Pc News

[Rasputin]

Alleged Software, Movie Pirate Turns Himself In

A 31-year-old Pennsylvania man who allegedly ran a home-based online business selling pirated copies of software, music, and movies was arrested today following an undercover operation by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) trade groups.

Robert Uss, of Reinholds, Lancaster County, turned himself over to police one week after East Cocalico Township police obtained a search warrant for his parents' home and recovered thousands of CDs and DVDs of illegally copied software, games, movies, and music, said Detective Kerry Sweigart.

The raid on the house came after MPAA and BSA investigators allegedly purchased pirated materials from the suspect over the past few months, between last November and this month. The investigators then contacted local police about the purchases, Sweigart said.

"With that information, we got a search warrant," and recovered about 10,000 pirated discs, he added.

Charges
Uss was charged, under Pennsylvania laws, with trademark counterfeiting and copying recorded devices, Sweigart said. Uss was arraigned before District Justice Nancy Hamill and taken to Lancaster County Prison where he is being held in lieu of $10,000 bail.

Uss faces up to seven years in prison and up to $15,000 in fines if convicted on the charges.

Elizabeth Kaltman, communications director at the Encino, California-based MPAA, said Uss first became known to MPAA investigators in late 2005, when he failed to appear in court regarding allegations of pirated movies. A default judgment of $14,000 was entered against Uss in that case, which was filed by movie company 20th Century Fox Film, she said.

"My understanding is that he's been running this operation for some time," Kaltman said. "Our goal is to stop piracy at its source" to protect MPAA members in the entertainment industry; she added that such operations are "a fairly significant source of piracy."

Who Was Affected
Jenny Blank, director of enforcement at the Washington-based BSA, said the software that Uss allegedly copied and sold was originally produced by a wide range of vendors, including Adobe Systems, Apple, Autodesk, McAfee, Microsoft, and Symantec. No estimated value of the pirated software has been released, she said.

Uss operated from his basement using a single computer and two disk duplicators, according to the two trade groups.

"You don't have to have a warehouse to hurt the industry," Blank said. While police recovered some 10,000 discs from the Uss home during the raid, "God knows how many he sold to people," she said.

[Rasputin]

Thousands of PCs Infected by Nasty Trojan Horse

Malicious Trojan horse software claiming to provide information on topics like the deadly storms that have battered Europe this week has infected thousands of computers over the past 24 hours, security vendor Sophos warned today.

The e-mail tries to entice victims into clicking on the malicious attachments by offering reports on breaking-news topics such as "230 dead as storm batters Europe," or "U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has kicked German Chancellor," said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with Sophos.

The attachments have names such as "Full Story.exe" or "Full Video.exe." Once they are launched, these files install software that then waits to receive further instructions over the Internet, Cluley said. Unlike a worm, this Trojan software does not immediately seek out other targets to infect once it has been installed.

"You think you're reading a news report or you're watching a movie," he said. "It's the age-old technique that we've seen since the mid-1990s: Here's something you want to look at. Look here!"

Cluley estimates that the Trojan accounted for about one of every 200 e-mail messages being sent on the Internet today.

Topical and Effective
These messages appear to have been particularly effective because they offer information on a topic that is of intense public interest in Europe right now. Over the past few days storms in northern Europe have caused widespread damage and killed close to 40 people.

Symantec, one of the biggest PC security firms, says it has seen this particular Trojan variant in circulation since Wednesday, and has counted "thousands" of infections since then. "It's not a small threat, but it isn't an epidemic either," said Dave Cole, a director with Symantec Security Response.

This latest Trojan--rated as a "medium" threat by Symantec--is no more widespread than other similar outbreaks over the past year, but it has raised eyebrows by coming on so quickly, security experts said.

Some customers were finding that the Trojan was accounting for as much as 10 percent of all their incoming e-mail yesterday, said Adam O'Donnell, a senior research scientist at Cloudmark, a messaging security firm. "It's not as bad as some other ones," he said. "It just sped up so quickly, it caught some people by surprise."

