Pc News

[Rasputin]

Google reinvents TV ads with pay-per-click video

Google Inc. said on Monday the company is ready to help Web sites run video advertisements, putting the Web search leader into competition with television for the biggest chunk of ad spending.

Google is seeking to take the pay-per-click model it refined for text ads and apply the approach to video, cleaning up a nascent market where irritating splash ads distract users and limit advertisers' desire to spend money on the medium.

Google video ads first appear on Web pages as static screenshots in small television-screen like boxes. Only when a consumer clicks on the screen does the ad begin running inside the box -- instead of jumping off the page as many video ads do -- giving users control over how much or how little they view.

"We are offering a very, very non-intrusive ad product," said Gokul Rajaram, product manager for Google AdSense, which runs advertising campaigns across affiliated Web sites. "Only users who click on the ad see the video."

Google's AdSense network generates nearly half of Google's revenue, with most of the rest coming from Google's own sites.

The new "click to play" video ads complement Google's existing line-up of text, static image, banner and flash animation ads that run on the edges of Web pages of sites that use Google to deliver advertising for them. Google aims to make video advertising as simple to buy as these existing formats.

Video ads will be introduced this week, Rajaram said.

To make it easy for advertisers to use the format, Google will host video advertisements on its own computer servers instead of forcing customers to contract out with a third-party supplier as many video advertisers must now do.

Click to play video ads differ from the scattershot approach of broadcast TV advertising in that Google promises to measure the duration of how long customers, on average, watch any particular ad on a site before moving on to another page.

[Rasputin]

Cheaters Never Prosper

Time is running out for the "punks" who disrupt game play and the virtual economies of the online world, experts say.

Increasingly, game developers and publishers of first-person-shooter and massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are turning to third parties to combat cheaters.


"We were doing everything that we could to stomp out all of the cheat programs the jackasses of the world were making for Quake III," says Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software, which independently develops games for publisher Activision.


Just before releasing Return to Castle Wolfenstein in 2002, id Software realized that "we were fighting a losing battle," Hollenshead says.

Publishers Fight Back

So id Software contracted with the leading anticheating-software company, Even Balance, for its PunkBuster software. Four years later, id Software includes PunkBuster in all its games, and now MMOG developers and publishers are turning to Even Balance to fight cheaters on their servers.


Other companies, such as Sony, deal with the fight against cheating in-house. And game developers and publishers say that players also have an important role in catching cheaters.


"We rely on reports from our user base to help us find and eliminate these problems," says Chris Kramer, a spokesperson for Sony Online Entertainment.

Losing Not an Option

Losing the battle is out of the question, says Hollenshead. Cheaters suck the life out of games, in part by setting off a domino effect.


"It's like performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports," says Hollenshead. "Even if not everyone is doing them, the whole sport gets tainted by the presumption of guilt rather the respect for athletic achievement. Pretty soon no one wants to play, and no one cares if it gets completely out of control."

Joining the Battle

Tony Ray, Even Balance's president, says more and more developers are realizing how cost-effective it is to outsource the fight against cheating." Advanced cheats can't be handled by low-level staff," he says. They require companies' highest-paid coders to "spend time figuring out how to combat cheats," he says.


Recently, Even Balance contracted with publisher K2 Network to run the software, which operates much like an antivirus program, on MMOG Knights Online, the most downloaded game on download.com.


Ray says more contracts with MMOGs are in the works, with another to be publicly announced in the next two to three weeks, once the "very large" publisher has incorporated the software.

How It Works

Massively multiplayer online games represent a new challenge for PunkBuster, Ray says.


Most often first-person shooters run on local servers, and the cheats involve altering or otherwise taking advantage of the semi-open coding. The worlds of the multiplayer games exist on servers run by the developer, and in many cases, Ray says, the cheats are hardware-based.


Even Balance and its team of researchers are able to keep pace with cheaters in first-person shooters by scouring the Web for new cheat codes, and staying in close contact with game administrators. The team updates the software constantly, and maintains a list of cheaters that prevents the "punks" from playing any game running PunkBuster.


