Volume 12, Issue 21        Atari Online News, Etc.       	May 21, 2010   
                                                                           
                                                                              
                  Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2010
                            All Rights Reserved

                          Atari Online News, Etc.
                           A-ONE Online Magazine
                Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
                      Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
                       Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor


                       Atari Online News, Etc. Staff

                        Dana P. Jacobson  --  Editor
                   Joe Mirando  --  "People Are Talking"
                Michael Burkley  --  "Unabashed Atariophile"
                   Albert Dayes  --  "CC: Classic Chips"
                         Rob Mahlert  --  Web site
                Thomas J. Andrews  --  "Keeper of the Flame"


                           With Contributions by:

                                Fred Horvat



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                                  =~=~=~=



A-ONE #1221                                                 05/21/10

   ~ Angry Facebook Users!  ~ People Are Talking!    ~ Hotmail Cool Again?
   ~ MacBook Line Refreshed ~ Google: Cougars Out!   ~ YouTube Turns Five!
   ~ Nintendo 3DS Is Leaked ~ Play Pac-Man on Google ~ Internet Cafe Risks!

                  -* MySpace Privacy Controls Soon *-
              -* Spam, Porn ISP Permanently Shut Down *-
           -* Making Changes to Facebook Privacy Policy! *-



                                  =~=~=~=



->From the Editor's Keyboard              "Saying it like it is!"
  """"""""""""""""""""""""""



What a great week, but I have to say that it's hard to imagine that the
unofficial beginning of summer is rapidly approaching, with Memorial Day
coming up next week!  It's actually been a great spring season, if we can
manage to overlook late March and early April - at least here in New
England!  Regardless, I always look forward to Memorial Day weekend.  I
get my gardens prepped and planted, open the pool (perhaps), and plenty
of cookouts on the barbecue!  I'd normally also include having a few brews,
but I'm supposed to cut down on alcohol.  I won't tell if you don't!

A great week, but a tiring one.  I returned to the golf course this week,
for three days.  It wasn't bad, but tough getting back in the routine of
getting up before the crack of dawn, and starting work at dawn!  But, it's
getting easier.  It's been fun being back there, though.  Nice to be outside
in the sun and warmth!

And then it's back at the store at the end of the week.  A little easier,
not having to be on my feet all the time, all week.  We'll see how it goes.
And hopefully, these work changes might help play a positive impact on my
overall health, as well.

So, while I kick back and relax from a long week, I hope you'll do the same
and enjoy this week's issue!

Until next time...



                                  =~=~=~=



                             PEOPLE ARE TALKING
                          compiled by Joe Mirando
                             joe@atarinews.org



Hidi ho friends and neighbors. Another week has come and gone and we're
barreling toward the unofficial start of summer, Memorial Day, next weekend.
The weather has been... interesting.. to say the least... something about
the combination of temperature, rain and whatever else has provided us here
in the northeast with a bumper crop of tree pollen. I've never had problems
with tree pollen allergies before, but I'm suffering this time around. I
know it's not just me, because I hear a lot of people mentioning it, and a
lot of people are suffering a lot more from it than I am.

I had a routine checkup this past week, and the doctor wasn't surprised at
all when I mentioned sinus/allergy issues. "Everyone's got them this year"
is all he said... To be fair, he did give me a sample of a prescription
nasal spray that seems to be helping a bit. Other than that, I don't know
that there's a lot else to be done... other than moving to the Antarctic
where there is no (or at least very little) pollen.

So to let the other shoe drop, my blood pressure and cholesterol medications
seem to be doing their respective jobs, and the doctor is happy with the
results. Yay! The doctor is happy. [grin]

Well, enough about me.

There are a couple of things I want to talk about this week, and I'll bet
you can guess what they are already, but I'm going to pick one and stick
with it: The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. And yes, it IS a disaster.
There's no other way to say it. That hole in the ocean floor a mile below
sea level is spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the
ocean every day... think about it... that's a lot of oil. Even according to
BP's early estimates of 5,000 barrels of oil a day, that's 250,000 gallons
of oil a day... more than a thousand gallons of oil every hour, more than
400 gallons of oil a minute, 7 gallons of oil every second. And THAT is a
LOW estimate.

BP now says that this tube they've inserted into the gushing pipe is taking
on 5,000 barrels of the load a day... what they'd originally said was being
blown into the water... and there's STILL lots and lots of oil escaping...
I haven't heard a good estimate, but you can see for yourself at the
government's "spill-cam". The poor government server as been swamped since
they started providing the feed, but you can try to make use of it anyway
at:

http://globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam

So what are we doing to try to stop this monster that we've created? Well,
we're spending millions of dollars to make concrete and steel 'caps' that
don't seem to be working out, we've done the equivalent of inserting a
straw into the mouth of a coffee can and pumping what we can up to a ship,
we're making plans to blast this sucker full of mud and hoping that that'll
plug it up until we can cover it over with concrete, and we're looking at
drilling a 'relief well' at sometime in the future. And y'know what? I
don't think anybody really has a clue as to what's going to work.

One of the things that bothers me... well, it ALL bothers me, but one of my
real concerns is this "chemical dispersant" that they're belching out into
the ocean to break the oil up... It's never been a secret that this stuff
is toxic. Although, they say, not as toxic as the oil itself. But I wonder.
The oil will, eventually, break up and break down. I haven't heard anyone
say the same of this dispersant stuff. Have you?

Now, I'm not saying that I think that its a good choice to do nothing, but
I wonder what we're letting out of the box with this latest round of
"fixes" to try to fix the things we screwed up by trying to fix something
that we screwed up.

