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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 11 Issue 06
Volume 11, Issue 06 Atari Online News, Etc. February 6, 2009
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2008
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:
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1106 02/06/09
~ Firefox and Security! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Google's E-mail War!
~ Mac OS X Is Climbing! ~ Nintendo Wins Over Old ~ Ask Joins Symantec!
~ Stimulus Payment Scam! ~ IE Slips Even Further! ~ India's $10 Laptop!
~ JuicyCampus Dries Up! ~ Valentines Spam Rise! ~ Porn Site Feuding!
-* StopBadware: Place To Appeal! *-
-* Internet Companies Vy for Stimulus! *-
-* IBM To Send Blazingly Fast Computers to DoE *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, the weather just continues to bring snow and extremely cold temps
to this area - getting really sick of it...still. Supposedly we'll see
some warmer weather over this weekend, but I'm not holding my breath.
Like the weather, the current political climate continues to chill. The
pols continue to debate what type of "stimulus" package to put forth, and
no one can seem to agree on what is needed to get the economy on track.
Personally, it makes sense to me to make it easier for people to earn
money so they can spend money. If people don't have jobs, they can't
make a living, they can't spend money - the economy suffers. Oh, that's
where we're currently in the midst. Forget about tax cuts and "stimulus"
checks. While either or both of these would be a nice thing, it would be
like throwing a few morsels of food to a starving family. Sure, you might
quench our hunger, but we'd be hungry again in a short period of time.
Provide me with the means to buy food whenever I needed it and I'd be
nourished for a much longer time.
And of course we have a bi-partisan government, each digging in their
heels trying to determine which direction to go in this mess. The
direction that I don't like seeing is bailing out companies and then hear
about expensive travel junkets and huge bonus checks. Makes me sick.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Heidi ho friends and neighbors. Looks like we're going to have enough
messages to make a decent column this week... perhaps not a fantastic
column, but a good one.
But before we get to that, I want to burden you some more with that most
dreaded of all topics: Politics.
I know, I know, you're sick of politics. You're sick of this sucky
economy and of all the arguing over the stimulus package and about these
greedy Ess-Oh-Bee executives making multi-millions while they ask
Congress for billions in bail-outs.
I'm sick of all of that too. But those who forget history are doomed to
repeat it and, while our current situation may not be as bad as the
Great Depression (yet), there are lessons from the 30's and 40's that we
could/should apply to our current predicament.
Now, I'd love to think that simply pointing a finger would get us out of
this mess, but it's simply not true. If you've read this column with any
frequency, you know that I'm not bashful about giving my opinion, and
while it would give me great pleasure to point fingers, it's really not
going to help.
So okay, here it is: The government needs to spend. Period. Giving
people tax rebates makes them feel good for a bit but, by the very
nature of this 'incentive', you make the overall problem worse.
Heh heh... I can see several of you out there right now, scratching your
heads and saying, "huh??"
Think about it for a minute. The smart thing for people (and
governments, for that matter) to do is to pay down their debt, to
squirrel some money away if possible, and to plan for the future. Makes
sense, right? But if people do that with government rebates and stimulus
checks, the net effect on the economy is a negative because this money
had to come from somewhere. It had to be siphoned from the government's
funds and it now is out of circulation, whether because it went to pay
off the balance on a credit card or got put into junior's college fund.
It's not stimulating the economy.
And tax rebates that favor the top earners... 'The Rich'? Well that's
money totally wasted. Rich people aren't going to go out and buy a new
washing machine or a car because they got a $600.00 tax rebate. They
could go out and buy whatever they need without the tax rebate... that's
sort of the definition of rich in the first place... being able to spend
what you want to when you want to.
So what the government hopes will happen is that people will forget
about the $4,000.00 credit card balance and go spend $600.00 on a
washing machine or snow-blower or something. And they'd be over-the-top
happy if it was used as a down payment on a new car, since not only does
that put people in Detroit to work for a little while, it gives the
banks and other lenders instant business.
The problem with this is that people are really really dumb and will get
themselves into more trouble than they'll get themselves out of.
Accruing more debt is not a sign of solvency just as curtailing
Constitutional Rights is not a way of preserving Constitutional Rights.
(sorry, I couldn't resist)
Now, there are a lot of people shaking their heads at the width and
breadth of this stimulus package and saying that it's just too much.
They're saying that we can't spend our way out of our problems and that
tax breaks are what we should be concentrating on.
Well tax breaks are great, and I would like one just as much as anyone
else. But I also want quality schools, national parks and
well-maintained roadways. Those things require money. The government
gets its money from taxes.
Now for the "history" part. Let's do a little compare and contrast,
okay?
To get us out of the Great Depression, the government spent a lot of
money. They spent it on public works projects. hydro-electric plants,
bridges, roads, buildings, you name it... just about anything they could
think of that would put people to work. And back then, just as now, many
people were fussing and fuming about the huge cost of the programs.
But what people don't often think about is the 'legacy effect'; the
usefulness of these projects after they're completed. We weren't
building things that were just built and left to stand there and rot, we
built roads (which let us travel), we built those hydro-electric plants
(which gave us electricity... a billable commodity.. and employed
people), we built public buildings for our local governments, for our
kids' schools, for the less fortunate. We, in short, built things that
would continue to provide some value to us.
Now those same couple of people who were scratching their heads before
are now jumping up and down yelling "Condoms! Condoms! Condoms!"
Yeah, there's money in the plan for condoms.. and look at it this way:
The availability of condoms might just keep your obnoxious little honor
student DARE graduate from popping out a kid (and at that point about
half of you hard-liners would suddenly be in favor of abortion... but
only in YOUR special circumstance... you've ALWAYS got some reason why
your rules shouldn't apply to you) and allow her to go to college and
get a good job to stimulate the economy instead of stimulating the
captain of the football team.
Now, I've heard the President say that these 'things' comprised about 1
percent of the overall package. That may (or may not) be true, but I
think that's the wrong way to look at it... WILL this particular item
help, either now or in the future? That's all we really need to think
about.
Okay, now comes the part that really gets to me: The people who say the
whole thing just costs too much. Umm.. too much as opposed to what? As
opposed to making sure that the gulf between rich and poor widens and
the middle gets dragged down as a matter of course? As opposed to
throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into an armed invasion and
occupation of a sovereign country?
There are those historians and pundits who say that Roosevelt 'allowed'
Japan to attack Pearl Harbor so that we would finally enter the war.
War, as we all know, is a great economic stimulator. Whether or not FDR
'let' the attack happen, once we entered the war, the economy made the
final advances necessary to finally shake off the last vestiges of the
Great Depression. Wars require armies. Armies require equipment and
ammunition and food and textiles and even scientific and technological
advances if they're within reach.