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Accused of Antitrust Violation

Lawyers suing Microsoft on behalf of Iowa consumers claim to have evidence that the company is withholding key application programming interfaces (APIs) from competing software companies, a violation of its 2002 settlement of its antitrust case with the U.S. Department of Justice.

That evidence, according to testimony on Jan 10 (see page 7654 of the transcript), includes an expert review of Windows XP source code provided to the plaintiffs' attorneys before the Comes vs. Microsoft trial began in December.

"We intend to present this evidence to the jury; we're just not sure when," said Elizabeth Kniffen, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.

Anticompetitive Practices
The plaintiffs allege Microsoft's anticompetitive practices resulted in the company overcharging Iowan consumers. They are seeking as much as $350 million in damages.

The presiding judge in the case on Tuesday granted the plaintiffs' attorneys and expert witnesses the right to inform the DOJ about the evidence.

Microsoft Said To Refuse Access
APIs allow independent software companies to create applications that run on Microsoft's platforms, such as Windows. The 2002 settlement of the federal antitrust case required Microsoft to share its APIs with third-party companies and to appoint a panel of three people with full access to Microsoft's systems, records and source code for five years to ensure compliance.

But as recently as December, security companies such as Symantec were complaining that Microsoft was refusing to grant them access to a kernel protection technology in the 64-bit version of Windows Vista called PatchGuard. Microsoft argued that giving away access to PatchGuard would compromise Vista's security, but it eventually agreed to create new APIs for Vista to let security vendors get around PatchGuard.

A Microsoft spokesman disputed the plaintiffs' claim.

"Microsoft is in full compliance with the 2002 final judgment in the government case and has documented everything it is required to document," he said. "All our work in this area has been exhaustively reviewed by the Department of Justice and the technical committee established under the final judgments, and the DOJ and technical committee regularly report on our compliance efforts to the court."

The review of Windows XP source code was done by Andrew Schulman, an author of Windows programming books and a software litigation expert.

Documents Produced in Prior Cases
What should emerge sooner than the alleged proof, however, are more than 3,000 documents admitted as trial exhibits that the judge presiding over Comes v. Microsoft agreed to allow be posted on the Web by Friday.

Exhibits already available at the site, which was put up by the plaintiffs suing Microsoft, have been dramatic. They include the transcript of a 1996 speech by a then-Microsoft tech evangelist who referred to independent software developers writing for Windows and the company's other software platforms as "pawns" and compared wooing them to persuading someone to have a one-night stand. The tech evangelist has since apologized.

There is also a copy of the 2004 e-mail written by then-Windows development chief James Allchin to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates, complaining that Microsoft had "lost sight" of customers' needs and that he would buy a Mac if he wasn't working for Microsoft.

A Microsoft spokesman said it was unlikely the new documents would be as striking as the already-available exhibits.

"Most if not all of those documents have been produced in prior cases," he said.

[Rasputin]

Critics Blast Music DRM Legislation

Consumer rights groups have voiced opposition to legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress last week that would require Internet broadcasters to deploy DRM (digital rights management) technology to prevent listeners from making unauthorized copies of music files.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and three other senators introduced the Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (Perform) Act Jan. 11 after the same piece of legislation failed to pass through Congress in 2006. The Perform Act would require all satellite, cable and Internet broadcasters to deploy "reasonably available" copy-protection technology and to prevent listeners from using recording devices to copy specific songs or artists.

Users Do More Then Just Listen
The bill would not prevent listeners from recording at specific times, such as a news show at 9 a.m., but it would require broadcasters to use copy-protection technology that would prevent listeners from recording all the songs by one artist played on a broadcast, Feinstein said in a news release.

"New radio services are allowing users to do more than simply listen to music," Feinstein said in a statement. "What was once a passive listening experience has turned into a forum where users can record, manipulate, collect and create personalized music libraries. As the modes of distribution change and the technologies change, so must our laws change.a??

But the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge oppose the legislation. The bill would be a "backdoor assault on your right to record off the radio," the EFF said. The Perform Act would prohibit digital and satellite radio services from offering TiVO-like recording options, the EFF said.