The day of the explosion on the platform, the day 11 people died, and a
couple days after that when the platform... "fell over and sank into the
swamp"... and again a couple of days after that when we 'found out' that
this well was indeed leaking... spewing oil into the Gulf, I remember
thinking, "Yeah, where are all you people chanting 'Drill, baby, drill'
now?"

And sure enough, people who had been all for drilling off the coast, be it
the west coast or east coast or the southern coast, they're all saying "Oh,
no, we can't do THAT... Look at the mess it made!"

To them... to Governors Jindal and Schwarzenegger and all the others like
Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney and the whole Bush family, I say... D U H !
Did you REALLY think that there was no chance that any of this was going
to come back and bite us on the butt? Did you really think that a company...
any company... could be trusted to STOP trying to make millions of dollars a
day because of a dead battery? Did you think that they would have the
conscience to step up and take the heat for the mess?

Corporations don't HAVE a conscience. A conscience is something that, so
far, only a living, breathing individual can have. I'm not saying that
corporations can't be a force for good, but even in the best cases, they
are only tools... the real root of that 'good' is a person or group of
people who decide to use this particular tool for a purpose.

And yes, BP will be made to clean up the mess, but rest assured that they
will do everything they can to cut down on their liability. That's just what
corporations do. Look at Exxon. The Exxon Valdez spill was decades ago and
even though there is no doubt about who or what caused the damage to Prince
William Sound... even though the courts have repeatedly ruled that they're
liable and are required to pay damages, they haven't "paid up".

And do you know why? It's not because they think they're blameless. It's
not because they think the amount is unfair. It's because they are a
corporation. An intellectual construct... a.. made-up entity. We can't
expect them to be imbued with the same qualities as a person, and what it
'understands' is the longer it waits, the more time they can put between
the "spill" and when they actually "pay up", the less that money is going
to be worth... If the courts said that they were liable for two and a half
billion dollars, that amount will be worth much less down the road due to
inflation. Instead of being the equivalent of six months' worth of profit,
it'll be worth about six HOURS' worth of profit if they can just wait
long enough.

And the damage to the coastline in states like Louisiana and Mississippi
and Florida... heck, the possibility of damage to every state ON the
coast... not to mention the possibility of the oil reaching the coast of
Mexico and the Central American countries or those in the Caribbean.. the
cleanup costs will be huge! It will make what Exxon is supposed to pay
look like pocket change.

And now we hear that there's a possibility that the oil could possibly even
make it around Florida and work its way up the east coast. The 'experts'
still haven't worked that out yet, and they can't even really tell us what
the likelihood of that might be, or how close it might come to the coast if
it does work out that way. But even if it 'misses' the east coast and works
its way up into the middle of the Atlantic ocean, is there really any doubt
that it'll have an effect on the ecology of the ocean? I mean, c'mon, we're
not the only ones here, ya know. The ocean is teaming with life. Everything
from plankton (the major oxygen generator in the entire planet, remember)
to squid to whales... and they're all part of the ecosystem. All part of
what makes OUR lives possible.

Now, I'm not going to launch into a tirade about how necessary it is for us
to "get off the fossil fuel teat", mostly because I have no alternative. As
we find the need for more and more electricity for our air conditioners and
computers and fax machines and our DVRs with their twinkling, eye-burning
blue LEDs and all the transformers and inverters and rectifiers that 'leak'
electricity when plugged in even when not in use, We're going to have to
find sources for that electricity. I don't want to give up my lifestyle,
just as I know YOU don't... and there are several billion other people out
there who've either never had reliable access to that kind of energy, or
have never encountered it at all. THEY are going to want a piece of the
"good life pie" too, and sooner rather than later.

So what do we do? Build a nuclear reactor on every city block and wonder
where to 'hide' the spent nuclear fuel later? Dam every river and kill
off the wildlife there while we generate electricity? Hope that there's
some miracle breakthrough in solar cells or an order-of-magnitude increase
in the electricity to be squeezed from wind power?

I don't know. But the power we derive from fossil fuels now... from coal
and petroleum and natural gas... provides almost all of our energy needs
today, and if we could somehow both reduce our need for electricity through
improved technology and conservation both, we could keep the wolves at bay
for at least a while longer... perhaps long enough to find out how to
efficiently harness the power of the sun.

I'm not talking about fusion reactors where it takes millions upon millions
of dollars' worth of energy to just START generating energy. I'm talking
about actually harnessing the power of the sun itself. I'm not hoping for
a Dyson sphere or even a moon based collector of some sort, but maybe a
couple of satellites that can catch and either convert or redirect all
that energy. I mean, the sun puts out more energy every second than we
humans have in our entire history on this planet. The trick is to be able
to grab it and use it.

The unfortunate fact is that, right now, 'free' solar energy is expensive;
much more expensive than generating electricity from coal. And if it
weren't for the fact that there's just so much of it out there... so much
pure energy emitted from the sun every second of every day with the only
end in sight billions of years from now... if it weren't for that, it
wouldn't even be worth talking about. But the sun IS there, and it IS
pouring out massive amounts of energy. And it WILL be doing so, and at a
slowly increasing rate, by the way... the sun will get hotter and hotter
as it ages. And if our descendants... IF we have any.. don't find a way to
mitigate that the Earth's oceans will slowly boil away and the Earth will
be left unfit for us. So we'd really be doing our descendants a favor if
we found a way to capture some of the sun's energy now. We really COULD be
our children's heroes... Imagine that!

I'm going to wrap this up soon, but I do want to say one last thing...
even if you're not worried about things like the Gulf oil spill, even if
you're not concerned about disposing of nuclear waste, even if you're not
worried about coal mine cave-ins or natural gas explosions, you might want
to think about this: Wars will be fought over this.