But wait a minute. Aren't we at war right now? Aren't we spending
billions of dollars every month (by most estimates, more than ten
billion per month) on the war effort? So how did we get here?
The answer may seem counter-intuitive, but the war is actually working
OPPOSITE of what you'd expect. The fact is that, first of all, ten
billion dollars a month isn't enough to stimulate the economy. Second,
that ten billion certainly isn't filtering down. Remember when people
worked for companies that did "government work"? They were all around us.
Today, you hear about Haliburton and KBR, but all of the little
companies of yesteryear are 'out of the loop'. Honestly now, how many
people can you think of today who are working for companies that supply
the government in general or the military in particular? Ask your older
friends and relatives what it was like in the early 40's. EVERYONE knew
someone who was doing something war-related. The work was there, the
jobs were there.
The bottom line? Not only can you not fight a war on the cheap, but you
cannot pull your country out of a nose-dive that way either.
Paul Krugman (Princeton Economist) was right... there's nothing special
about a war. There's nothing magical about the money spent fighting a
war as opposed to spending it on social or public works projects. The
only difference is that people tend to 'give it up' more easily for a
war than they do for a national park. What we're lacking isn't the
wallet, it's the will.
Fighting a war on the cheap is a part of what's gotten us into this
situation, along with the mistaken idea that financial industries could
be trusted to police themselves. It's foolish to believe that doing more
of the same would have the opposite effect and, personally, I take
umbrage at those politicians who wave a ream of paper in front of the
camera and shout that spending is what got us into this mess. It's not.
Spending and getting no value for it is what got us into this mess. And,
by the way Senator Cracker, YOU were a big part of that spending. So sit
down and shuddup and let us fix your mess.
On a purely personal note, a close family friend lost her battle with
cancer this past week. Loretta, you'll be dearly missed. Your smile, and
the humor and comfort you brought to everyone you encountered, was
always welcomed and will be sorely missed. Thank you.
Okay, enough of that. Let's get to the news, hints, tips and info
available from the UseNet.
From the comp.sys.atari.st NewsGroup
====================================
'Phantom' asks about some of the upgrades/add-ons that are available for
the Falcon030:
"I've just rebuilt a Falcon 030 and have been looking over some of the
Modifications and Upgrades that one could get for it. I left the
motherboard in the factory condition. It has a FPU, 14megs, TOS 4.04,
Expose' Digitiser, 2.5 IDE Hard Disk. The motherboard has no past
modifications.
I'm looking at increasing the BUS Speed if possible without doing a
major upgrade involving a lot of wires or replacing the CPU.
Have some Questions, for the most part they have to do with a Stock
Factory Falcon with TOS 4.04. No other Software involved/installed
except for the original Disk Software from Atari. Such as the Control
Panel, GDOS and etc.
What hardware on the motherboard is considered the actual Bus?
Where does it actually start and to what parts/chips does it branch out
to if it does branch out?
The AES
----------
On a Stock Falcon using TOS 4.04 what does the AES actually mean/do?
NVRAM
----------
I remember a lot of discussion over the NVRAM. To my knowledge, the clock
which keeps the date/time is located in the NVRAM Chip. If so, can one
remove the Top of the Chip and replace the battery? And what does the
Battery look like, is it the Top part of the chip or some type of watch
battery??
Does this battery also keep the NVRAM settings when the machine is OFF?
Does the NVRAM have anything to do with the Factory Control Panel
software or the Newdesk.INF file?
Are there any other things that the NVRAM does that could cause trouble
if the battery is bad/weak?
I remember a collection of Falcon modifications and fixes that were in
a
.ZIP format. Really well done. I think it created by someone in Germany
and may have been called DOITF030. Anyone know if this is still
available?
Any help with the above is much appreciated. Any suggestions on a good
solid BUS Upgrade or other modifications for a Stock Falcon?"
Derryck Croker tells Phantom:
"Correct. The clock is on the NVRAM chip. It also holds some other
settings.
Only certain variants of the chip can be 'opened' for battery
replacement. [It's] Some type of watch battery. Chips where you can lift
the top can have an external battery fitted, commonly a CR3023 in an
external holder. It'll be fairly obvious if you can lift the top, but be
careful if you're just prodding about due to the oscillator crystal just
inside.
Usually it's the failure to hold time settings that give you the clue
[about the battery failure].
Replacing the chip is a fairly easy job, but there is one pin that is
hard to unsolder because it's connected to what seems like a large
copper plane on an inner PCB layer. You will probably want to cut the
chip free from its pins, as close to the chip as possible so that you
have something to grip as you unsolder each pin. "
Phantom tells Derryck:
"Looks like I have a NVRAM chip or battery to replace. I have a couple
of motherboards for parts, not sure if the NVRAMs on them are any
better.
They are rather Tall, and look like they have a long rectangle block on
top with a line between it and the bottom part of the Chip.
Would this be the one with the replaceable battery?
Doesn't it require cutting with something like a Dremel tool or sharp
knife to get it apart? I'd like to do the battery fix, if this can be
done on this type."
Michael Schwingen adds:
"The battery is replaceable on all variants - the amount of cutting and
the layout of the wires in the potting material may differ.
Note that both the lithium battery and the crystal for the RTC are in
the
upper part of the module - you need to disconnect the old battery (at
least one wire), but keep the crystal connected.
On the modules where the "backpack" is only connected at the two short
sides, with a gap between the RTC case and the backpack, you can cut the
backpack in half and remove the half with the battery - an example
(MK48T02 from a SUN SparcStation, not the exact type used in the
Falcon):
http://www.ccac.rwth-aachen.de/~michaels/images/nvram1.jpg
http://www.ccac.rwth-aachen.de/~michaels/images/nvram2.jpg
http://www.ccac.rwth-aachen.de/~michaels/images/nvram3.jpg
As far as I can remember, on the fully potted Dallas variants, the
missing bottom pins are bend up to connect to the crystal and battery -
comparing the pinouts of the original MC146818A and the DS1287 should
give a clue. Hm - googling for the pinouts, it seems the MCA PS/2-PC
guys had the same problem and Peter Wendt documented the procedure:
http://www.mcamafia.de/mcapage0/dsrework.htm
Dremel might work, knife probably not, the plastic is quite hard. When
working with a Dremel, be careful not to leave metal dust inside the
machine."
Derryck tells Michael:
"Fascinating. I've used the technique of milling away the potting
material in the past, to repair a broken-off pin. Broke it whilst
installing a mod which involved cutting said pin and soldering a wire to
it.
Well folks, that's it for this week. 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 - Nintendo Wins Graying Gamers!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Killzone 2: Slaughterhouse!