Bill Sets 'A Bad Precedent'
The Perform Act would prohibit streaming music formats that don't use DRM, such as the MP3 format used on several Internet radio services, including Apple's iTunes streaming radio stations, said Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property lawyer at EFF. The bill sets a "bad precedent for our copyright laws," von Lohmann wrote on the EFF blog. "Over the course of a century, our copyright laws have responded to changing technology not with government technology mandates, but rather by letting new business models evolve ..."

Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, said she agrees with parts of the bill that streamline music licensing fees. But the DRM provisions place limits on consumers, she said.

a??This bill looks to the past rather than to the future by limiting the ability of consumers to use material to which they have subscribed and by limiting future innovations in electronics," Sohn wrote on the Public Knowledge Web site. "It confuses a radio service, in which a consumer can only record what is currently being played, with a download service, in which consumers pick the material to download.

But Feinstein argued that musicians and songwriters need to get paid for the music they produce, instead of having consumers record it for free. a??I believe this legislation is a good step forward in addressing a real problem that is occurring in the music industry, and I encourage discussion to ensure that this law will fully serve the needs of our emerging technologies," she said in her statement.

[Rasputin]

Alleged Software, Movie Pirate Turns Himself In

A 31-year-old Pennsylvania man who allegedly ran a home-based online business selling pirated copies of software, music, and movies was arrested today following an undercover operation by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) trade groups.

Robert Uss, of Reinholds, Lancaster County, turned himself over to police one week after East Cocalico Township police obtained a search warrant for his parents' home and recovered thousands of CDs and DVDs of illegally copied software, games, movies, and music, said Detective Kerry Sweigart.

The raid on the house came after MPAA and BSA investigators allegedly purchased pirated materials from the suspect over the past few months, between last November and this month. The investigators then contacted local police about the purchases, Sweigart said.

"With that information, we got a search warrant," and recovered about 10,000 pirated discs, he added.

Charges
Uss was charged, under Pennsylvania laws, with trademark counterfeiting and copying recorded devices, Sweigart said. Uss was arraigned before District Justice Nancy Hamill and taken to Lancaster County Prison where he is being held in lieu of $10,000 bail.

Uss faces up to seven years in prison and up to $15,000 in fines if convicted on the charges.

Elizabeth Kaltman, communications director at the Encino, California-based MPAA, said Uss first became known to MPAA investigators in late 2005, when he failed to appear in court regarding allegations of pirated movies. A default judgment of $14,000 was entered against Uss in that case, which was filed by movie company 20th Century Fox Film, she said.

"My understanding is that he's been running this operation for some time," Kaltman said. "Our goal is to stop piracy at its source" to protect MPAA members in the entertainment industry; she added that such operations are "a fairly significant source of piracy."

Who Was Affected
Jenny Blank, director of enforcement at the Washington-based BSA, said the software that Uss allegedly copied and sold was originally produced by a wide range of vendors, including Adobe Systems, Apple, Autodesk, McAfee, Microsoft, and Symantec. No estimated value of the pirated software has been released, she said.

Uss operated from his basement using a single computer and two disk duplicators, according to the two trade groups.

"You don't have to have a warehouse to hurt the industry," Blank said. While police recovered some 10,000 discs from the Uss home during the raid, "God knows how many he sold to people," she said.

[Rasputin]

AT&T to Replace Cingular Brand Monday

AT&T will launch a new advertising campaign to replace the Cingular brand with its own, the company announced Friday. The campaign starts on Monday and will initially feature a transitional graphic that includes elements of both the AT&T and Cingular logos.

Buying it Back
As a result of a series of mergers and acquisitions, the AT&T brand on a wireless service was recently killed off, only to now be revived.

AT&T Wireless was once an independent company that had been spun off from AT&T. Cingular bought the wireless operator and eliminated the AT&T Wireless brand. Then SBC, one of the owners of Cingular, bought AT&T, adopting the AT&T brand for its landline services. More recently, AT&T bought BellSouth, the other owner of Cingular, spurring the switch back to the AT&T brand for the wireless service.