For games like Knights Online, some of the cheats come from macros programmed into the keyboard.


"There is really no way to detect that in the software," Ray says. But Even Balance is "coming up with schemes to detect certain drivers in the keyboard."

Third-Party Contracts Not for Everyone

Sony, which runs the highly popular Everquest, prefers to handle cheaters through its customer service team, Kramer says.

"Because we run our own servers, we don't expose that much data to the client," Kramer says. "We don't necessarily need a third-party utility because we have lots and lots of those features already built into our server structures."

Sony also relies heavily on its customers to report "illegal" activities. "The customer service squad isn't that large," Kramer says. With 300,000 active accounts across 30 servers, customer service does "everything they can, but also depends on the eyes of our players to keep the world safe and fun."

Gamers Can Take Action
Ray and Hollenshead recommend that gamers take screen shots when they think they have encountered a cheater, and notify an administrator or send the screens to PunkBuster.

Ray also suggests joining anticheating groups, and playing only with members of those groups.

For MMOGs, Kramer says players should report any activity that violates the terms of service or rules of conduct, from instances of harassment or profanity to suspicion of another player running bots or farming.

But be careful with reporting, Hollenshead warns. "Sometimes people think someone is cheating, but they're really just damn good," he says.

[Rasputin]

Free Agent: Run Multiple Virtual PCs for Free

Though you can never have too much speed, modern PCs are more than equal to the task of running basic productivity programs and Web browsers in a Linux-based graphical user interface. If your PC has untapped RAM, disk space, and CPU horsepower, here's a great way to put that horsepower to work: Install a virtual operating system.

Virtualization lets your main OS run copies of other OSes the same way you run programs, either in a window or full-screen. The host OS (a Linux distribution or Microsoft Windows) and the virtualization software assign resources--network connections, optical drives, memory and the like--to the virtualized operating system, which behaves as if it controls the entire PC.


Who should use virtualization software? If you're contemplating dual- or triple-booting operating systems on your PC, or you want to see how a new version of your current distribution behaves before upgrading, you'll want to consider it. Virtualization software allows you to install and run a new OS without having to repartition your drive or reboot your main operating system. Virtualization also lets you do risky things, like browse the Web using an unpatched version of Windows XP, without endangering the host system. Should someone hack into your virtualized OS, the damage remains within the confines of the virtual container--to undo the damage, all you have to do is delete the virtual drive.


Until recently, virtualization was an expensive proposition. But recent events have given Linux and Windows users a choice of several powerful, free, virtualization tools.

The Art of Xen

XenSource's Xen 3.0 is a free, open-source virtualization server that works with any Linux distribution and comes partially preinstalled in Novell's SuSE Linux 10.1 and OpenSuSE 10.1, and Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 5 and Fedora Core 5 distributions.


Because Xen is small and runs as part of the Linux kernel, it has a reputation for good performance: Given enough memory, virtualized OSes should run nearly as fast as the host OS. However, Xen has a few drawbacks. For example, both host and guest operating systems must be recompiled to work with Xen, which limits the operating systems and distributions you can use. (See the Xen Wiki for a complete list.) Notably, you cannot currently run Windows XP virtually under Xen.


Most importantly, be prepared to become an expert at installing and configuring Xen; familiarizing yourself with the user manual is a good way to start.

VMWare: Not Choosy

If you want to run Windows XP--or any other OS compatible with your computer's processor--in a virtual machine under Linux, bypass Xen and go directly to VMWare's free VMWare Virtual Server. The benefits are mostly the same as those of Xen 3.0--you can try out new operating systems and run risky programs under XP with no fear that malware will take over your PC--but the performance lag is more noticeable than with Xen.


Once you've installed VMWare Virtual Server (a multistep process that's well-documented in its user manual), you can install the operating system of your choice within a virtual machine, or skip the installation and simply download and plug in one of dozens of "virtual applications"--preinstalled and preconfigured VMWare virtual machine image files--from the company's Virtual Appliances directory. Ranging in size from a few megabytes to a gigabyte, VMWare's virtual applications include full-blown Linux distributions, databases, software firewalls, wikis, PBXs, proxy servers, and security suites.