Yes, they will. Mark my words. Regardless of what the talking heads on
television say, wars are not fought over religion. They're fought over
POWER. And in the coming decades, energy... power... will literally BE the
power that wars will be fought over. Control of oil fields, coastal rights,
natural gas fields will be what's important.

If nothing else... if for no other reason, wouldn't it be worthwhile to
head off a conflict... multiple conflicts like that? Just something to
think about.

Well, that's it for this time around, friends and neighbors. Tune in again
next week, same time, same station, and be ready to listen to what they
are saying when...


PEOPLE ARE TALKING



                                  =~=~=~=



->In This Week's Gaming Section  - Leaked Nintendo 3DS Prototype?
  """""""""""""""""""""""""""""    'Premium' PSN Subscriptions?
                                   Play Pac-Man on Google!
                                   And more!


        
                                  =~=~=~=



->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News   -  The Latest Gaming News!
  """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""



              Leaked Nintendo 3DS Prototype... Possible Widescreen?


This week, Gizmodo posted an image from an FCC filing submitted by Nintendo
that appears to be an early prototype circuit board of the upcoming
Nintendo 3DS handheld. While the design of the board will certainly change
during development, there are a few interesting tidbits to be noted in the
image.

The most conspicuous is the top screen, which looks to sport a widescreen
aspect ratio. The prototypes bottom touch screen still appears to be the
standard 4:3 ratio that current DS hardware has, though I imagine this
will change prior to production and both screens will be widescreen.
Whether backwards compatibility with existing DS titles will implement
image-stretching or pillar-boxing to fill the new displays is unclear.

Another thing to note is that round, white component on the bottom-center
of the logic board. While I cant say for certain based on the low-res
picture, it sure looks like an analogue stick, doesnt it? I cant really
imagine what else it could be, so heres hoping the 3DS will finally
feature a proper thumb stick.

The Nintendo 3DS is said to feature autostereoscopic 3D displays which
can produce 3D imagery without the use of 3D glasses. It will be
backwards compatible with existing DS software, will have built-in
force-feedback and improved wireless communication as well as battery
life. Nintendo 3DS is rumored to be released this October.



          Rumorville: Sony To Unveil 'Premium' PSN Subscriptions?


One of Sony's biggest selling points for the PlayStation 3 is the free
PlayStation Network, the PS3's online hub for gaming downloads, video
rentals and multiplayer gaming. Now rumor has it that Sony is poised to
start charging for "premium" PSN subscriptions, complete with such
enticements as free monthly games and streaming music.

According to VG247, a "highly placed" source claims that Sony may unveil a
"large-scale monetizing scheme" for the PlayStation Network as soon as next
month's E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles, and that the new, paid PSN
subscriptions could be a "major part" of Sony's E3 presentation - so
big, says VG247, that we probably won't see another would-be Sony
bombshell (the rumored PSP 2) - until later this year. (Bummer.)

Let me stress that this "premium" PSN chatter is only chatter. Then
again, Kotaku points out that Sony was circulating a survey about paid PSN
options just a few months ago. Anyway, back to the story. According to
VG247 and its anonymous source, the premium PSN plan wouldn't foist charges
on any existing  free services on PSN, such as the online gaming and video
stores and multiplayer matchmaking.

Instead, for what amounts to about $72 a year, premium PSN subscribers
would get to pick one free PSN game a month from a selection of two to
four options, and might also get a music service similar to Pandora or
Slacker that could stream tunes during a game.

Left unsaid in the VG247 story: the fate of several enticing features in
the Sony survey mentioned by Kotaku, including the ability to back up
your saved games in the "cloud," free access to PSOne and PSP "mini"
titles and PS3 and PSP themes, and one-hour trials of full games. (Now,
that would be cool.)

Sony has always flaunted its free PSN as a key selling point versus Xbox
Live, Microsoft's online gaming service for the Xbox 360. Any Xbox 360
gamer can access Live's gaming and music stores with a free Silver
membership, but you need a paid Gold subscription (starting at $49 a
year) to game online with your pals - a service that's free on the
PlayStation Network.

An Xbox Gold membership is also required to share photos or stream
Netflix videos, as well as to access Facebook, Twitter and the Last.FM
streaming music service from the Xbox Dashboard.

Sony has neither confirmed nor denied any PSN "premium" plans.

Personally, I have no problem with the idea, so long as everything
that's currently free on the PlayStation Network - particularly
multiplayer matchmaking - remains free. And assuming the price is right,
of course (maybe more like $49 a year rather than $70).

I'd probably be most interested in the premium features that weren't
mentioned in the VG247 story, such as cloud-based storage for game saves
(so long as you can keep a local copy as well) and the one-hour trials
of full games.



                            Play Pac-Man on Google!


Happy 30th anniversary Pac-Man, Google style! If you haven't been to
Google's homepage yet today, check it out now before it's gone.
Hint: It didn't look this hip when it debuted 30 years ago today.

Yep, it's a fully functional Pac-Man game with Google-stenciled islands
in a wide-angle maze with the t-junction and ghost repository serving
aptly as the second 'g'. There's even an extra power pill per level.

Controls? Your keyboard's arrow keys, what else? Tap the 'insert coin'
button twice and you can play Ms. Pac-Man simultaneously using the
W-A-S-D keys.

Does it have all 255 levels? The infamous split-screen "finale"? Other
unexpected Google-styled easter eggs?

Guess we'll just have to play to find out.

*Update:* It'll be live for 48 hours, says Google, and apparently *does*
include all 255 levels - even the glitchy 256th.



                                  =~=~=~=



->A-ONE Gaming Online       -       Online Users Growl & Purr!
  """""""""""""""""""
 


     This Day in History: Atari Found Guilty in Landmark Nintendo Case


May 17, 1993: The legendary Atari v. Nintendo case comes to an end.