Now that AT&T is the parent company of several telecommunications brands, it is consolidating the branding under the AT&T name as a way of cutting costs. AT&T estimates that 20 percent of the operating expenses it expects to save though the merger with BellSouth will come from consolidating advertising.

Class Action Lawsuit
Although well-known, the AT&T brand has been tarnished a bit since Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless. A class action lawsuit claims that Cingular intentionally allowed the AT&T Wireless network to degrade as a way to encourage customers to switch to the Cingular network. Cingular then charged customers early termination fees to cancel their AT&T Wireless accounts, as well as other fees for setting up new contracts with Cingular, the suit alleges.

Throughout this year, the 2,000 Cingular stores and kiosks will get new AT&T signs. The company will use the co-branded graphic until customers become aware that Cingular is now AT&T. AT&T did not say how long that might take.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Offers Vista Preview to Fight Piracy

Want to try Vista before you buy it? Microsoft now has a free online "test drive" of its Windows Vista operating system in its latest effort to fight software piracy and counterfeiting.

Users can access the preview of Vista on a Windows test drive site, said Cori Hartje, director of the company's Genuine Software Initiative (GSI). The test drive sets up a virtual environment that shows users what running Vista is like via a legitimate way of testing the software rather than going out and buying a counterfeit copy or pirating a genuine version, she said.

Though users won't be downloading all of Vista by going to the site, some software will be installed locally on their machines because the site needs to communicate with users that way, Hartje said. The test drive also will assess a user's hardware and evaluate what upgrades need to be made to run the OS.

In addition, Microsoft has offered customers a free preview of Office 2007.

Piracy Concerns
Hartje also discussed progress in the GSI program, an effort that Microsoft launched in July 2005 to prevent pirated and counterfeited versions of its software from being sold to users, with components that include education, engineering, and enforcement.

It was through the engineering part of GSI that Microsoft launched its controversial Windows Genuine Advantage program, which evolved into a built-in Software Protection Platform in Windows Vista. The program will put a user's version of Vista into limited functionality mode--allowing them only to surf the Web for an hour before rebooting--if they don't activate the product with a valid product activation key 30 days after installing Vista on a machine.

Though some have criticized Microsoft's antipiracy efforts as intrusive, Hartje defended the company's efforts to make sure customers purchase legitimate copies of Windows by citing a Yankee Group report made public this week that shows using counterfeit software actually hurts companies.

That report--which was commissioned by Microsoft--says one company in Queens, New York, purchased counterfeit copies of Office at a discount, but then found the software cost them more than it was worth because of frequent crashes and interoperability issues that delayed shipping to some of the firm's customers, Hartje said.

Counterfeit Software
Hartje acknowledged that some people who buy counterfeit Microsoft software are purchasing "high-quality" copies, and only later do they realize they have been duped. She showed off two copies of Windows XP that looked nearly identical, though one was counterfeit and one was legitimate.

Customers can report these cases on Microsoft's antipiracy Web site, and so far there have been 56,000 reports, Hartje said. For some customers who report they were deceived by clever packaging, Microsoft is offering a free, genuine version of the software they purchased. Hartje did not have statistics on how many such freebies have been distributed, however.

[Rasputin]

Grab Bag of Reader Gripes

If my Net Watchdog inbox is any indication, gripes about Web sites and Internet services are up in 2007. I've been fielding a flurry of angry e-mails complaining about everything from questionable Web sites to Web services like Yahoo Mail that are causing headaches for some users. This month, I'll address two of the more interesting reader complaints.

Mystery Error
One comes from Clifford Tong, of Lafayette, California, who says he has been locked out of his Yahoo Mail Plus account for months. He reports that every time he tries to access his e-mail account, he gets a cryptic 'Error Code 1' pop-up message. The problem has been a major headache, he says.

He claims his premium Yahoo Mail Plus account, for which he pays about $20 year, has been out of service since late November 2006. Since then, he has tried to access his e-mail account from numerous PCs, but each time he has been unable to access his messages. He is able to sign in to his account, but when he attempts to access his messages, his Yahoo inbox generates the 'Error Code 1' message.