Microsoft's Offering

Finally, you might want to try virtualizing the other way around. Not to be out-freebied, Microsoft recently release a free virtualization program of its own, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, which runs Linux and other operating systems under Windows XP Professional Edition or Windows Server 2003. (Sorry, it won't work with Windows XP Home Edition.) The security benefits are different, but someone out there will undoubtedly want to run Linux under Windows, if only to dip a toe in the open-source waters before jumping ship.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Unveils Windows Vista Beta 2

Windows Vista moved a big step closer to completion today as Microsoft formally released Beta 2 of its next-generation flagship operating system.

"I just came from Redmond and I brought something for you," Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division, brandishing a box of Beta 2 DVDs before attendees at the end of a day-long reviewers' workshop in downtown Seattle on Monday. The workshop was held the day before the start of WinHEC--the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference--an annual gathering of hardware developers involved in products that support Windows.


While other recent builds have been labeled Beta 2, Microsoft officials have said those versions were part of the development process leading to today's formal release to between 500,000 and 750,000 developers and IT professionals. Allchin said Vista, which originally was supposed to ship by year's end, remains on track for a planned November release to enterprise customers only, to be followed in early 2007 by its appearance on new PCs and at retail.

Familiar Look

For those who have followed the OS's progression from the days when it was code-named Longhorn through the initial beta release last summer, Beta 2 looks generally familiar. But Microsoft has tweaked a number of features.


For example, Vista will have three faces, depending on both the hardware capabilities of your PC and which of the six core versions of the OS (four for consumers, two for businesses) you're running.


The much vaunted Aero interface, with its semi-transparent frames and glistening progress bars, will only appear on PCs with sufficiently robust hardware that run either one of the two corporate-focused versions--Vista Business and Vista Enterprise--or one of the top-of-the-line consumer-oriented Vista Home Premium and Vista Home Ultimate. Microsoft also says that Aero will be more reliable than XP's user interface.


Low-end PCs running Vista Home Basic or Vista Starter editions will run a less glamorous Basic interface. But if you're running either of these lower end editions on a PC that is capable of Aero graphics, you'll get what Microsoft calls the Standard interface, which is Basic with some Aero features such as the increased reliability.


Along with its new look, Vista is introducing a new Microsoft document format, XPS (XML Paper Specification). Documents created with XPS can be shared with people who don't have the originating application but do have an XPS viewer; Microsoft showed an XPS document being viewed in Internet Explorer. While not nearly as full featured as Adobe's popular PDF format, XPS is intended primarily to speed up and improve the quality of printing.

Stressing Security

Presentations at the Vista reviewer's workshop focused on several general areas where Microsoft believes the OS will save businesses time and money, most of which it has touted throughout the development process.


Perhaps chief among these are an array of beefed up security measures designed to ward off malware and hacker attacks. Among other things, Microsoft is pushing hard to discourage the widespread practice of having users logged in with administrative privileges, which lets them install software and perform all sorts of other activities that can put a system at risk. The reason IT staffers allow people to log in as administrators is because in Windows XP all other users are barred from performing even some extremely basic tasks, such as changing mouse settings.


Vista will only have two classes of users: administrators and standard users. But standard users will at least be able to make more routine changes--for example, change keyboard settings or install a mouse.


Microsoft officials admit they are still trying to find the right balance between maintaining security and irritating users with too many requests for administrator credentials. For example, some beta testers have criticized the inability of standard users to delete an icon on the so-called public desktop, one that wasn't put there by that user.


In Vista, Microsoft has changed the user authentication procedures so that users can add third-party alternatives--such as biometric devices--which can cause conflicts in Windows XP. Internet Explorer 7 in Vista sports an array of defenses, including the ability to divert efforts to change the Windows Registry or perform drive-by software installations to temporary folders.