Electronic Arts!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Killzone 2: Slaughterhouse High Five
Killzone 2 is finally here, and the PS3's breathlessly awaited exclusive
first-person shooter looks spectacularly depressing, a heliographing
bandolier buckled round a nuclear missile pointed at an everlasting
free-fire zone. Think exquisitely grim, then grimly rust-colored
tortured landscapes swirled with blinding sand and clots of dirt that
geyser as artillery shells arc and plummet like shooting stars. Think
meshes of destructible rack and ruin structures and neo-classical
complexes festooned with Futura-styled aphorisms, policed by red-eyed
shock troops reminiscent of Nazi Germany's sturmtruppen.
Yes, Killzone 2 looks good. Startlingly good. As good as you've heard,
and then some.
But is it the shot in the arm the PS3 needs? A chance for Sony's
punditry-pummeled console to kick-start 2009 with its best foot forward?
Exhale. The answer is yes, so long as you're willing to treat its
conventional campaign as just a warm-up for its superior skirmish and
online components.
But first some background on the game's two mortally opposed factions,
even if it's more than you'll glean from the game itself. Think bad guys
versus good guys devoid of moral ambiguities, Axis and Allies, the
International Strategic Alliance (or ISA that's you) versus the
fascist Helghast Empire, battling over planetary resources in some
far-flung future.
The original Killzone for PS2 saw the Helghast launch an interplanetary
war by invading the ISA colony planet Vekta, which the ISA eventually
repelled. In Killzone: Liberation for the PSP, the ISA managed to boot
the Helghast off Vekta altogether.
In Killzone 2, then, turnabout's fair play: The ISA opt to invade the
Helghast home world, whooping and fist-bumping all the way.
At the outset, you're treated to a propaganda clip from Helghast
overlord Scolar Visari, a Marlon Brando lookalike whose pallid head
emerges from shadow like a fist through chocolate. It's Apocalypse Now
for Dummies, without the river, patrol boat, or Dennis Hopper's
space-time fractions. "Imagine a boot stamping on a human face,
forever," or something similarly Orwellian.
Itching for revenge, the ISA assemble in towering drop-ships above
Pyrrhus, the Helghan capital. It's a Normandy beach invasion moment you
wouldn't put on a postcard. In fact you huddle on floating platforms
that look resemble hovering "Higgins" LCVPs. That they lack armor-plated
siding makes as much sense as cutting gaping holes in shields (who needs
logic when style pays dividends). Moments later you're spraying bullets
and double-timing for cover, and that's when you realize...
Well not quite, but after popping your first few Helghast Assault Troops
in Killzone 2, you'll notice they're hardly your average tenpins.
For starters, they'll keep their bodies effectively concealed and only
peek judiciously. They're as quick as you to employ blind-fire (firing
from behind cover without looking) and they'll lay curtains of bullets
across the battlefield to keep you hunkered and unnerved. They'll even
lob grenades to flush you out of hidey-holes instead of charging
headlong, and fire through complex geometry to prevent you from settling
in a corner. The design team clearly wanted to make the AI one of
Killzone 2's most compelling features, and they've hands-down succeeded.
There's more. The game utilizes a first-person cover system that homages
Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Vegas hold down a shoulder trigger to stick to walls,
wiggle the joystick to poke your weapons around objects, release to
unlimber. The kicker? Killzone 2's enemy's use it every bit as ably as
you on your best day.
Lay down suppressive fire and the opposition responds in kind, flanking
and skewering you with enfilade fire. Enemies know how to move
effectively and do so swiftly, whether mantling along walls or darting
between swathes of cover. They're tough to confuse, and only rarely peel
away from safe zones to stand unprotected while unloading a clip or two.
Head-shots are dear, because bodies can absorb up to six or seven. The
Helghast are altered humans tougher than you so they take more than
a few pops to drop. Bullets spin enemies off-center, making even stunned
targets volatile. Uncontrolled fire compounded by weapons recoil will
draw your aim off target and give the enemy critical seconds to recover
and return the favor.
Nothing's perfect, and in this case it's the friendly AI that's suffers
in certain instances. Despite promises that your squad mates will stay
out of your way, they'll occasionally wander into your line of fire,
then gallingly chastise you for it. In open terrain, they'll reliably
stay behind you, but when you're changing directions rapidly in narrow
areas like tunnels or stairways, they get too easily confused, often
impeding your progress or compromising your line of sight. It's a minor
defect, but present and annoying.
Perhaps the triumphs of Killzone 2's AI explain its inversely mediocre
solo campaign, which while tactically compelling during its set piece
battles offers only conventional objectives. Fight from one end of a
linear level to another. Push some buttons in a room. Take out an RPG
team. Pilot a tank for a couple moments. Cruise the battlefield in an
agile exoskeletal suit for a couple more. A game with Killzone 2's MO
could (and should) have offered better.
The campaign's also packing a few non sequiturs. Why can you heal your
squad mates, but they'll never lift a finger to help you? Why give
players the best weapon in the game for half a level, then inexplicably
yank it forever when the next one loads? And occasionally you're teased
with the promise of toys, e.g. "We've got buggies man!" only to be
dragged through a cutscene and dropped at the tail end without laying a
finger on the steering column.
Enemies that spawn when you pass a hidden threshold are also
irritatingly deterministic (the taint of heavy-handed scripting). In
certain areas, they're disgorged relentlessly through inaccessible
cracks or from behind ledges you can't climb up to. Die a couple times
and you'll spot these seams. Even brilliant AI can't hide the sense that
you've stumbled into a glorified shooting gallery when enemies backfill
endlessly behind corrugated nubs of cover.
Still, once they're in position, those enemies flow across the
battlefields with eerie dexterity and assault with breathtaking
efficacy. It's something to behold when you eventually encounter mass
fields of fire in which both sides oscillate back and forth like water
poured between cups, retreating only to advance again with the momentum
of an effective forward thrust. Moments like those almost make up for
the rest of the campaign's shortcomings.
Almost, but not quite, which is where multiplayer steps in and earns
Killzone 2 its stars. There's an offline Skirmish mode that lets you
practice against insidiously clever AI "bots," but the real money's
online against other players. That mode's called Warzone, and it offers
an evolving class-driven experience for up to 32 players, built around
five game types that cycle as you play and swap win states on the fly.
"Search and Retrieve," which entails nabbing a tiny speaker spouting
propaganda reflective of the carrier's faction, is basically Capture the
Flag, while "Search and Destroy" has you deploying explosive charges at
the opposition's base (or preventing them from doing the same to yours).
"Bodycount" is team deathmatch, "Capture and Hold," is king of the hill,
and "Assassination" designates random players on both sides as temporary
point-based execution targets.