Tong uses the Yahoo Mail account as a universal inbox to which he forwards several other e-mail accounts. A professional consultant, he also uses the Yahoo Mail account for his business and gives the address out to his clients. "I was dead in the water," he says. "I had no way of knowing what personal or business e-mail I was missing."

Tong is still paying for the account, and Yahoo has not offered him any sort of reimbursement, he says. He claims that he has spent 20 hours dealing with the problem by redirecting e-mail away from his Yahoo Mail account and spending more time than he'd care to talking to Yahoo Mail tech support on the phone.

Tong isn't alone. I poked around on Yahoo's Help Forum and used Yahoo search and found no shortage of people impacted by 'Error Code 1' and scratching their heads wondering why they were having problems accessing their e-mail accounts.

I called Yahoo's tech support line on the behalf of Tong and asked a tech support rep how often she fields calls regarding that error message. She said gets a handful of calls a day. At that rate, the problem is likely impacting only a tiny fraction of Yahoo Mail users, given that Yahoo manages 248 million Web-based e-mail accounts worldwide, according to comScore Networks.

The tech support agent I spoke with said she believed that 'Error Code 1' occurs when multiple people try to access their individual Yahoo Mail accounts hosted on the same server at the same time. She said that typically all people have to do is wait a few minutes and try again. Tong's problems seem much more severe, but she was unable to say what else could be causing them.

Yahoo spokesperson Karen Mahon offered little additional information. She told me that 'Error Code 1' indicates a "temporary access error" and said that the root of the problem could have to do with "different issues depending on [your] specific computer system." I was still confused, but Mahon would not elaborate. She also said she could not comment on why Yahoo had not offered Tong a refund, saying it would violate the company's privacy policy to discuss his particular e-mail account.

Mahon suggested that Tong's problems were an isolated incident and added that Yahoo has not seen an "unusual spike in inquiries to our customer care department."

Mahon's lack of answers leaves me wondering whether 'Error Code 1' and the notoriously secretive Air Force flight test center Area 51 in Nevada might be linked. The day that I contacted Yahoo media representatives about Tong's problems, they were resolved within 5 hours. Coincidence? I don't think so.

[Rasputin]

Two Major Linux Groups Merge to Fight Microsoft

The two main evangelizers of the Linux operating system, Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG), are merging to form the Linux Foundation.

The two industry consortiums announced today that they're in the final stages of combining their respective operations, according to Jim Zemlin, who will head the Linux Foundation. He was the FSG's executive director.

With Linux now an established operating system presence for embedded, desktop, and server systems, the primary evangelizing mission that the OSDL and FSG embarked on in 2000 has come to an end, Zemlin says. The focus for the foundation going forward is on what the organization can do to help the Linux community more effectively compete with its primary operating system rival Microsoft.

A Single Standard
The combination of the two Linux consortiums was "inevitable," says Michael Goulde, senior analyst with Forrester Research. "The challenge Linux faces is the same one Unix faced and failed--how to become a single standard." If Linux is really to be a long-term product for customers, the open-source operating system needs to allow application developers to "develop once for Linux so their software can run on any distribution," he adds. At present, Linux developers often are forced to tweak their applications so they can run on six to seven different distributions.

Interoperability is a key area to work on, as is backward compatibility between newer and older Linux releases, Zemlin says. At the same time, the foundation will look to expand the legal protection it offers developers and continue to provide a "safe haven" for Linux kernel developers, including the creator of the Linux operating system, Linus Torvalds, he adds.

Within the open-source community, the establishment of foundations to act as focal points for working on particular areas of technologies is an ongoing trend, according to Zemlin. The intention is that the Linux Foundation will become the go-to place for Linux development in much the way that the Eclipse Foundation is already the center of tools development, the Apache Software Foundation is the hub of Web server and middleware work, and the Mozilla Foundation is the heart of browser and Web interface creation, he says.

Merger Background
The OSDL and FSG always worked closely together and had discussed merging on several occasions, Zemlin says. However, the decision to merge was unrelated to the recent OSDL downsizing, he adds. In early December, the OSDL announced plans to narrow its focus after laying off just under a third of its staff and after the resignation of CEO Stuart Cohen.