On this day in 1993, the lengthy antitrust battle between Atari and
Nintendo came to a conclusion, with a Federal District Court Judge finding
Atari guilty of violating Nintendo's patent relating to its security
lockout chip.

The 10NES chip was Nintendo's security measure for preventing unauthorized
game makers from manufacturing games for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
It essentially acted as the "key" for a "lock" inside the NES itself - the
chip on the cart would interact with the one in the console, and if they
matched, the game would boot up. If they didn't, the NES would put itself
in an endless reset cycle.

The reasoning for this was twofold - first to prevent the market from being
flooded by crappy games, and second to make sure Nintendo got its (rather
significant) cut of each game sold.

The story is long and complicated and far beyond the scope of this article,
but here's the significantly shortened version: in 1989, Atari began
manufacturing its own NES games without Nintendo's permission, using a clone
of the 10NES they called the Rabbit. It also immediately filed suit against
Nintendo, claiming that its lockout of game manufacturers was a violation
of antitrust laws.

Four years and several injunctions later, Judge Fern Smith of the U.S.
District Court in San Francisco found Atari - not Nintendo - guilty of
patent infringement. As it turned out, when Atari developed its Rabbit chip,
it obtained a copy of the 10NES code illegally, by lying to the U.S.
Copyright Office to obtain a copy of the code, which they then copied.

The decision was a landmark event not only in videogame history, but for
programming in general, as it made clear that the work of a computer
programmer is a creative work that is protected under the same rules as
authors in other media.

Nintendo's press release from exactly 17 years ago, courtesy Business Wire,
follows.

    Time Warner unit guilty of copyright and patent infringement; federal
    court issues landmark decision

    Time Warner's video game unit, Atari Games, has been found to infringe
    Nintendo's copyright and patent covering the security system for the
    Nintendo Entertainment System.

    Nintendo had been granted a U.S. patent and copyright for its security
    system. The system prevents unlicensed third parties from producing game
    software for play on Nintendo's home video game systems.

    Federal District Court Judge Fern Smith, in San Francisco, issued
    orders Monday granting Nintendo's motion for a summary judgment against
    Atari Games.

    The Time Warner unit had previously been preliminarily enjoined by
    Smith. In the earlier decision Smith found that Atari Games'
    representatives had lied to the U.S. Copyright Office in order to
    obtain Nintendo's copyrighted computer "source code." Smith's decision
    was affirmed by the Federal Circuit last year.

    In addition to finding patent infringement, the new decision finds
    substantial similarity between protected portions of the computer code
    found in all Nintendo video game cartridges and the computer code
    contained in video game cartridges manufactured by Atari Games.

    The decision is of far-reaching importance in the evolving area of
    copyright law as it relates to computer programs. Until now, the courts
    have cast considerable doubt over the scope of protection for computer
    programs under the Copyright Act, despite Congress' clear directive that
    they are to be protected just as any other literary work.

    This decision makes clear that an infringer cannot copy the creative
    work of a computer programmer any more than that of authors in other
    media.

    While there are unique aspects of computer program works that give
    rise to complex issues with respect to their copyrightability, the
    federal court in this case was able to cut through thousands of pages
    of testimony and hundreds of pages of legal argument. It found that the
    deliberate copying of programming expression by Atari Games and Tengen
    could not be excused under any fair reading of the Copyright Act.

    Howard Lincoln, Nintendo's senior vice president, said: "Time Warner's
    unit has not dealt honorably with our company. It stole our
    intellectual property rights. We are pleased the court has now
    vindicated our position."

    Nintendo's counsel, John Kirby of Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon,
    said, "The court's ruling is not only a landmark in the copyright law
    and of major importance in the computer industry, but it also is a
    landmark in this litigation that affirms Nintendo's determination to
    protect its intellectual property rights against those who might have
    believed that the law had turned its back on owners of such property
    rights."

    The court's decision leaves certain issues to be resolved at trial,
    including Nintendo's claim that Atari Games' infringement was willful
    and Atari Games' claims with respect to the validity of Nintendo's
    patent.



                                  =~=~=~=



                           A-ONE's Headline News
                   The Latest in Computer Technology News
                       Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson



                 Facebook Prepping Changes to Privacy Policy


Facebook on Friday confirmed that it will soon introduce changes to its
privacy policies intended to make them easier to understand, though it's
unlikely the move will include the sweeping changes some privacy
advocates have requested.

"The messages we've received are pretty clear. Users appreciate having
precise and comprehensive controls, but want them to be simpler and
easier to use. They also like the new programs we have rolled out, but
want simple and easy ways to opt out of sharing personal information
with applications and Web sites through Facebook Platform," a Facebook
spokesman said in a statement. "We're listening to this input and
incorporating it into innovations we hope to announce shortly."

The company did not provide details on when this announcement would be
made, but said it has "spent the last couple of weeks" listening to user
feedback and meeting with experts in California, Washington, D.C., and
around the world.

"We know Facebook is well known for its innovations around sharing and
we want to be equally known for innovations around user control," the
spokesman said.

The most recent concerns about Facebook's privacy policies date back to
December, when the company rolled out new privacy settings intended to
give users more control over their settings. But given Facebook's move
toward a more open format as it integrates status updates with search
engines like Google and Bing, the site encouraged its users to make more
of their data public, and made some of the default settings more open.

That prompted nearly a dozen privacy and consumer organizations to ask
the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate. The FTC later said
the inquiry was of "particular interest" to them, but the agency has not
taken any action.

Last month, at its annual f8 developer conference, Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg discussed an "open graph" that would connect the social graphs
created by users on sites like Yelp or Pandora and combine them for a
larger, more social picture.

