3.1 alpha 1 code freeze for next Monday

Firefox 3 wasn't rolled out very long ago at all, but its first public milestone is just 'round the bend. Mozilla is expecting the code freeze for alpha 1 of Firefox 3.1 (code named Shiretoko, a place in Hokkaidō, Japan) to push out next Monday, with public beta testing to arrive July 25.

A status meeting today confirmed Beta 1 is due in August, while Beta 2 will ship out September. The final upgrade should be out by the year's end or the first quarter of 2009.

As for features, that's still up in the air:

“We’re not at a point where these sort of decisions are being made,” said Mike Beltzner [to ZDNet], Firefox project lead. “As you heard at today’s meeting, we’re currently working towards shipping a first developer milestone (Alpha 1) to get broader feedback on the work that we’ve been doing to date. Until we’ve shipped that first milestone, though, the future is still too hazy.”

Nevertheless, "sources" are listing off several items:

• video support defined by HTML 5
• cross-site XMLHttpRequests support (for building stronger web apps and easier implementation of mashups)
• tag autocomplete
• bulk tagging support
• private browsing mode for corporate users
• advanced search UI
• lightweight tagging user interface
• integration of a browser’s download history

Win one for the gipper, FCC

In a surprising case of a governmental agency not caving to corporate suggestions, a small victory has been won for those who enjoy a free Internet. 

As you may have read here on Neoseeker, Comcast has been throttling BitTorrent traffic for some time now, and have been less than forthcoming about their actions with the public. But this throttling will soon come  to an end, thanks to a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission this week.

The FCC found that Comcast's limiting of P2P traffic was arbitrarily enforced, and went against the principles of Internet communication.

This ruling might of not have happened if it weren't for the actions of a guy named Marvin Ammori. He is the "general counsel" of the Free Press -- a non-profit organization that promotes a democratic free press by arguing against excessive consolidation of media organizations by corporations, and more recently, the tenets of network neutrality. Marvin Ammori was the person who filed the complaint against Comcast to the FCC, which resulted in their investigation in the matter -- so, all thanks to him, you Comcasters now have a lot 'ammori' bandwidth to play with (I'm sorry, could not resist.)

Here's what Mr. Ammori said about the FCC ruling, as quoted by the Torrent Freak news service: “Nine months ago, Comcast was exposed for blocking free choice on the Internet. At every turn, Comcast has denied blocking, lied to the public and tried to avoid being held accountable. We have presented an open and shut case that Comcast broke the law. The FCC now appears ready to take action on behalf of consumers. This is an historic test for whether the law will protect the open Internet. If the commission decisively rules against Comcast, it will be a remarkable victory for organized people over organized money."

A possible downside to this legal victory might be a sort of retribution from Comcast: given this ruling, they might now suggest that providing unlimited bandwidth to people is financially untenable. Perhaps they will take this ruling as license to raise prices, or lower bandwidth caps.

Get your online interior decorating and chat on with Google's new social networking service

Avatar-based social networking platforms like Second Life will get some competition from Google, as the IT giant announces "Google Lively" straight out of left field.  Google Lively will allow users to create customized avatars which then visit persistent online spaces to interact and communicate with other users.  These spaces are in the form of equally customizable rooms, which other users can visit if invited.

The backbone of Google Lively will be a separate 10MB client, and users will also need to install some plugins in order to access the service through their web browsers.  Google Lively does not strictly require logging into a dedicated website, and can instead be accessed directly through other places like social networking sites and blogs (without leaving the actual sites) if they wish.

According to Google's head of 3D operations, Mel Guymon, Google Lively has been in development for over two and a half years, and is based around Emergent's Gamebryo engine.  It's already compatible with Facebook, and support for MySpace is currently in the works.  Google Lively will boast a "couple of hundred thousand items" to collect and trade with other users... all for the glory of killing time, we guess.  For example, some items include television sets which can be set up to run Youtube videos.  To be sure, users can't create rooms and items from scratch themselves yet, as these are currently designed by "vendors working for Google".  Google Lively may support actual user-generated content in the future.  At least it will be free, and there's no online advertising to wade through... for now.

All this might sound familiar to PlayStation 3 gamers, who will be getting a taste of social networking of their own with the impending release of PlayStation Home.  From its announcement, Home is designed to host customizable avatars and online spaces, which serve as bases of operations for chatting and online multiplayer PS3 gaming preparation.

Real cost of 3G data plan revealed; Canada to remain in the Dark Ages a while longer

Rogers, Canada's only GSM provider, just released their plan pricing for the iPhone 3G. I'm going to cut right through to what matters:

July 11th is not going to mark the shift in mentality of the Canadian cellular industry as we all had hoped. AT&T set a benchmark with the release of the original iPhone when they offered unlimited data access for $20/month, and when it was announced that Canada would be getting the iPhone 3G via Rogers/Fido, we all crossed our fingers hoping that we'd see something similar happen over on our side of the border.