Vista's firewall blocks inbound traffic except where users have specified exceptions; outbound traffic is permitted by default except where rules call for blocking. The OS wards off rootkits--spyware that evades usual means of detection such as showing up as a Windows process--with a feature called kernel patch protection. And the new Windows Defender anti-spyware software included in Vista can scan download for spyware, which standard users are allowed to delete.


Finally, the 64-bit version of Vista will not allow use of unsigned device drivers--drivers that Microsoft has not certified.


Allchin spoke at length of Windows XP's ongoing security problems, telling an anecdote involving Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer forcing him to personally fix a friend's PC that had been crippled by spyware. Of his expectations of how difficult it would be to make XP safer and how hard it turned out to be, he said, "I was naive?I was just humbled."


But he also seemed to maintain that Windows suffered from more successful security attacks than competitors principally because hackers focused their attention on it. "This isn't a Microsoft thing," he said. "Over a period of time, if something gets to a critical mass, it will get attacked."

[Rasputin]

Nokia Releases Browser Code

In a bid to encourage the mobile phone industry to standardize on a single Web browser, Nokia on Wednesday released the source code for the mobile phone Web browser it developed last year.

Nokia designed the browser for its S60 line of phones using the same open source frameworks used by Apple Computer for its Safari browser, and adding enhancements designed to improve mobile browsing. Any mobile phone maker or operator can now access the engine that runs the Nokia-developed browser and customize it for their own needs.


"We want to reduce the fragmentation currently in place in mobile browsing," said Lee Epting, vice president of Forum Nokia, Nokia's software development support program.


She doesn't expect the fact that this browser comes from Nokia to discourage Nokia competitors from using it. "It would be one thing if it was under proprietary licensing terms," she said. But Nokia is releasing the code as a BSD License, which she describes as a liberal license that enables anyone to use the code to develop a commercial offering. Developers can find the code through the WebKit Open Source Project.


Opera Software's chief technology officer, however, doesn't expect Nokia's move to have much of an impact. "It has limited value for the open source community," said Hakon Lie, CTO for Opera. The amount of code that Nokia released is relatively small compared to the amount it kept proprietary and the innovations Nokia has made are unlikely to be useful to developers of mobile phone platforms other than S60, he said.


"What I'm seeing is they're flirting with open source and trying to get the open source community interested in their platform, but it's more of a marketing thing rather than a real technical contribution," he said.

Browser Built on Open-Source Foundation

Features of the browser include the capability to work well in low memory situations, a mouse pointer for a similar navigation experience as on the desktop, and support for dynamic HTML and AJAX. Developers will be able to create their own user interface for the browser, a key way for them to differentiate their products, Epting said.


Support for Web technologies is a positive trend, Lie said. "If the Nokia browser is able to run Web applications I'd say that's good for the Web and from that perspective good for all vendors including Opera," he said. Historically, Web site developers have had to use special code in order to adequately display their sites on mobile devices.


Nokia began offering the browser, which is based on WebCore and JavaScriptCore components of Apple's Safari browser, to S60 licensees, including Siemens AG, late last year. The browser will ship with all S60 devices in the future, including Nokia's Eseries phones geared toward enterprise users and Nseries phones.


When Nokia first announced its open source browser project last year, the company said that creating a browser based on existing open source components was the least-expensive route to offering a full-function browser on its phones. Because of the volume of phones that Nokia ships, licensing a browser from a third party would become cost-prohibitive, Nokia said at the time.


Nokia does license a browser from Opera Software for some phones and isn't making any announcements about changes to that agreement in the near term, Epting said.


In 2004, Nokia made a financial investment in Minimo, the Mozilla Foundation's mobile browser project.

[Rasputin]

Google, Dell in deal on PC software package

Google Inc. and Dell Inc. said on Thursday that the No. 1 personal computer maker will install Google software on its systems, potentially dealing a blow to Microsoft Corp..

Google will incorporate on Dell computers its desktop software, which integrates a number of personal computing applications, a Google tool bar and a co-branded Internet home page, officials from both companies said on Thursday.