So there's variety, with dynamism besides. But the really clever part
involves Warzone's six classes, which run the gamut from support to
sabotage. Everyone starts with the basics: an assault rifle, a pistol,
and a grenade. As you take out enemies and accomplish tasks, you accrue
points, which buff your score and yield special badges and ribbons. The
higher your score, the more stuff you can carry. With enough points, you
can create squads that enhance your ability to communicate with squad
mates even spawn near your squad leader.
The badges and ribbons add to the overall role-playing vibe with
upgradeable class perks. Engineers, for example, can gain the ability to
set automated turrets that target enemies, then rank up to add the
option to repair ammunition dispensers, automated turrets, and mounted
guns. Saboteurs, at the other end of the class schema, can acquire the
ability to look like one of their opponents, then rank up and add the
option to throw sticky proximity-detonated C4 charges.
Still not deep enough for you? Classes aren't just static columns, they
can overlap. If you toil long enough and tally up the requisite
essentials, you'll have the option to couple one class's abilities with
another. Want a Medic who uses the Tactician's air support sentry bots
to cover his curative ministrations? How about a (virtually) invisible
Scout who employs the Saboteur's C4-laying ability to sneak behind enemy
lines and plant incendiary surprises? The combinative role-playing
possibilities are countless, the outcomes (which also iterate dependent
on play styles) highly unpredictable, and the organic process itself
completely fascinating to watch.
Which, speaking of watching, brings us full circle to Killzone 2's
looks. Make no mistake, it's a looker. But so what? At some point the
visual novelty wears off and you're left for posterity with a game that
either worked, or didn't...or fell somewhere in limbo-land between.
Which makes it fortunate that Killzone 2 not only works, but in most
cases excels. Even its mediocre campaign improves if you treat it as I
suspect its developer's intended a series of pitched battles designed
to showcase an AI that's at worst entirely competent, and at best,
entirely remarkable.
*PCW Score: 90%*
Electronic Arts Playing Spy Games with Ludlum Books
Electronic Arts has won an exclusive worldwide license from Ludlum
Entertainment to create video games based on the works of author Robert
Ludlum, including the popular Jason Bourne franchise.
The first game set to be released under the arrangement is based on the
Bourne series and is in development at Uppsala, Sweden-based Starbreeze
Studios, which worked on the "Chronicles of Riddick" games. Financial
details of the multiyear deal were not disclosed.
A previous Bourne game was published by Sierra Entertainment.
Video game veteran Matt Wolf, the Ludlum estate's interactive creative
adviser, will work with EA to oversee development of Ludlum games. He
played similar roles with Gracie Films on a "Simpsons" game and with the
Roald Dahl estate on a "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" game.
Try Your Skill at Landing A Plane on Hudson River
First came the heroics of landing a crippled passenger jet on the Hudson
River in New York City. Now there are the video games.
"Hero on the Hudson" challenges players to steady a plane nosediving
toward the busy river. In "Double Bird Strike," the goal is to evade
flocks of birds - a suspected cause of the US Airways jet's near
disaster on January 15.
Both are free online games created by units of MTV Networks, a division
of Viacom Inc. Free games, which make money by selling advertising, are
seen as a promising segment of the $22 billion U.S. video game industry.
Players can try to emulate the skill of pilot Chesley "Sully"
Sullenberger, who won acclaim for his smooth emergency landing on the
Hudson River that saved all 155 people aboard.
"Hero on the Hudson" has been played more than 1.4 million times since
it was launched on January 21, said Kate Connally, spokeswoman for its
creator AddictingGames. Average success takes three tries.
"If you land it correctly like the pilot did, then the passengers come
out and cheer on the wing," she said. "The payoff is the joy of having
saved all the passengers."
The plane sinks with burbling sounds if you fail.
"Double Bird Strike," which launched on January 18, may be trickier.
Scott Roesch, general manager of creator atom.com, said it took him at
least a dozen tries to succeed.
"The decision to launch the project was made within 24 hours. It really
is a story of heroism," Roesch said. "The more we started to think
about, the thing that the plane was hit by birds was amazing."
Among those conducting 147,000 tries on "Double Bird Strike," he said,
are mothers at home. Before playing the game, viewers must watch a
laundry detergent commercial featuring models on a catwalk.
In the 2008 election year, politics mixed with online gaming.
Several of the most popular games, Roesch and Connally said, featured
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the outdoorsy
governor of Alaska. "Hunting with Palin" by atom.com drew more than 1.6
million tries.
Nintendo Wins The Graying Gamers
Among video game manufacturers, Nintendo has arguably done the most to
recruit older gamers. Its Wii system is a minor hit in retirement homes,
and Brain Age, a program for the company?s DS system, is marketed in
part to graying users worried about losing their mental sharpness.
A recent report from Packaged Facts, a market research firm, suggests
that this strategy has paid off: almost twice as many older gamers use
Nintendo systems as use PlayStation, the runner-up.
?Over the last few years, the driving force behind the increasing
diversity and the mass appeal of gaming had been Nintendo,? said Bob
Brown, the report?s author. ?My wife?s mother lives in a retirement
community, and the last time we were there, everyone was excited because
they were getting a Wii in there.?
The report also found that women were more prevalent than men among
older video gamers. They make up 46 percent of 18-to-24-year-old gamers,
but 55 percent of those 65 and older.
Playing Violent Video Games Has Risks
Among young college students, the frequency and type of video games played
appears to parallel risky drug and alcohol use, poorer personal
relationships, and low levels of self-esteem, researchers report.
"This does not mean that every person who plays video games has low
self-worth, or that playing video games will lead to drug use," Laura M.
Padilla-Walker told Reuters Health.
Rather, these findings simply indicate video gaming may cluster with a
number of negative outcomes, "at least for some segment of the
population," said Padilla-Walker, an associate professor at the School
of Family Life at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
She and colleagues examined the previous 12-months' frequency and type
of video game and Internet use reported by 500 female and 313 male
undergraduate college students in the United States.
The students, who were 20 years old on average and mostly received
course credit for their study participation, also recounted their drug
and alcohol use, perceptions of self-worth and social acceptance, and
the quality of their relationships with friends and family.
The findings, reported in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, showed
"stark gender differences in video game and Internet use,"
Padilla-Walker said.
For example, compared with young women, young men reported video gaming
three times as often and reported playing violent video games nearly
eight times as often.
Young men were also more likely to use the Internet for entertainment,
daily headline news, and pornography, while young women more often used
the Internet for email and schoolwork.
However, regardless of gender, clear correlations were seen between
frequent gaming and more frequent alcohol and drug use and lower quality
personal relationships, as well as more frequent violent gaming and a
greater number of sexual partners and low quality personal relationships.
The investigators linked similar negative outcomes with Internet use for
chat rooms, shopping, entertainment, and pornography, but a contrasting
"plethora of positive outcomes" with Internet use for schoolwork.
Padilla-Walker sees these findings as a starting point for future
research. Continued analyses of video game and Internet use should
improve the overall understanding of health and development among
emerging young adults, she and colleagues note.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
IBM To Send Blazing Fast Supercomputer to Energy Department
IBM plans to announce on Tuesday that it will supply the world's fastest
supercomputer to the U.S. Department of Energy in the next few years,
according to numerous reports.
Not only will the machine, called Sequoia, be the fastest supercomputer
to date, it will blow the current record-holder out of the water. IBM's
Roadrunner, located at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos
National Laboratory, was the first system to reach 1.026 petaflops (a
petaflop is equal to a quadrillion calculations per second; the "flops"
stands for floating point operations per second). But only seven months
after the Roadrunner took top honors on a twice-yearly list
of the world's fastest supercomputers, IBM is announcing that its
successor will outdo it by an order of magnitude. Sequoia will be able
to work at a staggering 20 petaflops, the equivalent of the compute
power of 2 million laptops according to Reuters.
IBM says it plans to deliver the Sequoia to the Energy Department for
use at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The supercomputer
will run simulations to test the soundness of the nation's stockpile of
nuclear weaponry, according to the IDG News Service.
Like Roadrunner, IBM says Sequoia will be energy-efficient. It will draw
6 megawatts of power in a year, which is roughly what 500 American homes
would use, according to Wired.
Internet Companies Vying for Stimulus
Wireless and Internet service companies are looking to cash in as U.S.
lawmakers hash out a $900 billion stimulus plan aimed at jump-starting
the souring economy.
Nearly $10 billion in federal grants and loans and $100 million in tax
credits could be spent extending high-speed Internet access to rural
areas and poor neighborhoods, a goal outlined by President Barack Obama
during his campaign.
Public interest groups say it is laudable the government is trying to
help the poor while creating jobs but that a poorly implemented program
could smack of corporate welfare.
"Even though we support tax credits, we don't want them to 'incentivize'
investments that would have taken place otherwise," said Derek Turner,
research director at the public interest group Free Press.
"We won't be creating new jobs and we'll just be paying for current
investment."
In determining which companies benefit most from the stimulus
incentives, much will depend on interpretations of words like "open
access," "underserved" and "unserved."
The language in the stimulus bill is vague in some cases and fails to
define key terms.
For example, the House of Representatives version of the stimulus gives
the Federal Communications Commission the power to define "openness":
the idea that Internet providers should not discriminate based on the
size of the content - say movie downloads versus email - or
applications as it routes traffic.
Internet service providers like Verizon ardently oppose this, saying it
will discourage investment.
But public interest groups and content providers like Google Inc say it
is essential for innovation to flourish on the Internet.
"The commission will have to open rulemakings on these issues and we
expect they will be contentious and difficult," Medley Advisors analyst
Jessica Zufolo said in an investor note this week.
Big providers like AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications prefer tax
credits rather than grants and loans, while the smaller rural carriers
favor direct grants, in large part because they are more likely to have
liabilities.
Many Wall Street analysts say smaller, mid-sized and rural-focused
carriers are most likely to benefit from the incentives, as the dollars
would be too small to pack much punch for giants with tens of billions
in revenues.
The Rural Cellular Association, with members including United States
Cellular Corp and Cellular South, is pushing for provisions to prevent
the big carriers from dominating the process.
"The tax credits are of no use to smaller carriers," said Eric Peterson,
a spokesman for the trade group, which says its members serve about 25
million Americans. "Tax credits would not provide instant capital and
thereby be stimulative in terms of the administration and the Congress's
objectives."
The Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, which
represents mid-sized carriers including CenturyTel Inc. and Embarq Corp
and Windstream Corp, wrote to key lawmakers this week to push grants and
a focus on subsidizing access to unserved areas, currently unprofitable
to the companies.
"The reason our folks are at 90 percent deployment and not 100 percent
is that is where the numbers stop working," said Curt Stamp, president
of the group.
The tax credits proposed - currently 10 to 20 percent of investments,
depending on connection speeds - are not big enough "to move the
needle" on investment, Stamp said.
The Wireless Communications Association International, which represents
giants like AT&T but also smaller companies like privately held Xanadoo,
wants flexibility in accounting for net operating losses.
The group's president, Fred Campbell, said, "The reason it's relevant is
it's harder to raise money in a very volatile stock market, especially
when you have a sudden stock drop."
IE Slips Further As Firefox, Safari, Chrome Gain
The amount of market share commanded by Microsoft's Internet Explorer
browser has dropped for the seventh consecutive month.
Internet Explorer now has 67.55 percent of global browser market share,
a drop of over seven percentage points in a year, according to figures
from Web metrics company Net Applications, released Monday. Mozilla's
Firefox browser, meanwhile, has gained market share in the same time
frame, climbing over three percentage points to 21.53 percent.
Microsoft's browser has steadily lost ground to its competitors in the
past year. Its share dropped sharply in both October and November 2008,
when it lost over one percentage point in each month.
Apple's Safari browser now stands at 8.29 percent, up from 7.13 percent
in November, when IE dipped. Safari has gained share more quickly than
Firefox in that period: Mozilla's browser accounted for 20.78 percent of
browser use three months ago, and now has 21.53 percent.
Google's Chrome browser, launched in September 2008, now has 1.12
percent of the market, having overtaken Opera in November. Opera's share
of the market now stands at 0.7 percent.
Internet Explorer's drop of seven percentage point since February last
year is a continuing trend. Microsoft lost over nine percent of browser
market share in the preceding two years.
Most of IE's drop in the past year has been in Internet Explorer 6,
which fell from 30.63 percent last February to 19.21 percent this
January. Internet Explorer 7 has gained market share overall over the
same time period, rising from 44.03 percent to 47.32 percent.
Microsoft launched the first release candidate for Internet Explorer 8
last week. It hopes to regain lost ground by adding features such as
private browsing and a cross-site scripting filter.
Google Quietly Declares Email War on Yahoo
Many people have sent an email while angry, exhausted, inebriated or just
by mistake that they later regretted. Now, Google has a way to help
protect you (and others) from such a faux pas.
As part of its quest to attract users to its Gmail service, the Internet
search company has introduced dozens of features, including one that,
after a certain time, makes a user solve a math problem before sending
an email, giving them time to rethink it.
Because Google makes money every time email users click on ads, it is
enhancing its email service to increase advertising and take market
share away from Yahoo.
Unique visitors to Google's sites increased 32 percent worldwide to more
than 775 million last year, according to comScore, which tracks such
data.
Yahoo had a 16 percent gain to 562.6 million visitors and Microsoft had
a 20 percent increase to about 647 million visitors.
Analysts have attributed part of Google's visitor growth to email
features that are being turned out at a dizzying rate by the company's
Gmail Labs.
This month, Google introduced a feature to automatically download mail
so users can read Gmail offline in a Web browser. That matches an
existing feature in the client version of Microsoft's Outlook but when
Outlook is accessed from the Internet it does not have that feature.
The off-line mail feature was announced in a press statement, but most
other features to Gmail have been introduced more quietly. Engineers
created and posted 34 experimental features in the seven months since
Gmail Labs launched in June.
"They're able to improve the products much faster than anyone else,"
said Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler.
Google said those features are for adventurous Gmail users because the
rapid addition of them means they may not work smoothly or that they
will last.
"Mail Goggles" helps users avoid sending regrettable email or Gchat
messages, an instant messaging system, by making them pass a simple math
test before sending.
Another feature alerts users who forget to upload promised attachments.
And another lets users send free SMS (short message service) messages to
friends via Gchat.
The new features can be found in "Labs" on the main Gmail account page
in the upper right corner under "Settings".
Google engineer Dave Cohen took half a day to code an experiment that
lets users add a photo next to a friend's conversation in a chat window.
It was available for users to try out a few weeks later.
Cohen said it used to be "hard to take an idea you had and get it out
there." Now, he said, Gmail Labs "has increased our freedom and
flexibility, and we can do more at a whim when there's something you
really want to add."
Analysts said the quick roll out of experimental features puts pressure
on Yahoo, Time Warner and Microsoft.
Helping to speed development is a "Send Feedback" link in each
experimental feature that allows users to make suggestions directly to
the developer on how to improve it.
"We didn't ... have that kind of direct feedback between engineers and
users," said Keith Coleman, product manager. "Now, we have engineers
looking at the raw feedback that they are getting."
Firefox 3.0.6 Targets Security Issues
Mozilla on Tuesday released an update to Firefox for Windows, Mac,
and Linux that its developers said addresses several security and
stability issues in the Web browser.
Version 3.0.6 fixes six bugs, the worst of which is a JavaScript issue
affecting the browser's layout engine that developers labeled as
critical. The vulnerability, which also affects Mozilla's Thunderbird
e-mail client and SeaMonkey Internet Suite, could allow an attacker to
run unauthorized code on exploited machines, Mozilla said.
The update improves how scripted commands, such as those included with
Adblock Plus, work with plug-ins. It also addresses display issues,
Mozilla said.
The update comes as Firefox continues to chip away at Internet
Explorer's market dominance. Internet Explorer now has 67.55 percent of
global browser market share, a drop of more than 7 percentage points in
a year, according to figures from Web metrics company Net Applications
released Monday. Mozilla's Firefox browser, meanwhile, has gained market
share in the same time frame, climbing more than 3 percentage points to
21.53 percent.
Mac OS X Nears 10 Percent of Market as Windows Slips
While Microsoft's Windows 7 has been making tech news, Apple's Mac OS
X has moved up the market-share ladder. Apple's operating system
continued climbing for the third consecutive month, closing in on 10
percent of the operating-system market, according to Net Applications.
Apple now claims 9.9 percent of the market.
At the same time, Microsoft's Windows operating system saw three
consecutive months of decline. As of January, Microsoft Windows had 88.3
percent of the market, a .42 percent drop from December and a 2.2
percent decline in the last 90 days.
That's the largest slump in a three-month period in the four years Net
Applications has been gathering operating-system data - and it doubles
the previous record, set from December 2006 to February 2007. During
that 2006-2007 period, Windows fell 1.1 percent. Windows XP caused most
of the loss.
After a dismal showing with Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft has much
riding on the launch of Windows 7. Microsoft launched a beta version of
Windows 7 in mid-January and it now has one-tenth of one percent of the
operating-system market, according to Net Applications.
Net Applications gathers its data on operating-system usage from its Web
analytics program.
"Similar to Windows Vista, Windows 7 usage share is showing a pattern of
being much higher on weekends than on weekdays," the company said in a
note on its Web site. "Beta users are taking the time and effort to
install it on their home computers, since corporations generally
prohibit beta operating systems to be used in production environments."
Microsoft has said it will put out a release candidate of Windows 7 as
its next step - there will be no second beta version - but the company
has not offered a release date.
According to Microsoft, Windows 7 was built around consumer feedback.
Some of the new features include a taskbar at the bottom of the screen
that lets users switch between open applications. In Windows 7, users
can set the order in which the icons appear. A Jump List feature aims to
make it easy to find recent files. Right-clicking on a Word icon, for
example, will show the most recent Word documents.
Apple's operating system isn't coming close to eclipsing Microsoft
Windows, just as Mozilla's Firefox browser isn't close to beating
Internet Explorer. But Apple's influence on the PC market is becoming
increasingly visible.
According to Stephen Baker, director of industry analysis at the NPD
Group, that influence isn't just because of the Apple iPod's popularity.
Baker said the iPod halo effect is played out, and iMac and MacBook
sales are growing on their own merits.
"Apple has been selling a lot of PCs over the past few years. I don't
know that there's a milestone or a number that people ought to hang
their hat on. It's a continuing process right now," Baker said. "Mac has
been outperforming the rest of the PC industry in the consumer segment,
so it shouldn't be a surprise."
Ask Partners with Symantec on Security Ratings for Web Searches
Search engine Ask is partnering with Symantec to offer Web surfers
ratings on the safety level of sites in search results, the companies
were set to announce on Tuesday.
Sites will be rated with a color-coded icon in one of four colors - green
for safe, yellow for risky, red for unsafe, and gray for unknown, said
Andrew Moers, president of Ask Partner Network. Moving the cursor over
the icon will display more information about the rating.
Unsafe sites are ones that pretend to be something they are not and
shopping sites that lack security or where the merchants aren't
reputable, according to Moers.
Safe Search offers the ratings directly in the search experience so
users can conduct searches from the toolbar of Symantec's Norton Safe
Web software, which is part of Norton 360. The Web site rating service
was introduced in beta by Symantec last August.
Ask also is working on having a beta site open up to the public this
week, but the site will not have all the functions that the Norton Safe
Web rating service does, Moers said.
The service is similar to an alert system that Google uses, however
Google merely displays several warning messages saying that the site
"may be harmful to the computer" but does not assign a safety rating. An
error last Saturday led to Google warning temporarily that all sites on
the Internet were potentially unsafe.
Ask offers adult filtering and re-launched its Ask Kids white list
service for children last year.
StopBadware.org, The Place To Appeal A Google Malware Warning
If your Web site is one of the more than 170,000 sites on the Internet
that Google has tagged as hosting malware, you have a place to
turn--StopBadware.org.
On Saturday, an error at Google changed the display of search results so
that every site on the Internet was listed as having malware for about
an hour. After that happened, StopBadware.org's site was hit with so
much traffic - 67,000 or 13 times the normal daily number - that it led
to a denial of service that had the site offline for nearly an hour and a
half.
After initially saying StopBadware.org had contributed to the problem,
Google retracted that and said it was solely the fault of the search
engine. Meanwhile, StopBadware.org got 150 malware review requests over
the weekend from people whose sites were tagged as harmful during the
glitch.
"It was an unfortunate event, but it helps raise awareness of this real
problem" of sites hosting malware, Maxim Weinstein, manager of the
nonprofit StopBadware.org, said in an interview on Monday with CNET News.
An appeals body From a five-person office on the Harvard campus in
Cambridge, Mass., the organization serves as a sort of appeals body for
people who argue that their sites shouldn't be flagged as dangerous. In
the high stakes game of e-commerce, getting tagged as dangerous can cost
a Web site visitors and money.
The organization gets anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 requests per month
from Web site owners who think Google has unfairly tagged them as
harmful to the Web surfing public, according to Weinstein.
For sites that host spyware, adware, or other software that interferes
with peoples' ability to control their computer, Google includes a
warning along with the results that says: "This site may harm your
computer." If the searcher clicks on the result, a window pops up with a
second warning that suggests trying a different search and offers direct
links to StopBadware.org and related Google sites. To get to the flagged
Web site a searcher has to type in the URL in the Web address bar.
Google offers an automated process for review requests, while
StopBadware.org does the review manually.
Outside of the anomaly that occurred over the weekend, Google rarely has
false positives, according to Weinstein. Many of the sites are indeed
malicious, such as phishing sites hoping to steal sensitive data an
unsuspecting visitor may type in thinking that the site is a legitimate
bank site, for instance.
But most of the people who ask StopBadware.org for help are legitimate
sites whose servers have been compromised, often because they are
running Web server software with a vulnerability that has not been
patched, he said.
Sometimes the malware is contained in the comments on a blog, and in
other cases some people just aren't using strong enough passwords to
protect their Web hosting accounts.
A lot of bloggers use WordPress, which has a fair share of security
weaknesses, and people don't know they need to update the software,
Weinstein said.
"Attackers run software scanning for WordPress blogs that are running
vulnerable versions of the server software and then they run an attack
that gets access to the site," he said.
In the dog-eat-dog world of Web search, StopBadware.org shares a special
status. The organization, launched in 2006 as a "neighborhood watch for
the Internet," was coordinated by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center
for Internet & Society.
It gets data from Google, AOL, PayPal, Trend Micro, Lenovo and VeriSign,
and Consumer Reports WebWatch.
"We're independent but with friends in high places," Weinstein said. "We
get access to data from Google and other companies and...this allows for
data analysis and research that no one else is able to do."
In addition to offering a second opinion to aggrieved Web sites,
StopBadware.org works on developing new approaches to addressing malware
and offers the BadwareBusters.org forum where Web site owners can
exchange information.
The organization has been focusing on identifying what it calls
"borderline applications," badware that isn't obviously malicious but
which exhibits behavior that malware does, such as installing extra
software on the PC without informing the user and software that doesn't
uninstall when the user tries to get rid of it.
Representatives from Google, StopBadware.org's closest partner, declined
an opportunity to be interviewed about the organization following the
weekend search snafu.
"We have a good ongoing relationship with StopBadware.org," a Google
spokesman said in an e-mail.
Valentine Spam Part of a Junk-mail Resurgence
It's a time for romance, for Cupid's arrow, and perhaps a male
enhancement drug from a fake online pharmacy.
Valentine's day spam and scams are showing up in inboxes in anticipation
of the upcoming holiday. The messages, with timely sales pitches like
"Increase your length, the best valentine's gift," join a flood of other
crap mail that has spam levels back up to where they were prior to the
McColo shutdown success in November.
In addition to listing other eye-rolling Valentine's spam subjects like
"Great watches for your Valentine," Symantec's State of Spam report for
the month (pdf) adds to evidence that, as expected, junkmail spreaders
have found other ways to spread their spam after McColo, a company that
provided Internet homes for many spam spreaders, was cut off. It was a
major victory, but one all the experts predicted would be short-lived.
Sadly, the experts were right. According to Symantec's report, spam
levels are back up to around 79 percent of all e-mail, just about the
levels prior to the McColo takedown.
But that doesn't detract from the major, and relatively rare, victory
against the spammer infrastructure. And according to a story from Brian
Krebs at Security Fix, the Washing Post writer who was instrumental in
getting McColo nailed, there's potential for other wins.
Krebs covers work done by a group called Knujon that shows how most of
the Web sites advertised by all this junk mail are registered with only
a small handful of domain name registrars (out of 900 or so total, Krebs
writes). His post doesn't explicitly come out and say so, but I'd say
identifying outfits central to helping spammers is the first step
towards cleaning up - or shutting down - those outfits and perhaps
scoring another victory against Internet crime. I'll be keeping my
fingers crossed.
Latest Scam: Bogus Emails Offering Stimulus Payments
The US Department of Homeland Security warned Friday that scammers were
sending out bogus emails offering economic stimulus payments in an attempt
to retrieve personal information.
US-CERT, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team, said it had received
reports of a "phishing" scam involving "fraudulent US Internal Revenue
Service emails offering users stimulus package payments."
"These emails include text that attempts to convince users to follow a
link to a website or to complete an attached document," US-CERT said.
"The website and document request the user to provide personal
information."
In a statement on its website, us-cert.gov, US-CERT urged anyone who
received one of the fraudulent emails to alert the authorities.
US-CERT was created in 2003 to defend the Internet infrastructure against
cyberattack. It is a partnership between the Department of Homeland
Security and the public and private sectors.
Phishing is a common Internet fraud in which perpetrators attempt to steal
IDs, passwords and other personal information in an attempt to swindle
money.
The fraudsters behind the latest scam would appear to be a bit premature.
The US House of Representatives passed a giant economic stimulus package
last week but it has yet to clear the Senate.
India Plans '10 Dollar' Laptop To Promote Computer Skills
India has unveiled plans to produce a laptop computer costing just 10
dollars in a bid to improve the skills of millions of students across the
country.
The laptops will be mass-produced as part of a government-sponsored
education scheme launched on Tuesday in the southern city of Tirupati.
Details about the computer remained scarce, but Higher Education
Secretary R.P. Agrawal said last week that it would be available within
six months.