Let's see what went wrong ...

According to Rogers' cheapest iPhone 3G plan, $60 a month gets you 150 minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends, visual voicemail, some text messages, and ... 400 MB of data. And that's not including Call Display or the bogus "System Access Fee". Minimum contract length? 3 years.

I had a fleeting hope that maybe the iPhone launch in Canada would finally be the day that we got some 2008-era data pricing, but 400 MB for $60/month? It looks like Canada's cellular industry is destined to remain in the Dark Ages for a while longer.

However, let's be fair and look at the offerings in a little more detail:

Have you had a minute to process that? Good. Let's break down the cheapest plan:

• $60/month + $6.95 bogus System Access Fee + tax = $75/month minimum
• 150 minutes, per-minute billing, $0.35/minute additional minutes
• Unlimited evenings start at 9 PM + weekends
• They're actually advertising 75 sent text messages? We're farther back in the Dark Ages than I previously believed.
• Visual Voicemail (voicemail is only vaguely useful for most)
• 400 MB of data, $0.50/MB for the first 60 MB, $0.03/MB thereafter
• NO network calling (ie. Rogers-to-Rogers free-of-charge)
• NO incoming call provisions
• NO call display

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but to me, voicemail is useless, while call display I can't live without. It's another $15 a month on top of the $75 if you want call display (as part of the value pack; it remains to be seen whether Rogers will offer the $7 stand-alone option).

Essentially you have 150 minutes a month, and unless you're talking on your phone between 9 PM - 7 AM on weekdays or on the weekends, those minutes are counting down one minute at a time (the accounting department at Rogers loves rounding up!) whether you received the call or dialed it, and regardless of whether the other party is on the same network.

If this was the industry standard here in Canada, then I would just shrug and move along, but here's what Rogers themselves offer with a few of their other plans:

Mega Time 30

• $30/month ($41/month after SAF + taxes)
• 200 weekday minutes (with a 3-year contract as with the iPhone)
• Unlimited 9 PM evenings + weekends
• UNLIMITED NETWORK CALLING

Mega Time 40

• $40/month ($53/month after SAF + taxes)
• 350 weekday minutes (with a 3-year contract as with the iPhone)
• Same as above

The also offer very similar plans ("Mega Incoming 30/40") for the same prices but with unlimited network calling swapped out for unlimited incoming minutes.

Let's just use the "Mega Time 30" plan as a baseline, and compare it to their basic iPhone 3G plan -- for the ADDITIONAL $34/month ($75 - $41) you get:

• 50 LESS minutes per month
• Network calling taken away
• 75 text messages (wowaweewa!)
• Visual voicemail
• 400 MB of data

Uh-oh. Putting things into perspective suddenly makes a "so-so" offering look plain awful. In my opinion the 50 less minutes per month cancel out the 75 text messages and voicemail, and that leaves us with the SUBTRACTION of network calling (a hugely minute-saving feature) and 400 MB of data for $34/month.

What if we were to subtract the "Unlimited network calling" feature from the "Mega Time 30" plan to see exactly how much the 400 MB of data is costing us? Well, that's hard to do because Rogers' web site is convoluted and doesn't actually want to tell me how much this feature costs. However, since Fido == Rogers and Rogers == Fido, let's take Fido's "Fido-to-Fido" option which gives you unlimited network calling AND text messaging to other Fido customers for $10/month, and assume that the first portion alone would cost about $5/month if Rogers were to offer it. Finally, this leaves us with $29/month for 400 MB of data, or about $1.00 for 14 MB.

Let me repeat that: The entire Rogers iPhone 3G plan essentially boils down to ~$30/month for 400 MB of data. They can spin it any other way, but that's that -- and they know it.

What happens if you go over the 400 MB? That price shoots up to $0.50 for 1 MB, up to 60 MB ($30). After that it's $0.03/MB. Rats. Compare and contrast this to AT&T in the U.S. offering unlimited data for $30 USD/month.

"Moving icebergs" is how I would describe attempting to modernize the Canadian cellular industry. The iPhone 3G plan just inched things along a bit, but everyone's expectations just fell flat on their faces anyway, especially in light of AT&T's benchmark.

Rogers should feel ashamed for single-handedly destroying the best chance Canada had of emerging from the Dark Ages of the cellular industry. This is suit-and-tie highway robbery at its finest.