"There's probably more to come" in the Google-Dell partnership, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt told investors at a Goldman Sachs & Co. Internet conference. "This is the first" of several agreements.

The companies will share revenue from the tie-up, but Schmidt and Dell spokesman Jess Blackburn declined to give details.

"We're doing this because we feel the tools will help the customers search and organize digital information quickly and easily right out of the box," Blackburn said.

Dell will start selling Google-equipped PCs to consumers and small and mid-sized businesses by the end of this month, Blackburn said. The systems will also be offered to some large corporate customers.

Google of Mountain View, California, and Dell of Round Rock, Texas, in February said they had begun to test incorporating Google's software package, which would allow PC customers to search both the public Web and information stored on their computers.

At the time, Dell and Google were reported to be in talks to install the software on as many as 100 million new Dell PCs, following a bidding process in which Google edged out Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, and after Web search rival Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) withdrew.

A large-scale agreement with the world's No. 1 PC maker would be a major coup for Google. A decade ago, Microsoft used its leverage over PC makers to control which software came installed in new computers, betting that customers rarely bothered to replace many of those programs.

[Rasputin]

Yahoo, eBay deal ups pressure on Microsoft

Microsoft Corp. may need to cut prices or pursue a deal similar to Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)'s and online auctioneer eBay Inc.'s partnership to gain ground in the lucrative Internet advertising market, analysts said on Thursday.

Earlier on Thursday, the online media giant Yahoo and eBay said they agreed to a broad tie-up in the United States to boost their positions amid growing competition with Google Inc. and Microsoft.

The partnership between the two Silicon Valley giants, however, should not immediately hurt Google, whose dominance in Web search makes it impossible for companies like eBay to ignore, analysts added.

"The deal shows they need to be more creative and go after the advertising base more aggressively," said Martin Pykkonen, an analyst at Hoefer & Arnett. "It does put more emphasis on whether you get there through an alliance or on your own."

Under the deal, Yahoo will become the exclusive provider of graphical advertising on eBay, the biggest e-commerce player, and provide some search services within eBay's site to connect buyers to items they seek.

In return, Yahoo will promote PayPal, EBay's popular online payment system, as a way for Yahoo's hundreds of thousands of affiliated Web sites and small business owners to conduct transactions online.

Yet Bruce Richardson, an analyst at AMR Research, said it would be difficult for Google and particularly Microsoft to win such large partnership deals because their competitors have no desire to make either company stronger.

Google has an estimated 42 percent share of the Internet search market -- the largest share of the Web advertising market -- followed by Yahoo at 28 percent and Microsoft at 13 percent. At the same time, Microsoft's dominance on the desktop and its huge cash reserves make it a feared competitor in nearly any business it enters.

That strong position makes rivals wary of agreements with either company out of fear they might one day be gobbled up by a fast-growing Google or a large and powerful Microsoft, Richardson said.

Instead, he sees Microsoft and Google making small acquisitions to gain strength and fill in any technology holes either company might have.

"It is going be hard to get big partnerships in this business because no one wants to speed their own demise," Richardson said. "Nobody wants to make Microsoft stronger."

Microsoft, which has said it has a five-year target to gain a bigger slice of the online advertising market now led by Google and Yahoo, is making a big push into Web services.

At the core of this plan is Windows Live, an advertising-funded, one-stop shop for services from e-mail to instant messaging to blogs that targets the online ad market, which is estimated to grow to $26 billion in 2009 from a current $15 billion.

The Yahoo-eBay deal also reflects the growing need for the biggest Internet companies to consolidate operations in the face of mounting four-way competition and slowing growth.

"I'm surprised Microsoft didn't fight harder to get this deal," said Marianne Wolk, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group. "It clearly raises the bar for Microsoft."

[Rasputin]

Google Takes Half of All U.S. Searches, Nielsen Says

American Web surfers continued to flock to Google in April, using the Internet search site for 50 percent of their 5.3 billion queries, according to a research report.

That marked a rise from Google's year-ago market share of 47 percent, while second-place site Yahoo held steady at 22 percent, and Microsoft's MSN dropped from 12 to 11 percent, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.