There was a fair amount of overlap in membership between the OSDL and the FSG, Zemlin says. The Linux Foundation, staffed by 45 full-time employees and contractors, will begin life with some 70 members including software vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Oracle, and Red Hat, as well as universities and end users. Zemlin is keen for the foundation to attract new members, particularly among end users, government agencies, and individual developers.

The foundation's Web site provides an introduction to the new organization and its goals, as well as links to the technical work the OSDL and the FSG were engaged in and that the Linux Foundation has pledged to continue.

[Rasputin]

Sun's McNealy: Intel Deal Offers Options

An alliance with Intel announced this week gives Sun Microsystems customers a wide range of options for running the Solaris operating system, Sun founder and Chairman Scott McNealy said Tuesday.

McNealy, speaking at a Sun conference for U.S. government customers, said the Intel partnership gives the open-source Solaris a platform on the two major x86-based processor vendors, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), as well as Sun hardware. He called the Intel agreement, announced Monday, a major step toward wider adoption of Solaris in government agencies and large businesses.

Sun will not push Intel over AMD or vice versa, he said in a press conference following his speech. "Some people are Ford folks, and some people are Chevy folks," he said. "We're not going to make them choose."

Sun launched a line of servers using AMD chips in late 2003, but Sun expects AMD and Intel to "leapfrog each other" with improvements in their processors and price advantages, added Bill Vass, president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems Federal, Sun's government-focused business.

Sun's goal is to provide government and other customers with a complete package of software that runs on multiple architectures, Vass told the conference attendees. Sun's message to customers will be, use the right architecture for the right job, he said.

Sun, by releasing Solaris and other software under open-source licenses and by embracing open standards, wants government customers to see how they can avoid vendor lock-in, McNealy said.

New Sun Idea: Project Blackbox
McNealy also discussed Sun's Project Blackbox, a data center fit into a waterproof shipping container, started as a way to help customers migrate to new hardware and software, as well as back up existing data. The 20-foot- or 40-foot-long (6.1 to 12.2 meter) shipping containers, scheduled to be available in mid-2007, will be able to hold Sun Fire T1000 containing 2,000 cores, plus 1.5 petabytes of disk storage and 2 petabytes of tape storage, according to Sun.

Customers can park the Blackboxes in their parking lots and use them to hold data as they migrate applications, but customers are seeing broader uses for the self-contained data centers, McNealy said. The Blackboxes could be used in remote areas with limited indoor space, such as war or disaster zones, and many customers are looking at ways to conserve indoor space by places the Blackboxes outdoors permanently, Vass said.

After Sun pitched the Blackbox as a way to migrate applications, many customers asked, "Why don't I just leave it in the parking lot?" Vass said.

[Rasputin]

OpenOffice, Office 2007 Get New Tools

Rivals Microsoft and OpenOffice.org both released toolkits today that support building applications for their competing document file formats and productivity suites.

OpenOffice.org's toolkit allows developers to add the ability to save documents in Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) to a variety of applications.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's kits help companies build applications for its Office 2007 productivity suite, which is based on Open XML, ODF's rival file format. Office 2007 is available to business customers and will be in wide consumer release on January 30.

The OpenOffice.org ODF Toolkit Project has published an initial version of its toolkit online and is inviting members of the community to add to its development, says Louis Suarez-Potts, community manager for OpenOffice.org.

Why It's Needed
Previously, developers would have had to add "a good piece of OpenOffice.org" code to an application to give it the ability to save documents in ODF, Suarez-Potts says. The creation of the ODF Toolkit makes this easier, he says.

For example, "if someone has a mail application, they can take the tools we're making available and make it so mail messages can be saved as ODF," Suarez-Potts says.

However, e-mail is just one of many applications for which the toolkit can create the option to save files as ODF, he says. Because ODF is "a flexible file format," any application for which someone creates content can include the option to save files in this way, Suarez-Potts says.

More information about the toolkit can be found on the ODF Toolkit site at OpenOffice.org and on this Sun Microsystems blog.