Just for kicks, let's see how much it would cost me personally to get the same functionality + 400 MB of data with Rogers' iPhone 3G plan as compared to my current plan (which I'm using on an iPhone anyway). My plan with Fido right now:

• 150 daytime minutes
• Unlimited E/W starting at 6 PM
• Unlimited incoming calls
• Unlimited Fido-to-Fido calling + texting
• Call display
• $35/month after S.A.F. + taxes

If I wanted the unlimited network calling, incoming calls, and call display options on the basic iPhone plan, I'd have to shell out an additional ~$15 (estimated network calling + incoming calls options based on Fido's prices) + $15 for call display. That's $30 on top of $60, or $108/month after S.A.F. + taxes. Honestly?

So for me personally, I would essentially be paying an additional $73/month so that I could get a measly 400 MB of data, while losing out 3 hours of "evening" calling. Wow.

I think I'll just stick with my current iPhone and the occasional WiFi connection I find. Thanks, Rogers, for maintaining such an iron grip on GSM service in Canada. I can't wait until the Canadian government kicks you out of bed, and invites a hotter, younger cousin in.

.here, .there, .everywhere, .all, .sorts

Far into the future, when your talking to grand-offspring, you might be able to say, "Back when I was your age sonny, we only had dot coms, dot nets, and dot orgs" and they will not believe you.

The supreme Internet Overlords at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved some big changes for domain names yesterday. Soon there will be a huge influx of new domain name possibilities. You can expect .xxx to top the list, along with other more obvious ones such as .news, .shop, .games, .cam -- there will be all sorts of new domain names. (Personally I'm going to try to get a stranglehold on the sure-to-be popular .spiess domain.)

New domain names will also be allowed to be written in non-English languages. This is great news for developing countries with exploding Internet populations, such as China.

Some spam-curtailing changes will also be coming into effect. The ICANN will make it a little more difficult for spam websites to change their name all the time. 

With these changes, and the upcoming switch to six-number IP addresses, the Internets are seeing some big changes that should really help with congestion.

'Information Card Forum' hopes to end era of usernames and passwords

A consortium of companies -- including Microsoft, Novell, Equifax, Oracle, and PayPal -- launched a nonprofit organization with the aim of creating new standards for identifying online users. The name chosen for this new group is the Information Card Foundation (ICF).

The goal of the ICF is to create a standardized framework that can be used to develop "Internet-based information cards and virtual founders," according to the website Dark Reading. The idea is to move away from usernames and passwords acting as your access method to websites, and instead, relying on a sort of single Internet-ID card that can be securely verified.

The primary reason companies are doing this is probably to cut down on costs associated with fraud, and people abusing their services with multiple accounts.

“The Internet was never really designed for dealing with people proving who they were. As a result, we have been left with a world of too many user names and passwords,” Charles Andres, executive director for the new ICF, was quoted as saying. "Criminals can exploit the weaknesses in here... We’ve got to do something to make this better.”

The foundation is looking to work with existing online-ID initiatives, such as those from the OpenID, Liberty Alliance, and Project Concordia groups.

It seems that the difficulty with getting this endeavor going isn't the technology behind it -- instead, the problem is setting up a standard the everyone can agree on. After that, the next challenging step  would be encouraging buisneses to get on board with the program.

One possible problem with this security initiative is, well, security. For current systems, if you lose a password and username for one site, you only lose access to the one service (if you maintain different ID's for every different website.) However, if a future, potential "virtual wallet" was apprehended by criminal elements, it seems like they would be able to quickly abuse your identification quickly and easily, to take advantage of multiple online services. By the very nature of the virtual wallet -- being on a computer connected to the Internet -- there is no system that could possibly be developed that would be completely, and certainly, secure.

Reader says Firefox 'most administrator-unfriendly program' he's used

A reader of the Redmond Report, a column run by Redmond magazine writers says Firefox is inferior to Internet Explorer when it comes to security. This is what he, David, had to say:

"I don't care how many patches are released for IE, or how few for Firefox. I patch Microsoft products with WSUS, which automatically approves critical and security patches so they install on all the client PCs without admin or user involvement. Even if the PC is sitting at a log-in prompt, IE will be patched automatically. And I have an e-mail waiting for me each morning to notify me of errors or problems.

With Firefox, I'm relying on an update mechanism that cannot be monitored, and requires user intervention to initiate updates. It's the most administrator-unfriendly program I've allowed on my network.

I don't have any unpatched instances of IE on my business LAN. I hope that's true of Firefox, as well, but I have no easy way of knowing. It only takes one unpatched vulnerability, so unless Firefox can assure me that it'll never require even a single security patch, I'm at much greater risk from Firefox than I ever will be from IE. As a user, I'd probably prefer Firefox, but not from the admin standpoint."'

Well, this may be all well and good for a more experienced computer user, but I'd contend for the average and the casual computer user Firefox is overall the wiser choice of the two.