The trend mirrored an announcement Thursday that Dell had agreed to load as a default on new consumer PCs certain Google software, such as its desktop search application and browser toolbar, at the expense of competing Microsoft products.

Vying for Customer Loyalty

But Google cannot sit on its lead for long, warns Michael Lanz, vice president of search industry solutions for Nielsen/NetRatings. The top search providers will continue to compete for customers' loyalty with new features, improved functionality, and rewards programs, experts like Lanz say.


In the past year alone, all of the big three search companies have succeeded in boosting their respective numbers of monthly searches. Google's search count rose 34 percent, from 1.9 billion searches in April 2005 to 2.6 billion in April 2006. Yahoo rose 27 percent, from 919 million to 1.1 billion, and MSN rose 10 percent, from 515 million to 570 million.

More Searches Mean More Revenue

Those numbers can translate into revenue as increased traffic allows each search company to charge a higher rate for more exposure of clients' advertisements.


That could be lucrative territory, since the top shopping terms entered on Google in April included retail giants such as Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, and Best Buy. Of course, pure entertainment still rules the Internet: The top overall Google search terms for the month included Nick Lachey, Denise Richards, Miss USA, Cinco de Mayo, and Bettie Page.


This landscape could begin to change by the second half of 2006, says Allen Weiner, an analyst with technology market research firm Gartner.

Moving From Straight to Social Search

Search providers are moving from a "straight search" method based on algorithms and page rankings, to a "social search" method that incorporates human knowledge and other people's preferences.


Yahoo has made the most progress, with its Yahoo Answers site already running, while Google has lagged with its Google Co-op site still ramping up. Yahoo also has an advantage in worldwide traffic, with a greater Web presence outside the United States than Google has, Weiner adds.


In the meantime, Google will rely on sheer numbers to preserve its advantage. "These three guys are like the three TV networks back in the old days; and right now Google has the top-ranking show," Weiner says. "Until proven otherwise, they're the leader."

[Rasputin]

Microsoft's OneCare to Go Live Thursday

Microsoft will complete its entry into the desktop security market next week with the general release of its Windows Live OneCare antivirus software.


OneCare, which also includes backup and PC-tuning software, has been available for free in beta form since November, but as of next Thursday customers will be able to purchase the final, supported product, according to sources familiar with Microsoft's plans.


OneCare will cost $49.95 per year, which will cover licenses for as many as three Windows XP PCs. That means "98 percent of homes in the U.S. will be able to buy one subscription and be able to cover all of their PCs," Microsoft Group Program Manager Brian Hall said in an interview earlier this year.


A spokesperson for Microsoft's public relations agency declined to comment for this story except to confirm that the product would be available for purchase from the Web and in retail stores in the next few weeks.

Three Apps in OneCare

OneCare includes firewall, antivirus, and backup software, as well as Microsoft's Windows Defender antispyware technology. The product also takes care of routine maintenance tasks such as defragmenting the hard disk and cleaning up unused temporary files.


Microsoft portrays OneCare as part of a new category of "PC care" products that handle technically challenging tasks. But analysts say that the product clearly targets the antivirus market, dominated by companies such as Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro.


"This is really competing head-on with the antivirus vendors," said Andrew Jaquith, senior analyst with Yankee Group Research.

[Rasputin]

Bulgarian police bust major European web pirates

Bulgarian police charged two men on Saturday for illegally distributing music and films in what officials called one of Europe's largest Internet pirate groups.

They arrested an administrator and systems operator for putting download links to 20 million songs -- or roughly 3 million albums -- and hundreds of films on the web site www.arenabg.com, one of Bulgaria's most popular pages.

Users could download as many of the songs and films as they liked after paying a four lev ($2.50) monthly fee. Authorities estimate the damage to the entertainment industry at around $30 million.

"These people are among the biggest Internet pirates in Europe," said Liliana Yosifova, spokeswoman for the Sofia Investigators' Office. "We are talking about big losses here."