That prompted members of Congress, privacy watchdogs, and the Article 29
Working Party to express their concern about the new policies, though
again, no definitive action has been taken. Many detractors are requesting
that Facebook provide users with a better explanation of how their
information is being used, and gain express consent from members before
rolling out new features.

Recently, two Toronto-based Facebook users set up a Web site at
quitfacebookday.com, urging other Facebook users to cancel their accounts
on May 31.

"For us it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions.
In our view, Facebook doesn't do a good job in either department,"
Matthew Milan and Joseph Dee wrote on the site. "Facebook gives you choices
about how to manage your data, but they aren't fair choices, and while the
onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it damn
difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. We also don't
think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the
context of the future."

Milan and Dee suggest Ning, Orkut, or Akoha as alternatives, though Ning
recently announced that it would be phasing out its free service, so that
might not be the best alternative to Facebook.



              MySpace Unveils 'Simplified' Privacy Controls


Perhaps a bit late to the party, MySpace on Monday said it would soon
implement a privacy upgrade that provides users with more control over
who can see their profiles.

In the next few weeks, MySpace said it will simplify its privacy settings
to let users display their profile information to the public, friends only,
or to users over 18. Settings will default to "friends only" for anyone
who previously had any granular page settings to "friends only,"
co-president Mike Jones wrote in a blog post.

In December, Facebook replaced its regional networks with four basic
control settings: friends; friends of friends; everyone; and customized.

"While we've had these plans in the works for some time, given the
recent outcry over privacy concerns in the media, we felt it was
important to unveil those plans to our users now," Jones wrote. "We
believe users want a simpler way to control their privacy."

While Jones did not specifically name-check Facebook in his post, he is
likely referring to the rival social networking site's recent troubles
regarding its upgraded privacy policies.

At its f8 developer conference last month, Facebook introduced the
concept of an "open graph," which is intended to create a larger, more
social Facebook community across the Web. It also introduced "Community
Pages" intended to provide information about various topics.

The changes have been criticized by consumer groups, members of Congress,
privacy watchdogs, and the Article 29 Working Party because, the groups
say, Facebook has not done enough to inform users about how their
information is being used.

"MySpace early on recognized the issues facing a website with a massive
global population and we've taken our responsibilities seriously," Jones
wrote. "We take a holistic approach to safety, security and privacy and
align our product and practices around the needs of our users, while at
the same time working closely with industry experts, law enforcement,
regulators, and safety and privacy advocates."

The new MySpace privacy settings can be altered under the "Privacy"
section of account settings.



         Judge Permanently Shuts Down ISP Catering to Spam, Porn


A U.S. district court judge has ordered the permanent closure of an
Internet service provider long accused of hosting and distributing spam,
spyware, child pornography and other illegal content, at the request of
the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Judge Ronald Whyte of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District
of California in San Jose has ordered that the computer servers and
other assets owned by Pricewert, doing business as 3FN.net, be sold by a
court-appointed receiver. Whyte also ordered the company to turn over
US$1.08 million in illegal profits to the FTC, according to court
documents.

Whyte's orders, dated April 8, were made public by the FTC Wednesday.

Several security experts supported the FTC's case against 3FN, Whyte
wrote in a disgorgement order. "These experts had analyzed data derived
from internet searches which establish that defendant, an internet
service provider, was engaged in widespread illegal activity," he wrote.
"There seems to be little doubt from the information provided that
Pricewert functioned primarily as an internet service provider for
illegal activity."

There were a "relatively small number of apparently legitimate
customers" of the company, Whyte wrote.

The FTC, in June, charged that 3FN actively recruited criminals to
distribute spyware, viruses, Trojan horses, phishing e-mails and
pornography featuring children and animals. The company, doing business
under several names, advertised its services in a variety of underground
sites, including a chat room for spammers, the FTC charged.

The company's distribution of illegal and malicious content and
deployment of botnets compromised thousands of computers and was an
unfair business practice, the FTC alleged.

The Pricewert.com and 3FN.net Web sites were down Wednesday. An e-mail
to the contact person for Pricewert listed on whois bounced back.

Whyte issued a temporary restraining order against the San Jose company
in June. That order prohibited 3FN's upstream Internet providers and
data centers from providing services to the ISP.

Spam volume on the Internet dropped by 15 percent following the June
shutdown, security vendor M86 Security said.

In June, Pricewert spokesman Max Christopher complained that the FTC was
"blaming providers for bad customer actions."

The ISP "shielded its criminal clientele" by ignoring take-down requests
from the online security community and by shifting the Internet Protocol
addresses of criminals in order to avoid detection, the FTC alleged.

The FTC also alleged that 3FN operated large botnets and recruited
so-called bot herders to run the networks of compromised computers.
Botnets are often used to send spam and launch denial-of-service attacks.

Transcripts of instant-message logs filed with the district court show
the company's senior employees discussing the configuration of botnets
with bot herders, the FTC said. More than 4,500 malicious software
programs were controlled by command-and-control servers hosted by
3FN, the FTC alleged in court documents.

This malware included programs capable of keystroke logging, password
stealing, and data theft, programs with hidden backdoor remote control
activity, and programs involved in spam distribution.

The defendants named in the FTC's complaint are Pricewert, also doing
business as 3FN.net, Triple Fiber Network, APS Telecom, APX Telecom, APS
Communications, and APS Communication.

Among the groups assisting the FTC in the case were the U.S. National
Aeronautics and Space Administration's Office of Inspector General,
Computer Crime Division; Gary Warner , director of research in Computer
Forensics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham; The National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children; The Shadowserver Foundation;
Symantec; and The Spamhaus Project.



                     Apple Refreshes MacBook Line After Leak


Apple introduced its newest MacBook entry-level laptops Tuesday featuring
a faster processor and longer battery life. The new model has a 2.4GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM. The release of the MacBook comes
days after Vietnamese site posted leaked details regarding the notebook
this past weekend.