Microsoft Toolkit Details
Microsoft's toolkits for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and the Microsoft Office Project 2007 provide technical guidance and sample code so that developers can build what Microsoft is calling Office Business Applications.

The company hopes these applications will allow employees to access information from back-end systems through the new Office user interface, which it has named Microsoft Office Fluent. Microsoft today announced the name of the Office 2007 UI for the first time and said it will license Fluent royalty-free so that developers can build new applications that look like those in the suite.

In addition to the toolkits, Microsoft announced that it will add a new portal on Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) to focus on development around Groove, a peer-to-peer application it acquired when it bought Groove Networks.

P-to-P has become a strategic part of Microsoft's collaboration software strategy, and the company has even made Ray Ozzie, Groove's founder and brainchild, its chief architect and heir apparent to Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates.

Microsoft will launch the Groove portal on MSDN this calendar quarter along with free templates, called Application Templates for Groove 2007, that will provide sample code for a variety of user scenarios for using Groove within the Office suite.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recently approved ODF as an international standard for document file formats. It is supported by companies such as IBM and Sun--Sun markets its own version of OpenOffice.org called StarOffice. Microsoft's Open XML, on the other hand, recently won approval by Ecma International as a standard, but the ISO has not approved yet it.

[Rasputin]

Should Microsoft Pay for Wikipedia Edits?

A software engineer in Australia has said he was offered payment by Microsoft to edit certain entries in the Wikipedia online dictionary, opening a heated debate about the ethics of such a move.

Rick Jelliffe, chief technology officer of XML tools company Topologi, said he will probably accept a contract from Microsoft to edit Wikipedia entries on ODF (OpenDocument Format) and OOXML (Microsoft Office Open XML), competing document format standards.

In a blog posting on the O'Reilly Web site, Jelliffe said he recently received an e-mail from Microsoft saying that the company wanted to contract someone "independent but friendly" for a couple of days to provide "more balance" on Wikipedia concerning the ODF and OOXML formats. Jelliffe said he rarely uses Microsoft products and does not imagine he is viewed as a Microsoft enthusiast.

Jelliffe, who lives in Sydney, wrote The XML & SGML Cookbook and describes himself as a standards enthusiast. He says he has added material to Wikipedia entries in the past, and that he doesn't consider himself as being hired to add pro-Microsoft information--just to correct errors.

Debate Storm
His disclosure unleashed a heated debate about the ethics of a company paying someone to edit Wikipedia entries, and the effect such payment has on the credibility of the site. "From now on we should take the Wikipedia entry on OpenDocument with a grain of salt," wrote Daniel Carrera, an ODF developer, in an e-mail.

Other comments on Jelliffe's blog posting weren't so kind. "Since you openly admit being paid by Microsoft you immediately destroy any credibility as a neutral commentator. End of story," one person wrote.

The matter is particularly sensitive given the Wikipedia entries in question. Microsoft created OOXML to compete with ODF, an electronic document format backed by Sun Microsystems, IBM, and open-source companies. ODF appeals to users interested in open-standard document formats that will ensure they can continue to access their existing files and can lessen their dependence on Microsoft. While the formats are competitive, some companies, such as Corel and Novell, have said they'll support both.

It's not yet clear what will happen if Jelliffe does make changes to the pages. Wikipedia "tends not to look favorably in terms of conflict of interest, and paying someone is a conflict," says David Gerard, a volunteer spokesperson for Wikipedia.

Block Paid Editors?
Jelliffe could potentially be blocked from contributing to the site. The English language site is administered by about 1000 volunteers who have the authority to block editors from contributing to the site, Gerard says. Publicity people who update the Wikipedia page about companies they represent routinely get blocked from the site, he says.

Given the attention brought to this particular incident, however, Gerard finds it likely that readers will closely watch for changes made by Jelliffe and respond with their own updates and changes, resulting in an overall improvement to the relevant pages.

A representative from Microsoft's external press office in the United Kingdom couldn't confirm that Microsoft had made the offer to Jelliffe.