Police also found three satellite receivers and 200 CDs with pirated movies at the suspects' homes, part of what the Interior Ministry said was a high-speed network used to download new movies and songs from foreign pirate sites.

The site was no longer functioning on Saturday afternoon. The men, who were released on 10,000 levs bail, were not immediately available for comment.

Software, music and movie piracy is widespread in the poor Black Sea country of 7.7 million. Analysts say it is linked to rampant organized crime, the biggest stumbling block to Bulgaria's efforts to join the European Union next year.

Brussels has warned Sofia to fix its intellectual property legislation and crack down on piracy, other types of organized crime and high-level corruption, or see its entry into the bloc delayed until at least 2008.

[Rasputin]

LCD TV Prices Expect to Drop

Prices for LCD TVs are falling at a slower pace this year, but consumers will still enjoy significant price drops for the next few years, market researcher DisplaySearch said today.

The biggest price declines for users will come by the end of 2007, before the market begins to mature and discounts slow down. In fact, the pace at which price tags are being lowered has already slowed compared to last year.


The average selling price of a 32-inch LCD TV in the U.S. dropped just 24 percent during the first 18 weeks of this year, compared to a 53 percent decline during the same period last year. In 37-inch screens, the price drop this year was 30 percent, compared to 53 percent a year ago.


Part of the reason for the slower price decline was that there was no oversupply, said Ross Young, president of DisplaySearch, part of the NDP Group, at an event in Taipei.


The market research company expects prices for today's LCD TV models to fall by as much as 68 percent between the end of last year through the end of 2010. Of course, vendors are likely to come up with bigger, fancier screens to tempt buyers into buying higher-priced models.

[Rasputin]

First StarOffice Virus Detected

The first virus affecting StarOffice was detected today, but so far it isn't being used to infect computers.

Since the virus has not been launched with malicious intent yet, a teenager hacker may have written it, said Roel Schouwenberg, senior research engineer for Kaspersky Lab. The virus uses macros to attack the office suite from Sun Microsystems.


Kaspersky is calling the virus "Stardust." Viruses using macros are rarely seen anymore since simply shutting off a program's macro feature stops them, Schouwenberg said. Macros can be used to automate certain tasks within a document, such as repeated calculations on a spreadsheet.


Macro viruses were most often written to disrupt Microsoft office applications, Kaspersky wrote on its virus blog.

How It Works

Typically, a virus using macros infects a template, which is then read when opening other documents and infects those also, Schouwenberg said. The Stardust virus is contained in a StarOffice document that uses macros and then infects a global template.


If a user opens a document infected with Stardust, every StarOffice text document, with a ".sxw" extension, or document template, with a ".stw" extension, will be infected, Schouwenberg said.


When one of those documents is launched, it opens an adult image hosted on a tripod.com server, a Web-site hosting service from Lycos.


So far, the bug does not pose a risk since it remains a proof-of-concept virus, a term meaning the virus was written to prove it could be done, but is not yet being used maliciously.


"We're not hyping it," Schouwenberg said. "The world is not coming to an end. It's just a poc [proof-of-concept]."


But with a little tweaking, Schouwenberg said the code, which uses an old API (application programming interface), could be modified to affect OpenOffice 2.0, an open-source suite.

[Rasputin]

Password-Stealing Trojan Spreads

A fresh round of spam with a password-stealing Trojan horse detected this week uses a German-language pitch, saying the malicious attachment is an official Microsoft Windows update.

The attached malware, called "Trojan-PSW.Win32.Sinowal.u" by antivirus software developer Kaspersky Lab, is a next-generation Trojan that's on the rise, said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior research engineer with the company. The Sinowal family of malware was first detected in December, and first seeded on malicious Web sites.


If a user visited the site and did not have a properly patched browser, the software would install itself, allowing it to harvest login and password information for some European banks' Web sites, Schouwenberg said. The Sinowal family of malware may have been created in Russia, since the malware code contains some Russian, he said.