There are no changes to the exterior of the new MacBooks. Inside though,
the new notebooks come with 250GB of storage and an upgraded battery,
which Apple claims it can last up to ten hours on a single charge.
Despite the improvements, Apple maintained the price of the new MacBooks
at $999.

The graphics on the new white MacBooks also come in line with its
13-inch Pro sibling, ditching the NVIDIA GeGorce 9400M for an NVIDIA
GeForce 320M. This update narrows the $200 gap between the 13-inch
MacBook Pro and white MacBook, with the main differences remaining the
metal chassis, more RAM, and an SD card slot.

Vietnamese blogs have been the source of upcoming Apple gear leaks,
after the widely publicised case of the Gizmodo iPhone 4G unveiling.
The Taoviet forum showed pictures and videos of the new iPhone expected
this summer, which unlike Gizmodo's prototype, it was a later model.

The new MacBook introduced on Tuesday was leaked on another Vietnamese
blog, Tinhte, showing the updated specs a few days before Apple, sometime
during the past Saturday. The videos from the Vietnamese site also show
that the new MacBook will come with a different AC adaptor, similar to the
one found on the Pro and Air lines. We cannot confirm this information
however, until the new MacBooks actually ship to consumers.

It is unknown how Tinhte and Taoviet actually got hold of the unreleased
Apple hardware, but their leaks proved to be true in the case of the new
MacBook and confirm the new iPhone 4G design, first exposed over at
Gizmodo. What is a given though, is that Apple cannot be very happy
about these leaks from Vietnam, considering the snafu the company is
making back in the U.S. over the alleged misappropriation of the iPhone
4G prototype.



             Microsoft Upgrade Aims To Make Hotmail Cool Again


Microsoft Corp. is trying to make Hotmail cool again.

The free Web mail service soon will be switching to a new approach that
Microsoft hopes will give Hotmail an edge over rival offerings from
Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc.

The upgrade, expected to be available in July or August, will
automatically sort incoming messages into different categories devoted
to users' key contacts and Internet social networks. It will also
provide previews of incoming photos, videos and other material without
having to open an attachment or click on a link.

Other tools are being added to make it less cumbersome to send photos,
videos, documents and other attachments to e-mail recipients. Another
tweak is supposed to make is easier to sync Hotmail on mobile phones.

It's all part of the most extensive overhaul to Hotmail since Microsoft
bought the service 12 years ago, said Chris Jones, a Microsoft executive
who is overseeing the renovations.

"Our service wasn't doing the best job that it could," Jones said during
a Monday preview of the makeover.

The new features are supposed to enable people to spend less time
managing their inboxes and more time enjoying and digesting what's in
the messages.

Microsoft is hoping the added convenience will help overcome the
perception that Hotmail was growing stale as Google and Yahoo added more
bells and whistles to their free Web mail services.

Even as it made relatively few changes, Hotmail remained the world's
most used service with 360 million users, according to statistics
complied by comScore Inc. Yahoo ranks second globally with about 284
million users followed by Google's Gmail at 173 million users.

Now Microsoft thinks it might have shot of supplanting Yahoo as the top
Web mail service in the U.S. (Yahoo's e-mail service has 95 million U.S.
users compared to 47 million for Hotmail and 43 million for Gmail,
according to comScore).

Hotmail's most significant changes will provide new ways to look at
photos and videos sent through e-mail. Microsoft expects this feature to
be particularly popular because it says 55 percent of Hotmail's storage
is consumed by photos sent as attachments.

The new technology will detect when an e-mail contains a photo
attachment and automatically display a thumbnail of the image (or
images) at the top of the message. Hotmail will provide similar previews
when it detects links to photo-sharing sites Flickr and SmugMug or to
video-sharing sites YouTube and Hulu.

Other changes are designed to make it easier to send photos, video and
other Web content. A new insert bar will allow users to send up to 10
gigabytes - about 200 photos each containing 50 megabytes - by uploading
them to Microsoft's free online storage service Skydrive, where they can
only be viewed by the recipients of the e-mail.

Videos and other Internet material can be found through a new panel that
will connect Hotmail to Microsoft's Internet search engine, Bing. The
videos and other Bing-generated content can then be inserted into an
e-mail with a mouse click. The e-mail recipient will then be able to see
the video or other material without having to click through a Web link.

As it spruces up Hotmail, Microsoft also will try to make it more
secure. Embracing a change recently made by Gmail, Microsoft is adding a
so-called "secure sockets layer" (denoted by "https" before a Web
address) that encrypts e-mail to make it less vulnerable to computer
hackers.



           YouTube Celebrates Birthday with a Five-Year Channel


In a future history of media, YouTube's fifth birthday may mark the
point when Internet video became a grown-up, next to its older sibling,
television. The popular video site marked its birthday Sunday and touted
its more than two billion views every day.

"That's nearly double the prime-time audience for all three major U.S.
television networks combined," the site noted on its official blog. The
YouTube figure includes its international viewers.

YouTube said that "what started as a site for bedroom vloggers and viral
videos has evolved into a global platform that supports HD and 3-D,
broadcasts entire sports sessions live in 200+ countries," and delivers
Hollywood features, independent films, and videos that document social
unrest. The first video ever uploaded to the site, called Me at the Zoo,
was posted shortly before the launch by cofounder Jawed Karim, and was
19 seconds long. In 2006, the "site for bedroom vloggers" was purchased
for $1.65 billion by Google.

Since then, the site has taken an increasingly prominent position in the
culture. Some videos, for instance, have achieved instant classic
status, including Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent
competition, Barack Obama's YouTube videos, and daily uploads of videos
from the Iranian election protests.

Appropriately, to celebrate its fifth birthday, the site is starting a
Five Year channel, with video stories of how YouTube has "changed or
shaped" people's lives. One story, for instance, features a Hawaii teen
who began posting his short fictional movies and later changed his major
to film in college. There's also an interview with Jessica Rose, the
actress who played 16-year-old Bree in the hit fake-diary series, Lonely
Girl 15.

YouTube asked guest curators to pick their favorites - Net pioneer Vint
Cerf, news anchor Katie Couric, talk-show host Conan O'Brien, and film
director Pedro Almodovar. Among the videos picked by Couric is Virginia
Sen. George Allen making his "macaca" comment - a captured moment which
many observers think contributed to his electoral defeat.

O'Brien's include Pinky the Cat, a video where a cat turns vicious
moments after the owner has heaped praise on the animal sitting in his
lap. Vint Cerf's favorites include the Boston Dynamics BIGDOG Robot and
an explanation of Einstein's relativity theory.

The difference in the time window that users devote to YouTube compared
to television is still large. The average user spends 15 minutes a day
on YouTube, compared to an average of five hours daily that people spend
watching TV.

The site is actively trying to increase viewing time by adding longer
fare, and by making it easier to sort through and find videos. As is
increasingly the case with TV, finding what to watch in the huge YouTube
store of content is a key issue. Every minute, a day's worth of video is
uploaded to YouTube.

YouTube's place in the media landscape may begin to change again this
week if Google introduces its much-awaited Google TV as expected, and
devices that combine the web with high-definition TV become popular.

Michael McGuire, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner, said
"there's no doubt YouTube has gone from being a time-wasting pastime to
a significant part of the media landscape."

But he noted that comparing views of videos on YouTube with viewership
on TV is "apples and oranges." Among other things, McGuire said, "the
economics haven't shifted yet, and the amount of ad money on TV still
dwarfs that on the Net." And, he said, TV still "dominates in terms of
sheer time that people spending watching it."

What YouTube and other video sites have done, he said, is add new
expectations for how to watch video, and "underscored in consumers'
minds the benefits of having control" over what to watch and when.



              Angry Users Seek Better Alternatives To Facebook


One drawback of building a huge social-networking community like Facebook
is the intensity of that community when it gets mad at management. At the
popular networking site, that anger - over what some users perceive to be
an erosion of their privacy - is bubbling up in very public ways.

For example, four New York University computer-science students are
attempting to build a social-networking site that would value user privacy
more highly than they believe Facebook does. In late April, they set
themselves a minimum goal of raising $10,000, to pay for basic living
expenses while they wrote code. They were able to raise that amount from
online donors in 12 days. Within three weeks, as of Monday, they had
raised nearly $175,000 from about 4,600 donors.

The open-source, free software they are developing is called Diaspora.
"We're going to build a great lightweight decentralized social-networking
framework," write the four on their web site, joindiaspora.com. They added
that they've also received offers of help from "a massive number of
talented and experienced people."

There have also been publicized efforts by some users to delete their
Facebook accounts and encourage others to do so. Web tech pundit Leo
Laporte, for instance, has made public his efforts to delete his account
- and the convoluted efforts required to do so. Others have similarly
publicized their attempts to quit Facebook, such as Google's search spam
expert Matt Cutts and Engadget cofounder Peter Rojas. The effort has
gathered enough interest that, on Google, entering "How do I" leads to
"How do I delete my Facebook account" as the first auto-complete
suggestion.

In a recent question-and-answer article with Facebook users in The New York
Times, Facebook Vice President for Public Policy Elliot Schrage said "we
don't share your information with advertisers." He added that the targeting
is anonymous and names are not shared or identified.

If an advertiser wants to target users interested in boats, Schrage said,
ad impressions are served to people with "boats" somewhere on their
profile, but no names or other personal information is provided.

But that message has been somewhat less than clear. "We're building
toward a web where the default is social," Facebook cofounder and CEO
Mark Zuckerberg said late last month during the kickoff announcement of
Open Graph in San Francisco. "Every application and product will be
redesigned from the ground up to use a person's real identity and friends."

Open Graph makes a user's likes and dislikes available on partner sites.
"Like" buttons, which have quickly become famous, are placed on partner
sites to reflect the user's interest in the site, photos, blog posts,
songs and similar content. Clicking on the Like button makes that
information become viewable by a user's friends - and, in the
aggregate, to sponsors.

Users have complained in particular that opting out of such
participation requires a complex navigation of a series of menus, and
that policies and functionalities keep changing. The perception of
Facebook's attitude toward privacy wasn't helped by Zuckerberg's
comments earlier in the year to the effect that, if he were creating
Facebook today, users' private information would be public by default.

Michael Gartenberg, a partner and analyst with the Altimeter Group, said
"it's interesting how fast Facebook has gone from being an industry
darling to getting beaten up."

Despite the high visibility of several Facebook critics and quitters, he
noted, they're currently "a relatively insignificant number" of the
site's 400 million members.



          Google Tells Sites for Cougars to Go Prowl Elsewhere


IF youre a woman who would like to date younger men, you can find lots
of articles about these relationships by doing a Google search.

But as a woman looking for a man, you might be a little confused by the
advertisements that accompany these articles. One promises to help you
find sexy Latin women, and another, hot Latvian ladies. But there are no
links to the growing number of "cougar" dating sites, matching older
women with younger men, on content sites that show up in a Google
search. Google has recently deemed those dating sites "nonfamily safe,"
and therefore its ads for such sites containing the word "cougar" will
not be allowed on so-called content pages.