He does have a point about the update mechanism though; why can't Mozilla's browser install updates automatically? Especially for those who don't use their browser every day, this would seem to be common sense, and surely it wouldn't be hard to implement. Hopefully we don't have to wait for Firefox 4 for this sort of thing.

In either case, I'm very happy with the browser and won't be switching back to IE anytime soon. Of course, I'm kind of stubborn (this was the very thing which made me reluctant to switch to Firefox in the first place years ago). Does this change anyone else's mind?

Virtual screening room now open

Google Incorporated was looking for a mutually beneficial relationship, and it found just the right thing with its YouTube-based independent film screening room. This new feature debuted yesterday, giving sometimes struggling filmmakers a prominent home and effectively making them 'partners', traffic-wise.

"Hopefully as they see thousands of people watching their films, it's going to be a very eye-opening experience," said Sara Pollack, YouTube's film and animation manager.

Four new films each week will be highlighted, chosen by a YouTube editorial panel. The four currently chosen are called 'Our Time Is Up' ("When a therapist discovers he has six weeks to live, he adopts a fresh method of treatment: brutal honesty"), 'The Danish Poet' ("Can we trace the chain of events that leads to our birth?"), 'Love and War' ("Probably the world's first animated opera"), and my personal favourite as of yet, 'Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?', which features actor John C. Reilly (The Promotion, "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!", Chicago). The short movie sees him asking the question to strangers on the street; simple yet profound in and of itself:

Submissions are welcomed, and those interested should be happy to know the panel will be working with partners like the Sundance Channel to 'identify prospects.' More than that, support can be given to the filmmakers directly by buying physical or digital copies of the work through the site. Between that and shared ad revenue, YouTube says creators that make consistently popular work (one million views-popular) can make several grand a month. And, past featured filmmakers have landed TV and DVD distribution deals, like Susan Buice and Arin Crumley, who made the full-length project "Four Eyed Monsters." Bless you, Internet.

Yet another annoyance malicious files can cause

Malware gives everybody problems.  Some track your every keystroke to try and gather passwords, bank account numbers, or other important information from you.  Others give you annoying popups all day long.  Even still, there are some that are out to cause serious damage to your computer.  If you think that's bad, there are still other forms of malware that are out to ruin your life.

Don't believe me?  Ask fifty-three year old Michael Fiola of Massachusetts, who was fired and charged with possession of child pornography after IT administrators found certain images of children in his Internet cache in March 2007 after investigating why his wireless Internet usage was four times greater than any of his coworkers.  As word got out, he lost not only his job, but his friends and reputation as well.

Fiola, not knowing much about computers, hired a forensics expert who looked through the laptop in question and convinced the court to drop the case after finding that there were no physical files on his computer that could be used against him in a legitimate child porn case.  While this is great news for him, it won't be quite so easy to regain the trust of his friends and coworkers (assuming he's even offered his job back) and it also makes the state's IT department look like idiots because the laptop wasn't properly configured and there was no working antivirus software to keep the machine free of trojans and the like.

This should be taken under consideration by anyone and it serves as a great reminder to us all of the importance of having properly working malware protection on our computers.  Paid protection from McAfee tends to work well, but many users prefer free alternatives such as AVG for virus protection, Spybot - Search & Destroy for spyware, and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE Personal for anti-adware.

Who wants an Awesome Bar?

Firefox 3 is done as promised as of today, but it seems the less-and-less niche browser cannot handle the demand as of yet, giving a Http/1.1 Service Unavailable error upon attempting to access the Get Firefox page. And don't try to be all smart and whatnot and update from the browser itself, you'll just get an AUS: Connection timed out error. Here's a blog posting from the team put online just now:

"The outpouring of interest and enthusiasm around Firefox 3 has been overwhelming (literally!).  Our servers are currently feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly.  Download day will officially commence once the site goes live.  The 24 hours period will be clocked from that moment.  Thanks for your continued support."

(Update: the site appears fully operational as of 1PM PST.)

So, this won't affect Mozilla Corporation's goal to set the Guiness World Record for most number of software downlods in a day. Good stuff.

Firefox 3 was three years in the making, and we'll see over 15,000 changes from Firefox 2 in this version (see an overview here). The main improvements expected are increased speed and security, not to mention the 'Awesome Bar', which adapts to the user's behaviour to help them find sites more quickly.

Tristan Nitot, founder and president of Mozilla Europe, stated "It's really a completely new version."

Program will help support 'broadband neutrality'

As you may have read on Neoseeker, Internet service providers in US, the UK and Canada have increasingly  been using  bandwidth throttling to decrease network loads. Most of the throttling is aimed at reducing P2P traffic, specifically the use of BitTorrent. So even though you pay $40 or $50 a month for your broadband service, certain ISPs (such as Comcast and Bell Canada) surreptitiously limit the amount of bandwidth that comes your way. 