The latest spam messages have a ".de" e-mail address. Rather depending on a browser exploit to install itself, the latest version of Sinowal tries to trick users into installing it. The message, written in German, claims that a new worm is on the loose, and that the recipient should run the attached file to protect their system.


Schouwenberg said the malware writers may have decided to send it by mass e-mail if the browser exploit approach wasn't working as well.

How It Works

The Sinowal Trojan is a type of "man-in-the-middle" malware. Even if a user has started a Secure Sockets Layer transaction with a bank, the Sinowal Trojan can insert HTML code that causes a pop-up window asking for a user name and password. It is programmed to react to certain bank Web sites.


"This is something we are going to see more and more and really make life hard," Schouwenberg said.


It's unique since it then sends that information immediately to the hacker's server rather than storing the information for periodic transmission, Schouwenberg said. The Trojan is also capable of checking for updates of itself.

[Rasputin]

Parts of JPEG Patent Rejected

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected 19 of the 47 claims in a patent held by Forgent Networks, which the company has been using to assert licensing rights related to the JPEG digital image standard.

The USPTO reexamined the patent at the request of the Public Patent Foundation, a U.S. not-for-profit group that seeks to overturn what it sees as unfairly awarded patents. The foundation said it had found prior art--or previous related inventions--which made Forgent's patent invalid.


The foundation claimed a victory, saying the USPTO's decision, issued last Thursday, overturned the broadest claims in Forgent's patent. They include the first claim, describing "A method for processing digital signals... to reduce the amount of data utilized."


Forgent, an intellectual property company based in Austin, Texas, said it was also pleased, however, noting that the patent office had upheld the majority of its claims. In a statement last week it said it would "vigorously defend" those that were rejected.


The patent is known as the '672 patent, an abbreviation of its U.S Patent No. 4,698,672. It describes a technique for compressing data by replacing strings of code that appear frequently with code strings of a shorter length. Forgent says the technique is employed in the JPEG format, used in digital cameras, printers, and many other products.

Format Wars

It is currently suing about 30 companies to secure licensing deals for the technology, including Apple Computer, Eastman Kodak, Microsoft, and TiVo, according to its statement. It has so far secured licensing deals with more than a dozen other companies that it sued, generating about $105 million in revenue, it said.


Forgent's patent can be viewed by searching for its number the USPTO's Web site.


The Public Patent Foundation posted a PDF of the USPTO's decision.


Relatedly, Microsoft introduced a new image format at its WinHEC engineering conference last week. Called Windows Media Photo, it can preserve more of a photo's image details and do so at a higher compression level, according to Microsoft.


The technology will be built into Windows Vista and supported by Windows XP by way of a software add-on, the company said. It was unclear whether Microsoft plans to promote the technology as a replacement for JPEG.

[Rasputin]

Symantec Squashes Antivirus Bug

Symantec has patched a widely reported flaw in the English versions of its corporate antivirus software.

The flaw, which affects recent versions of its Client Security and Antivirus Corporate Edition products is considered serious, and could be exploited by hackers to run unauthorized software on unpatched PCs.


It was discovered by rival security vendor eEye Digital Security and first disclosed last Wednesday. Three days later, Symantec patched the problem, according to an alert published late last week on Symantec's Web site.

English Only

The patches are for English language versions of Symantec's products only, and a Symantec spokesman could not say when the complete line of products would be patched.


Symantec did not release many details on the flaw, but eEye has warned that it is the kind of vulnerability that could be used to build a self-replicating worm attack, similar to the Blaster and Slammer outbreaks of 2003.


That has not happened to date, and Symantec is "not aware of any customers impacted by this vulnerability, or of any exploits of this vulnerability," the alert said.


The problem affects version 3.0 and above of Client Security, and version 10 and above of Antivirus Corporate Edition. Symantec's Norton line of consumer antivirus products is not affected.


A number of other flaws have been reported in Symantec's security products over the past year. Last December, researcher Alex Wheeler discovered a flaw in Symantec's Antivirus Library that could allow remote attackers to gain control of systems that used Symantec's products.


In October a critical flaw was found in the company's Scan Engine software.