"Once the testing is over, the computers will be made available on
commercial basis," he told the Press Trust of India news agency.
"Its cost will be 10 US dollars. If the parents want to give something
to their kids, they can easily purchase this item."
The laptop will reportedly have a two gigabyte memory and wireless
Internet capability, but officials have not publicly demonstrated a
prototype - or yet explained how it can be produced at such a low cost.
The government has earmarked more than 46 billion rupees (939 million
dollars) to develop the low-power gadget to work in rural areas with
unreliable power supply and poor Internet connectivity.
The planned laptop is part of a push to increase the number of students
in higher education and give them the technological skills needed to
further boost India's economic growth.
New Delhi rebuffed a previous attempt to bring cheap laptops to India,
led by MIT computer scientist Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child
programme.
The government cited hidden costs for its rejection of that computer,
which was dubbed the 100-dollar laptop.
Porn Site Feud Spawns New DNS Attack
A scrap between two pornographic Web sites turned nasty when one figured
out how to take down the other by exploiting a previously unknown quirk
in the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS).
The attack is known as DNS Amplification. It has been used sporadically
since December, but it started getting talked about last month when
ISPrime, a small New York Internet service provider, started getting hit
hard with what's known as a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack.
The attack was launched by the operator of a pornographic Web site who
was trying to shut down a competitor, hosted on ISPrime's network,
according to Phil Rosenthal, the company's chief technology officer.
The attack on ISPrime started on the morning of Sunday, Jan. 18. It
lasted about a day, but what was remarkable was that a relatively small
number of PCs were able to generate a very large amount of traffic on
the network.
One day later, a similar attack followed, lasting three days. Before
ISPrime was able to filter the unwanted traffic, attackers were able to
use up about 5GB/second of the company's bandwidth,
With a bit of work, Rosenthal's staff was able to filter out the hostile
traffic, but in an e-mail interview he said that the attack "represents
a disturbing trend in the sophistication of denial of service attacks."
According to Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence at security
vendor SecureWorks, we may soon see a lot more of these DNS
Amplification attacks. Late last week, the botnet operators, who rent
out their networks of hacked computers to the highest
bidder, started
adding custom DNS Amplification tools to their networks.
"Everyone's picked it up now," he said. "The next big DDOS on some
former Soviet republic, you'll see this mentioned, I'm sure."
One of the things that makes a DNS amplification attack particularly
nasty is the fact that by sending a very small packet to a legitimate
DNS server, say 17 bytes, the attacker can then trick the server into
sending a much larger packet - about 500 bytes - to the victim of the
attack. By spoofing the source of the packet, the attacker can direct it
at specific parts of his victim's network.
Jackson estimates that the 5GB/second attack against ISPrime was
achieved with just 2,000 computers, which sent out spoofed packets to
thousands of legitimate nameservers, all of which started flooding the
ISPrime network. ISPrime's Rosenthal says that about 750,000 legitimate
DNS servers were used in the attack on his network.
Earlier this week, SecureWorks produced a technical analysis of the DNS
Amplification attack.
The attack is generating a lot of discussion amongst DNS experts,
according to Duane Wessels, program manager with DNS-OARC (Operations
Analysis and Research Center), based in Redwood City, California.
"The worry is that this kind of attack could be used on more
high-profile targets," he said.
One of the things that makes the attack particularly nasty is that it's
very hard to protect against.
"As far as I know, the only real defense you have is to ask your
upstream provider to filter [the malicious traffic]," he said. "It's not
something the victim can do by themselves. They need cooperation from
the provider."
The DNS system, a kind of directory assistance service for the Internet,
has come under increased scrutiny over the past year, when hacker Dan
Kaminsky discovered a serious flaw in the system. That flaw, which has
now been patched by makers of DNS software, could be exploited to
silently redirect Internet traffic to malicious computers without the
victim's knowledge.
DNS-OARC has here.
JuicyCampus, Home to Nasty School Gossip, Dries Up
Critics hoped the better angels of human nature would kill off the
popular campus gossip site JuicyCampus.com. Some prosecutors were trying
to use the law to do the trick.
In the end, the site's much-criticized founder insisted he was merely
the latest victim of the economic downturn.
In any case, the site one college official recently called a "virtual
bathroom wall" of hateful and degrading speech was offline Thursday -
much to the relief of administrators and many students nationwide.
"We're very happy," said Erika Lowe, vice president of the student
government at Western Illinois University, which had been working with
administrators to block the site from campus computers there. "While we
support free speech, there was nothing positive coming out of this Web
site. It only served to dampen spirits and ruin friendships."
But JuicyCampus was popular. Following its launch on seven campuses in
2007, it spread nationwide, and founder Matt Ivester said the site was
getting more than 1 million unique visitors monthly. He said it was all
in good fun, but the anonymity the site granted its gossip-posters
seemed to bring out the worst in people.
Fraternities and sororities cruelly attacked each other. Typical
discussion threads included "Biggest slut on campus" and "easiest
freshmen." Others identified women who had gained weight and one post
named a rape victim and said she "deserved it."
Several student government associations asked their colleges to block
access to the site from campus networks, and a handful - including
Tennessee State and Hampton - did so. New Jersey prosecutors, meanwhile,
were investigating whether the company was violating the state's
Consumer Fraud Act. No charges were filed.
The site appeared to be protected by a federal law absolving Web sites
of responsibility for what their users post. And most colleges decided
they couldn't get into the business of picking and choosing sites to
block. So they urged students to stay away and quietly hoped this day
would come.
"To be tactful, I'm not disappointed," said David Maxwell, president of
Drake University in Iowa. He had received complaints from parents and
students, but declined to block the site when student leaders asked him
to consider doing so.
"We certainly value the university environment as a safe haven for
expression," Maxwell said. But academic freedom "also requires you to be
held responsible for what you say. The anonymity of JuicyCampus was
really a concern for us."
Ivester did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment
Thursday. The site was already offline, but in a farewell note on a
separate blog site, Ivester wrote that "in these historically difficult
economic times, online ad revenue has plummeted and venture capital
funding has dissolved."
He denied that legal troubles were to blame, or that advertisers were
avoiding JuicyCampus because of its content.
Most notably, Ivester said posts would no longer be publicly available,
and the site's privacy policy would continue - it would not release IP
addresses without a subpoena. The site has said it blocks its discussion
board from being indexed by search sites like Google.
He did acknowledge some users had gone overboard.
"While there are parts of JuicyCampus that none of us will miss - the
mean-spirited posts and personal attacks - it has also been a place for
the fun, lighthearted gossip of college life. I hope that is how it is
remembered," he wrote, before signing off: "Keep it juicy."
=~=~=~=
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