It looks like Google is working on a free software tool that will help consumers keep tabs on how much they are being affected by this throttling. Although a release date has not been set, Richard Whitt, a Senior Policy Director at Google, confirmed that they are working on the tool in a story published in The Register yesterday.

The primary goal of the tool is it allow people to have better idea of what their ISPs are up to -- because as of now, ISPs have been not appeared all the eager to let their customers know whether they do, or don't, throttle traffic. "We're trying to develop tools, software tools...that allow people to detect what's happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they're not happy with what they're getting -- that they think certain services are being tampered with," Richard Whitt was quoted as saying at recent talk in Santa Clara.

Company making steady progress

Yet another reason to love "The City That Knows How": company Meraki is planning on having free Wi-Fi set up in all of the city by the end of 2008, with a service called Free The Net. Can you believe that? Heck yes. Last month, about 6,000 users were logged on, as of now it's 100,000.

The company is accomplishing this by installing repeaters (electronic devices which repeat a signal without degradation) on rooftops, going about it neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood, with the permission and assistance of the city. Here's a statement about the company released back in January:

After raising an additional $20 million from venture capitalists, Meraki decided it had enough money to set up free Wi-Fi in San Francisco's remaining 47 square miles. Meraki probably will have to give away 10,000 to 15,000 repeaters, estimated Sanjit Biswas, the Mountain View-based company's chief executive.

Hm, I guess venture capitalism can have its benefits. Aside from VCs, municipal branches also support Meraki, so as a result, it's completely free. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this, I keep waiting to hear the scam; what a progressive city.

At the moment they're focusing on affordable housing areas, which is sweet, really. And more than that, in one of these places in particular, the Valencia Garden Complex, they've set up a computer lab where workshops and programs are hosted. Developed back in April, it allows people to utilize resume and academic services.

Honestly, the more I hear about this place the more I want to go. It's odd to know of a city that actually seems to really care about its people, especially the not so well off. More or less (I've moved around a lot), I'm from a small city myself, the province of which is built on that small town, everyone supporting everyone mentality, but even there most people just bitch about how much of their money those on welfare are taking from them. In SF they give them free Internet! Well, I'm oversimplifying the issue, but it is still a valid point I think.

Obviously, it's not a perfect system, bandwidth is shared and all, but I expect the service will only improve over time. There's talk of it being set up in other cities, as well. All things considered, would you like to see the same setup in your city or town?

Columbus does it again

Defying previous attempts, the first commercial Ethernet switch has been sent off in space successfully. Now 400km above Earth onboard the Columbus module research laboratory, the switch will create part of a half duplex 10Mbps local area network, sustained on the International Space Station (ISS). Up until now, a mixture of IT technology decades old was used.

Cisco, D-Link, Avaya, 3Com, NetGear, and Hewlett Packard switches underwent similar conditions before, but were exposed to extremely high levels of radiation. This time HP's ProCurve 2524 switch (which holds a 10 year lifespan) succeeded. In the dev, configuration and qualifications cycles for three years, HP says it was the "most unusual and demanding" project Procurve has endeavoured.

Lack of wi-fi encryption raises security concerns

Everybody wants an iPhone, according to Apple.  It's the cell phone's industry next big thing, so of course consumers will want one!  In fact, even some businesses are getting them for their executives or the executives are buying them themselves.  However, Internet security group Pure Hacking advises otherwise.

In fact, the company's senior security consultant Chris Gatford says that "there are a lot of vulnerabilities" with the increased used of the iPhone on Wi-Fi networks.  Why? 

Because of the lack of data encryption.  This means that anyone who watches your iPhone could watch every packet and determine every single keystroke from passwords to bank account numbers to major corporate secrets.  Gatford's other concern is that the use of iPhones in Wi-Fi hotspots will increase thanks to the falling price of network plans.  For those of us out there that want to make sure we're not being watched, don't use your iPhone or other mobile device for anything but casual surfing or the occasional looking up of directions. 

Packet sniffers will care less about what you post in an online message board or what you're looking for on Mapquest than they will personally identifiable information.  Of course, it's always smart to keep in mind your plan for your web-enabled phone if you have one so you don't go over your limit and get hit with overages.  If you need to do any serious surfing like looking up your bank account's information or reading e-mail concerning your job that needs to be kept private, do it from a properly firewalled computer and make sure there's no spyware, adware, or other malware around.

Company aims to break world record with new browser

The world's most popular open source web browser, Firefox, is all about change.  It changed the way people thought a web browser should work.  It changed the ways in which you can customize it to make it your web browser beyond just adding a script plugin here or a toolbar there.  And now, Mozilla has its eyes et on changing something else:  A Guinness World Record.  That's right, the people behind Firefox want to break the world record for the most number of times a single piece of software has been downloaded within 24 hours and they've got a good campaign set up already.

People love Firefox.  In fact, some people love it so much that they (myself included) have been running Firefox 3 since the beta stages.  Others love it to the extent that they have pledged their support to download Firefox 3 on Download Day.  In fact, here are a few countries and the number of people that have pledged to download the fox on D-Day:

• United States:  185,377
• Canada: 31,551
• United Kingdom:  45,417
• Australia:  18,401
• Brazil:  76,597
• Russia:  29,670

Want to pledge your support for Download Day 2008?  Go to the source and click the "PLEDGE NOW!" button.  As one of Firefox's beta testers, I can guarantee that you won't be disappointed with the new version!

The penguins are keepin' it cool in your data center

For a long while, Linux was only seen on servers and on the computers of hackers or geeks.  As time has gone on, more and more people began to feel beckoned to the light of freedom that open source software offered.  Not just freedom as in the cost of using an application for next to nothing and it still being legal, but freedom in that you choose how you use it and, for the true enthusiasts out there, how you modify it.  While it's still not commanding a formidable share of the desktop market like Windows does, it holds a considerable sway over the server market.  In fact, it's the system of choice for 48% of all servers which are currently running an active website as opposed to Microsoft's Windows Server being used for only 35%.

Now there's yet another reason for server administrators to choose Linux:  It's greener than Windows Server 2008!  With the ever-increasing price of oil and energy, some companies are looking to cut back on expenses wherever possible.  For those that use Windows-based servers, switching to Linux could be a great way to manage energy costs, as it uses up to 12% less energy than its proprietary rival.  However, the tests run by Network World were under various distributions and hardware configurations, so Windows users might not experience as big of a decrease in power consumption when using Linux as the tests run may lead you to believe.

It's hard to decide which distribution of Linux to use for some people, especially when there are currently 220 maintained distributions in various languages on the Internet ready for people to download, install, and use.  In this specific test however, two commercial versions of Linux were used:  Red Hat Enterprise and SUSE Enterprise Linux.  For Windows, they chose the Enterprise edition for Windows Server 2008.

The main key to success?  Enabling a CPU throttle-back mechanism to reduce the amount of energy a server uses.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Wrong.  Only two of the test servers chosen for this trial came ready-made for the feature to be used.Changing your power settings will also help unless you're a hardcore gamer or someone that wants their computer's best performance all the time.

I've personally been using Debian GNU/Linux on my laptop for almost a year now, but I could tell a noticeable difference in my computer's battery life almost right away after switching from Windows Vista.  While this is by no means a definitive statement that will help Tux overcome the giant that is Windows as far as the desktop market is concerned, it's still something worth thinking about.

Survey polls 13,000

PopCap Games, developer of such titles as Peggle (pictured above) and Bejeweled, recently commisioned a survey on the usership of casual games (primarily web-based), and found about 1 in every 5 suffer from some sort of disability. This incorporates all types of disabilities, which range from depression to multiple sclerosis.

The UN states as many as 650 million people worldwide live with a disability, or 10% of the world population, and 15% for the United States, meaning the statistics are in line with survey results. Interesting stuff.

The light side of the facts is these kind of games provide great relief for those in such a situation, positively affecting stress, mood, psychological tension, anger, depression, fatigue, you name it. 58 year-old Gary Robinson, who lives with severe physical disabilities, noted with the survey how it greatly benefits him:

"Games like Bejeweled and Peggle, with simple controls that are also mentally challenging and engaging are ideal for me, because my mind moves as quickly as the next guy's but I type with a mouth-stick. In some ways, games like these are the greatest thing that's appeared on the computer scene for people like me."

Animal cruelty on the job

A man by the name of Jesus Villalovos, a Comcast (cable company and ISP) employee, was arrested very recently for subjecting a kitten to animal cruelty while on the job in West Valley, Utah. In conjunction with two other men, they spray-painted a kitten, a three month-old grey tabby, and began kicking it nearly to death.

When animal control officers got to it, there were worries of internal injuries and severe shock. Villalovos was arrested on charges of animal cruelty and obstruction of justice (for lying about the incident). The two other men were brought up on Class B misdemeanors.

The kitten will in fact be fine, and witness Mike Merrill says if noone claims it within three days, he will adopt it, where you can bet it'll have a good home.

Have to wonder why these people would do this. I mean, I know people often kill people because that's the life they live in, if they don't kill, they get killed, I suppose. But a kitten? Who's going to give these guys accolades for that? Certainly not Comcast, anyway.

Here's the video of the coverage:

Official ISP site gets hacked

Wednesday evening hackers infiltrated popular American ISP Comcast's official website, effectively preventing 14.1 million subscribers from being able to access their emails, news or tech support.

Site content was replaced by the following message: "KRYOGENICS Defiant and EBK RoXed Comcast. sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven."

According to Broadband Reports, they got into the site's domain registrar account at hosting provider Network Solutions, altered Comcast.net's DNS servers, then redirecting visitors to foreign IP addresses. All was well late the next morning, though some users still had trouble with their accounts and/or the website. It's said no private information was stolen, and Comcast is working with authorities on the matter.

Not to blow this out of proportion, but why hack Comcast out of all sites? Well, if you know much about net neutrality, it's a pretty easy guess. For one, Comcast is the second largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the U.S. Second, they're notorious among the general population for being against net neutrality, which, summarized, is basically the Internet economy ruled by a more socialist system as opposed to a capitalist one. The corporation was proven last year to utilize "traffic shaping" measures to hinder or altogether cease intended use of filesharing/torrent programs, affecting both uploads and downloads.

Another heavily debated aspect of net neutrality is the "charging content sites a premium for more reliable delivery of their content," which some organizations, companies and corporations believe in; this is just fancy language for saying it's open season as far as some ISPs are concerned, where people can pay each other off for optimal site performance (speeds, services, etc). Overall, this is detrimental to the customer, and harmful to the concept of the Internet as a free and open information and communications tool, as we would see, presumably, a rise in prominence and traffic of corporate websites, and a decline in everything else (blogs, personal websites, independent media, etc).

While companies like Verizon oppose net neutrality, there are some out there who openly support it, such as Free Press' policy director Ben Scott:

"We applaud Chairman Conyers and Representative Lofgren for their leadership and commitment to the public interest on this critical issue. The Internet is the greatest engine of free speech and commerce since the printing press. The future of the Internet as we know it depends on maintaining the freedom and openness online that we have always enjoyed. Congress must step in to defend the open Internet."

Still, I have to wonder why the hackers didn't leave some sort of message detailing their motive; 14.1 million subscribers is a big audience. Maybe it'd go a little something like this:

DS console now able to access NTT's wireless hotspot network

Nintendo will bring additional wireless services unrelated to gaming to its popular DS console.  The Mario Factory has partnered with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) to make the Japanese telecommunications giant's upcoming "Wi-Fine" wireless hotspot network compatible with the DS console for Internet access and information services.  The PlayStation Portable is already able to connect to Wi-Fine hotspots, and it even allows for online multiplayer in titles like the insanely popular Monster Hunter Second G.

Wi-Fine rolled out on its trial run earlier this year with around 900 access points, and the "beta period" is set to end by December 28th.  Downloads via Wi-Fine are currently free until June 30, after which a fee (either per-connection or monthly) will be introduced.  Some of the first clients to tap into NTT's hotspot network include fast food joints like McDonald's and KFC Japan.  Both will make information on its sales campaigns and products available for wireless download at its restaurants based in Tokyo.

Outside of fast food, Wi-Fine sees implementation at train stations along the Tsukuba Express line, which includes "electric town" Akihabara as a destination.  Information on various news like the weather, as well local guides for spots like restaurants will be made available for wireless perusal via devices like laptops (even the Asus Eee PC), PDAs, mobile phones, and now the DS and PSP.  Wi-Fine access extends into the trains themselves, so Wi-Fi connectivity is also possible during trips.

WMF violating US Communications Deceny Act

Wikileaks, a site dedicated to 'developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis,' revealed the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) Board (the machine behind Wikipedia, and its stem projects) censors Wikinews (another of its operations). To clarify, Wikileaks is completely separate from the Wikimedia Foundation and its affiliate websites. While some might say 'oh well' or 'what do you expect,' it's a little different here: the WMF, legally speaking, is supposed to be editorially independent from Wikinews. Having violated laws, not only is the public in danger, but the foundation itself.

The US Communcations Decency Action (CDA) section 230 gives providers of Internet services immunity from legal action regarding user-generated content, provided they do not excercise "pre-publication control." Basically, let the community run free, and you won't get in trouble. Edit the content before it is published and/or pick and choose what is published, then you're going to have trouble.

The articles deleted in this case were the report into the Barbara Bauer vs. Wikimedia Foundation lawsuit, and an investigation into child and other pornography on Wikipedia (Wikimedia counsel Michael Godwin said it might be defamatory).

The first involved a publisher (Bauer), of 'Barbara Bauer Literacy Agency', an agency claiming it is "specializing in the development and marketing of new and unpublished authors," and that it had "placed books with a number of well-known commercial publishers", though no details or proof were given. This proved an associated conflict, so edits pertaining to Bauer (many of which were considered libel against her reputation as a publisher) were deleted, and following the incurred legal process, so was the article and talk page. The article has been under review and deleted in previous years, as well.

