opens the ignorant hiring people only based on the dollar bid. This is  simply not the right approach.

I have to say this if India or any third world country is good they will create the applications themself and sell them. A great place to start would be in my opinion a Low cost CMS system. Just a few searches on the web will show you how expensive something like this is if done properly. Look how long and how many companies have been created simply for a shopping cart application. There are so many to chose from today it is almost confusing. Seems logical to me that this level of competition can be focused on more than just a shopping cart.

Police in London arrested an unemployed computer systems administrator last week, more than two and a half years after U.S. authorities said they would request his extradition to answer charges of hacking U.S. federal computer systems.

Gary McKinnon, 39, was arrested at his home in northeast London, according to a spokeswoman for the city's Metropolitan Police Service. He was released on bail last Wednesday after a court hearing on extradition.

Although McKinnon was indicted in a U.S. District Court in Virginia in November 2002, London police received the extradition warrant only recently, the spokeswoman said. The warrant alleges that McKinnon gained illegal access and made unauthorized modifications to dozens of computers belonging to NASA and the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Department of Defense between Feb. 1, 2001, and March 19, 2002, she said.

McKinnon allegedly obtained administrator privileges on a number of government computers and then used that access to delete user accounts and install software enabling him to remotely control the systems, according to his indictment.

On Tuesday, May 17th 2005, the federal government revised the 2257 laws. The new regulations not only extend the amount and type of documentation required for producers of adult content, but they also extend the very definition of “producers of adult content.”

2257 originally required that primary producers of adult content maintain records of a given model’s legal documentation (a passport or drivers’ license, for instance). With the new regulations, producers of adult content are required to have several copies of this documentation. Furthermore, they must have copies of all of this documentation available and subject to investigation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The government is not required to give any timely forewarning of any investigation.

In addition, the original 2257 regulations essentially affected ONLY primary producers of adult content—that is, photographers and/or videographers of adult entertainment. With the new regulations, secondary and tertiary “producers” of adult content are subject to the same regulations. In other words, even if a website or video company wasn’t the company that produced the pictures or video, they are still held to the extended laws that regulate primary producers. And, according to the latest legal interpretations, even resellers of adult content—those people who simply make money off of other people’s websites or videos—are required to have access to 2257-compliant documentation.

The new laws will basically shut down free porn on the web for everyone. In a nut shell every site that has nudity will have to keep records and signed statements from each nude person shown on the site. Even if its just a banner!

Full Details

Security software maker Symantec Corp's proposed purchase of Veritas Software Corp. should be supported by shareholders of both companies, a top investor advisory group said on Friday.

Symantec, the world's biggest security software maker, and Veritas agreed in December to join forces in an effort to blend security with data management. Shareholders of both companies are scheduled to vote on the deal on June 24.

The companies believe selling their products together will meet growing demand from customers for fewer software vendors and will help firms comply with new regulations requiring many types of data, including e-mail messages, to be archived and secured.

ISS said both companies had not quantified the revenue or market share opportunities their deal represents long term, "which means that shareholders are being asked to make a leap of faith and trust the vision of management."

Symantec's stock is down about 35 percent since news emerged in early December about a possible deal.

The companies have said they expect cost savings of about $100 million in their first 12 months as a combined entity.

Many investors have been concerned about slower revenue growth of the combined company, with Symantec's revenue seen slowing from growth of roughly 35 percent in 2005 to around 18 percent in 2006.

Following about six months of competitive bidding, VeriSign this week officially retained control of .net, the Internet's third-largest domain.

ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the oversight body for the Internet's domain-name system, announced Wednesday that it will enter into a new, six-year contract with VeriSign Inc. for the operation of .net.

VeriSign, whose current contract to run .net expires at the end of the month, had been the front-runner to run .net since March, when an independent evaluation of the five bidders for the domain ranked VeriSign as the top choice.

For the first time since its inception, .net was opened this year to competitive bidding among registries. Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign gained control of .net in 2000 when it acquired Network Solutions Inc., and Network Solutions had run the domain since 1992.

Along with .net, VeriSign is the registry for .com, the Internet's most popular domain. As a registry, VeriSign manages the main database of Web addresses in the domains and works with the so-called registrars, who sell registrations for particular domain names to individuals and businesses.

 

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will begin technical and commercial negotiations with ICM Registry to launch .xxx, officials announced Wednesday.

ICM Registry claims the Internet community as a whole would be better off with a specified area for the adult industry, making it easier for parents and organizations to filter porn while giving members of the adult entertainment industry a venue for their wares.

The overall effect of a .xxx top-level domain (define) is up for debate.

While the domain extension will give the adult industry a "safe zone" to conduct its business relatively, it's a voluntary effort. Adult sites are not required to pack up their .com or .net Web site and sign up to the .xxx domain extension.

More than 10 percent of all online traffic and 25 percent of Internet searches are oriented towards adult content, officials from the registry company stated on their Web site, with more than 100,000 adult webmasters worldwide and 1 million adult domains.