The Google advertising system has two components: one for ads that
appear next to search results, and one for its content network. For a
company like CougarLife.com <http://CougarLife.com>, now banned from the
content network, that means its ads will no longer appear on more than
6,700 Web sites, including Ask.com, YouTube and MySpace, which accounted
for 60 percent of its traffic, said Thomas Koshy, vice president for
marketing at CougarLife, a Toronto-based site that says it has a
half-million members, men and women.

Google continues to allow similar advertising for the many sites that
match older men and younger women, like DateAMillionaire.com, which assures
its clients they can meet "sugar babies."

So cougars and cubs are out, but sugar daddies and sugar babies are in.

Blurbs and 'sponsored links,' which typically pop up on the right side
of the screen, for dating sites like CougarLife.com and other
'nonfamily' sites (one screams "Date a hot cheating wife!") will still
appear along with a list of search results.

Google, which has more than a million advertisers, would not comment on
why sugar-daddy sites are still considered family safe, but cougar sites
are not. The companys decision, made public this week by
CougarLife.com, has rankled not only advertisers but women who have
embraced the cougar concept as a symbol of empowerment, of older women
bucking dating stereotypes.

Many feminists still take issue with the word 'cougar' because it may
conjure the image of a predatory, aggressive older woman on the hunt for
a boy toy. And plenty of cougar dating Web sites are salacious, as are
other dating sites.

With television shows like 'Cougar Town,' many movie plots based on
these May-December romances (not always portraying cougars in a positive
light) and a steady stream of tabloid reports on the comings and goings
of celebrities like Demi Moore, the concept has taken hold in pop culture.

But thats a far cry from a societal stamp of approval. Experts on
female sexuality and womens history say Googles decision provides a
glimpse into a pervasive discomfort with older women as sexually active
players on the dating scene.

"Its relatively new that women have felt O.K. to be sexual and be
attractive and continue to be alive in that way as they aged," said
Lonnie Barbach, a psychologist in San Francisco who specializes in
female sexuality and relationships. "Its always been an acceptable part
of culture for men to be sexual at all ages and all levels."

Last week, CougarLife.com, which was paying Google $100,000 a month to
manage its advertising and place it on content pages, was notified by
the company that its ads, which had been appearing since October, would
no longer be accepted.

Google confirmed that 'cougar' would now automatically place a site into
the adult category, but would not say which other words would do that.

"We cant comment on specific advertisers, but our policy is that adult
dating ads are classified as nonfamily-safe, meaning that they will not
show on the Google Content Network," the company said in an e-mail message.

When notified by Google of the decision, CougarLife proposed
substituting a different ad for the ones that were running, picturing
older women and younger men together. Cougarlife said it would use an
image of the companys president, Claudia Opdenkelder, 39, without a man
in the picture (she lives with her 25-year-old boyfriend).

But the advertising department was told in an e-mail message from its
Google representative that "the policy is focused particularly around
the concept of cougar dating as a whole," and asked if the company
would be open to changing "the cougar theme/language specifically
(including the domain if necessary)." CougarLife forwarded the e-mail
messages to The New York Times. Google would not comment on the messages
but did confirm that they were consistent with the new policy on cougar
sites.

"Its just wrong all around," Ms. Opdenkelder said. "Its age and gender
discrimination. Its just about older, successful, independent, strong
women who enjoy someone thats younger. Some of the men sites, they are
borderline prostitution, and Google has no problem having them
advertise." CougarLife said it was considering filing a discrimination
complaint with a Canadian agency that oversees equality issues between
private parties, and was looking into possible legal recourse in the
United States.

CougarLife.com is owned by Avid Life Media, which also owns
ArrangementSeekers.com, which describes itself as 'the original Sugar Daddy
service catering to ambitious and attractive girls seeking successful and
generous benefactors to fulfill their lifestyle needs!'

Avid Life Media executives said that while some specific advertisements
for the ArrangementSeekers site had been rejected, the ads were
evaluated on a case-by-case basis and the site was still advertising
with Google.

Mr. Koshy of CougarLife.com said his site was, however, continuing to
advertise on Facebook, spending $100,000 monthly. Facebook, he said, had
objected to some specific content of proposed ads but had not objected to
the cougar concept.

A Facebook spokeswoman said there was no 'broad ban on cougar ads,
but that any advertisements 'image and language cannot be overtly
provocative or sexual.' In the messages to CougarLife, Google said it
might revisit the new policy. But for now, the cougars would be confined.




                  New Risk Threatens Internet Cafe Denizens


Canadian university researchers on Friday warned of a new strain of
advertising software that can sneak onto laptop computers linked to
wireless networks at Internet cafes.

University of Calgary computer science researchers have branded the
potentially infectious ad software "Typhoid adware" for its ability to
spread in public through unsuspecting laptop users.

"We're looking at a different variant of adware which we haven't seen
out there yet but we believe could be a threat soon," said associate
professor John Aycock, who co-authored a Typhoid research paper.

Adware is software typically sneaked onto people's computers when they
download booby-trapped files such as screen savers or browser tool bars.

Once on machines, the programs barrage users with pop-up advertisements.

"Typhoid adware is designed for public places where people bring their
laptops," says Aycock. "It's far more covert, displaying advertisements
on computers that don't have the adware installed, not the ones that do."

A "carrier" laptop infected with Typhoid inserts advertisements in
videos or Web pages on other computers using hotspots, according to the
research.

"Not only are ads annoying but they can also advertise rogue antivirus
software that's harmful to your computer, so ads are in some sense the
tip of the iceberg," Aycock said.

Rogue antivirus software is used to con people into paying to fix
computer problems that don't exist, steal identity information, and
infect machines with malicious programs.

Internet cafe Web surfers can protect themselves by making certain
online videos being watched are from the original sources and adjusting
computer settings to be more wary of contact from other computers,
researchers said.



                                =~=~=~=




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