The second is a little more straightforward and involves an image of a music album cover, which features a partially nude girl, appearing about the age of ten. Though votes swayed the opposite way, the administrator stated it was deleted for the following reason:

"..outside pressure should never influence us, not to do what the pressure group want, nor to do the opposite just to spite them. We should base our decisions on Wikipedia's policies and values. Those policies and values say that we should only use non-free content under stringent conditions. This image didn't and doesn't meet those conditions and should be deleted. If it does meet them in the future it should be undeleted."

The other major part of the investigation involved Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Erik Möller 'endorsing' pornography featuring minors. According to a Google cache, an offending image depictive as such was posted to his website, though has since been deleted. In 2001 he made the following statement:

"If there was any doubt, yes, I am defending that children can have sex with each other. Not only adolescents, but also children of earlier ages -- whenever they want to," stated Möller, although denies that he supports pedophilia saying "I have pondered putting a disclaimer into the article ("I am not a pedophile. I am a 22-y-o heterosexual white male") but I see no reason to give this concession to the child sex hysteria."

In any case, deleting the articles prior to publication violates the agreed editorial independence between the WMF and Wikinews, and as such could remove all of the foundation's CDA section 230 immunity, although possibly only for Wikinews, where the issue occurred.

Broadcasting corp looks to increase web presence

CBS is purchasing internet company CNet for $1.8 billion, or $11.50 per share, the corporation said today. CNet owns many popular internet sites, including Download.com, as well as several gaming resources (Gamespot, GameFAQs, Metacritic), and technology resources (TechRepublic, CNet.com).

CBS' motivation for the deal is probably obvious: to increase its online prescence. The corporation plans to integrate its broadcast networks with CNet's resources. In a conference call with reporters, CBS' CEO Leslie Moonves said this opportunity with such a large audience was a "large part" of the reason for the acquisition:

"Our idea is to have our content wherever, whenever you can get it, and adding CNet just makes that happen faster."

For CBS, this also looks like an opportunity to shift their programming to the online medium somewhat, as its chief of interactive business Quincy Smith has been pursuing this avenue for some time now, in light of the change in demand.

CBS feels the price is fair too, stating "We feel like we got a terrific value with this company."

Looks like good news for CNet as well, as the company was in the middle of some rough legal battles with one of its largest shareholders.

This is just one of a few major deals the corporation has inked this year, two others included partnerships with Eqal (responsible for "lonelygirl15" and "KateModern") for programming in multiple formats, and with AOL Time Warner, providing content from 140 of their radio stations to its music service.

CBS is owned in turn by Summer Redstone and National Amusements, the latter of which operates over 1500 movie theaters worldwide, Viacom (MTV Networks, BET, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks), and Midway Games.

Sort of like virtual spray painting and tagging

The other day, while well surfing the World Wide Web, I happened across a stimulating website called Paint That **** Gold.

The basic premise of the website is this: you write a url in this little box, then it takes a screen capture of the website, and then it gives you some tools to get to work. You can spray the URL image with paint, color it with markers, use stencils and stuff like that -- anything to help you get that pent up hostile artistic aggresion out. The website is fairly fun, in a let's-waste-time-on-the-Internet kind of way.

True to the site's witty name, the only colors you have at your disposal are black and gold. However, I did not let this stop me when I created this visual masterpiece, playing on an age-old, classic graffiti-inspired statement. I call this work of art "Barf":

I don't think it is possible to do anything better than that work of art, but be my guest -- your welcome to try.

The website was made to promote a hip-hoppery group named Atmosphere. From the site, you can listen to their music, check out the tour dates, write them hate mail, and do similar stuff like that.

The man sticks it to the man

Microsoft: We'll give ya USD 33 per share (47.5 billion).

Yahoo!: Nawww.

Microsoft: To heck with this, then.

After trying to acquire Internet company Yahoo! before (at 31 per share), Microsoft has thrown in the towel after their recent second offer. Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang feels his company is worth USD 38 per share, not the 33 offered by Microsoft.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer feels it's now best for his company to recede, stating the following in a letter to Yang following the rejection:

"We believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal."

Following the first proposal, Microsoft threatened a proxy fight while Yahoo! seeked interest from other companies to prevent a possible takeover. Seems these are just two companies that can't get along; MicroHoo just wasn't meant to be.

This week, Yahoo's stock closed at 28.67 per share. Ouch.

In today's irreverent, musical news...

You probably have all seen some wacky renditions of people from the Internet playing the Super Mario Brothers theme song with odd instruments, such as wooden spoons. But...have you ever seen anybody play that legendary musical tune... with a remote controlled car?

Well that's just what some wacky Chinese guys did, in an underground parking garage:

Usually this would not be news worthy, but I have a weakness for the Super Mario Bros. theme played using remote controlled vehicles.