[Rasputin]

Windows Live OneCare Updated for Vista

Microsoft will begin the international rollout of its consumer security software on January 30 when it releases a new version of Windows Live OneCare in the U.S. and 16 other countries.

OneCare--which incorporates antivirus, antispyware, firewall management, backup, and tune-up functions--has been available in the U.S. since May 2006. Existing users there will be automatically upgraded to the latest release, Microsoft said.

The new version of the product will provide unified virus and spyware scanning, more flexible file back-up options, and support for Windows Vista, which is also being released to consumers January 30.

OneCare Available Online, in Stores
The release of OneCare marked Microsoft's entry into a heated security software market led by Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro. Microsoft has priced OneCare at $50, and it can be used on up to three computers running Windows XP or Vista.

Pricing will be about the same worldwide, Microsoft said, and consumers will be able to either download OneCare or buy it in stores. The countries where it will be offered for the first time are Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Japan, and Singapore. There was no word yet about plans for additional countries.

Microsoft has been running a worldwide beta program since last year. Users who participated in the program are eligible for 60 percent off an annual subscription if they sign up between January 23 and February 12.

Microsoft secured just 1.2 percent of worldwide antivirus revenue in 2005, according to figures published by IDC last month. Analysts predict that OneCare will pose more of a challenge to the leading vendors.

[Rasputin]

Apple's coming iPhone; a 1-terabyte hard disk

Apple Cell Phone: Apple says its long-awaited iPhone will be available in June and will work exclusively on the AT&T (formerly Cingular) wireless network. The iPhone, priced at $499 or $599, features a 3.5-inch touch screen and includes integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The iPhone will synchronize via iTunes and sync calendars, e-mail accounts, and photos.

Hard-Disk Milestone: Hitachi is gunning to be the first to market with a mammoth 1-terabyte hard disk. By March the company planned to release a 1TB Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive for $400. The 7200-rpm, 3.5-inch SATA drive will target high-performance applications. Seagate says it will release a 1TB drive by June, but had no pricing or model information at press time.

[Rasputin]

Google Dusts Off Discussion Groups

Online discussion forums date from the Internet's early days, and many people consider them passe in the Web 2.0 era of blogs, wikis, and social networks. But Google has no plan to put its Groups service out to pasture.

On the contrary, Google today unveiled an updated version of Groups. The discussion forum now sports a redesigned interface and new features such as the ability to create and edit Web pages and to upload and share files. According to Andrew Zaeske, Groups' engineering manager, this is just the beginning of the service's makeover.

Many of the new features have been available in a beta test version since last October; but the test is now over, and the improvements have been implemented in the main Google Groups service, the company said today.

The revamp gives Google Groups a facelift designed to keep it relevant as a tool for people to use in sharing information online. Once the most common way for people to form online communities, discussion forums must now compete with blogs, social networks, photo and video sharing sites, social news and bookmarking sites, virtual worlds, multiplayer games, and wikis.

Groups Still Valid?
At least one analyst believes that keeping Google Groups alive is wise because discussion forums remain useful to people interested in exchanging information on specific issues in a simple, mostly text-based, controlled online environment.

"Yes, you can argue that in the Web 2.0 world maybe discussion forums look a little dated," said Allen Weiner, a Gartner analyst. "But while discussion forums may not seem very 2007, the inherent beauty that made the Usenet model so appealing is that it allows passionate, like-minded people with a very granular interest to come together, in more of a closed community."

For now, Web 2.0 sites such as social networks and blogs seem to work best when they appeal to a broad, massive audience, and they seem to wither and wilt if they can't reach a certain scale, Weiner said. "Google Groups is certainly not Web 2.0, but I would label it Web 1.5," he said.

Current Google Groups users will see the new interface and features the next time they visit the site. Other enhancements include the ability to customize the look of forums, along with a new layout for threaded conversations done in the style of Google's Gmail Web mail service.

To join a Google Groups forum, visitors need only provide a valid e-mail address. Users who have a Google Account get access to more features.

The new version of Google Groups is available in 19 interface languages: U.S. English, U.K. English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, Polish, Turkish, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese.