Sunday, May 31, 2009

Bashing Bing, whacking Wave

May 30, 2009 04:01 AM ET

Computerworld - Industry titans Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. are getting rave reviews this week about innovative new approaches to Internet search and communications, respectively.

Even Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak told a reporter that Microsoft's new Bing search engine looks "astounding" and that he's "a big fan, now."

There's much to like. In a nutshell, Bing does more to surface information you're probably looking for than Google does. For example, if you search for a company, one of the top results will present links to customer service, store locator -- that kind of information.

If you haven't seen it, go here to see the Microsoft pitch for Bing.

Looks great, right? What's not to like. Well...

Bashing Bing

If you'll notice, the URL for the video link above is: DecisionEngine.com. And that's exactly what Bing does better than Google. It makes decisions for you. Of more concern is that it makes decisions for all users. So what's wrong with that?

Well, nothing for you and me. For individual people, Bing is a nice alternative to Google and the other search engines. It can save you time and hassle for some kinds of searches -- no question about it.

The problem is how Bing might affect culture, especially if Google copies some of its features to neutralize Microsoft as a competitor. In other words, if search engines that made decisions for you is a trend, it's probably a bad trend, not a good one.

Decisions are -- and must be -- based on value judgments. To use Bing is to see the Internet through Microsoft's corporate values. For example:

  • Bing brings "the best match to the top," not the most popular. In other words, Microsoft is overriding the democratic approach for an elitist, we-know-best approach.
  • The demo video shows a search for "home depot," which offers alternatives to the left of the results, including "Ace Hardware" and "Walmart." That the alternative to a mega-chain is another mega-chain is a value judgment. Why isn't the mom-and-pop hardware store in my neighborhood the best alternative to Home Depot? To some it is. To Microsoft, it isn't. Could Bing, if popular, accelerate the demise of locally owned businesses in favor of giant corporations?
  • "Bing's health results bring together resources from the top medical sources in the world, including the Mayo Clinic," Microsoft says in the demo. Microsoft's value judgments about whom to trust for medical information win the day, namely conventional Western medical authorities. Alternative therapies, which may favor diet and exercise for obesity or cardiovascular disease over drugs and surgery, are buried. The whole complex debate about whether the Western medical establishment is overly influenced by pharmaceutical industry pressure, insurance industry pressure, and so on, is settled before you even start exploring your options. Microsoft has chosen sides -- for all of us.

Yes, Bing is easy. It's always easy to have someone else choose your values and make your decisions for you. But is that good for society?

Whacking Wave

Google Wave also demos well. And what's not to like? The prototype promises the joining together of e-mail, chat, photo sharing and other forms of communication into a single online app.

At first glance, the "hosted" messaging system of Wave looks compelling. You can comment to a specific part of a conversation by dropping in your note right there in the message (rather than copying and pasting).

This feature looks great on stage, but I fear in practice it will result in confusion. It's sort of like how Google currently does Gmail. Unlike other e-mail systems, where the most recent message is at the top, Gmail has some mysterious system for how it orders threaded comments. I and others I've spoken to constantly find ourselves confused about where the most recent comment is. The thread feels shuffled.

Wave looks like it could make this situation even worse. After bouncing stuff back and forth, and after people comment on various parts of the thread, adding commentary at the top, bottom and middle of the original message, clarity about what's old, new, moot or relevant seems unlikely.

The other major problem with Wave is its generous contribution to the larger problem of over complexity and information overload. There is so much going on here that Wave fights against the quest for clarity, simplicity and minimalism - the qualities that made Google famous. This is essentially what Microsoft attempted with Outlook, and the result was bloat. "It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping! " I'm not sure we need yet another app that does everything.

What's bad about both

The biggest problem with Bing and Wave is that both are on the wrong side of two technology-design battles raging in the industry. The first is the battle over linearity, and the other is the battle for mobility.

Have you noticed that every massively popular new way to communicate in the past few years has shared the attribute of perfect linearity? First e-mail, then chat, then blogs, then Twitter -- all provided the benefit of strict, top-to-bottom, most-recent-first organization. Linearity imposes clarity on information, and puts the user's mind at ease. All attempts to "improve" these media with non-linear views have failed. People love linearity.

But this is exactly how both Microsoft and Google are trying to improve search and communication, respectively: by introducing non-linearity. In the case of Bing, Microsoft displays results in order down the middle of the page. But there are alternative results on the left as well. It's not a big deal, and Google has introduced similar non-linearity in recent years. But Google got rich and famous by providing a single search box, followed by a single ordered list of results.

In the case of Wave, the many killer features may be overshadowed by the amount of "stuff" happening all over the page. I'd love to have the good features, such as the ability to see the other person typing, but in a single, linear column from newest to oldest.

Finally, constant improvements in the quality of mobile devices have created the possibility of sites that work great on screens both big and small. I want giant companies that play in both spaces, such as Microsoft and Google, to drive this initiative. They should seek ways to get everything working great on all devices, and to avoid systems where there's a PC version and a separate mobile version. Both Bing and Wave appear to be optimized for big screens and unrealistic for phones and other mobile devices.

This was a great week for announcements about innovative new products. But announcements are really nothing more than sales pitches. Let's all reserve judgment about these two exciting new technologies until we can see for ourselves what effect they'll have on what's really important: Our ability to focus, think clearly and make decisions objectively.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. He blogs about the technology needs, desires and successes of mobile warriors in his Computerworld blog, The World Is My Office. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter or his blog, The Raw Feed.

Original post: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=&articleId=9133682&taxonomyId=&intsrc=kc_feat


iPhone app development stardom

Shooting to Software Stardom on the iPhone

Published: May 30, 2009

MITCHELL WAITE could think of only one reason that Apple’s legal department would leave a voice message last February asking him to call back: he was about to be sued. Mr. Waite has a tiny software company bearing his name — it has no full-time employees — whose principal product is a field guide to birds called iBird Explorer, which runs on the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Mitchell Waite plays sounds from his iBird application for the iPhone to attract birds to feeders in his yard.

Enlarge This Image

Apple featured the app in a TV ad.

He called back and discovered that his life was about to change no less than if the lottery authority had told him he’d won the big prize: Apple had decided to feature iBird in a television commercial.

IBird was one of three applications that appeared in the spot, and while it got only about seven seconds, that was all it needed to become the No. 1 “reference” app in the iPhone App Store, a software star among the 35,000-plus applications now crowding the store’s shelf. The iBird Explorer is offered in different versions, priced from $4.99 to $29.99.

“I look at it like Apple paid me $10 million to show my application on every single major network, every major television show — no, I can’t even put a figure on it,” Mr. Waite said.

It’s a delightful story, not only because it does not involve a lawsuit, but also because it does not involve promotion fees. Apple does not accept money from companies whose products are placed in its commercials or in the other prime real estate, the “Featured” section of the App Store.

This has earned Apple applause from software developers and backers. “Apple doesn’t want the money. It’s a level playing field,” said Matt Murphy, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. If Apple likes the app, he added, “it doesn’t matter if you’re a one-person or a 10,000-person company; they’ll put it in ‘New’ or ‘What’s Hot.’ ”

A developer easily gains entrance to that level playing field, by paying a nominal $99-a-year fee for the iPhone Developer Program. A completed app must secure Apple’s approval before it is put on sale in the App Store. It’s often a slow process and has drawn the ire of many developers. But the worst that Apple has been accused of is maddening opacity, not discrimination.

Apple takes a 30 percent cut of App Store sales, a paltry slice compared with that exacted by other online stores in the past. Those that distributed software for the Palm Pilot, for example, took 50 to 70 percent of sales as their cut, according to Jeff Scott, founder of 148Apps.com, a Web site offering in-depth reviews of iPhone apps.

Apple also makes buying and downloading a snap; the app is dispatched wirelessly from the store to the iPhone and is ready to run in a few seconds.

The App Store’s very appeal, bringing in so many developers, has intensified a perennially vexing problem: How can a new software title come to the attention of prospective customers?

“For 99 bucks a year, Apple gives you the ability to sell software to millions,” Mr. Scott said. “They solved the distribution problem, but they did not solve the marketing problem for developers.”

Mr. Scott’s site, 148Apps.com, offers a partial solution, but it reviews only hundreds of apps, not tens of thousands.

Apple can feature only a few apps, of course; “featuring” all would mean featuring none. The unfeatured are stuck in crowded quarters, placed into one of 20 categories. Only five apps can be displayed on the phone’s small screen at a time; unless an app clambers up the equivalent of a best-seller list to appear among the five visible on the first screen, the casual browser will probably not see it. As the number of apps grows, it becomes ever harder to break into even the top 100 in a category.

Neil Young, C.E.O. of Ngmoco, a publisher of iPhone games, said his company watched closely what happened to the 5,000 titles added after the App Store passed the 25,000-title milestone.

“Only 40 of 5,000 made it into the top 100,” Mr. Young said. “It’s very difficult for an app to rise above the noise.”

He credited recommendations among gaming enthusiasts, from one friend to the next, as important to the success of his company’s titles.

In April, Apple celebrated the one billionth download from the App Store in only nine months. For all of its success with the store, however, Apple remains most interested in using third-party software to sell its hardware. Mr. Waite said an Apple liaison told him, “We pick apps not for how well they’re selling — we pick apps that will sell more iPhones and iPod Touches because they show off the best features or are something you can’t get elsewhere.”

Fitting that bill is Mr. Waite’s iBird application, which turns the iPhone into an always-in-hand field guide replete with bird calls that a printed field guide cannot provide.

Tens of thousands of iPhone App developers will never get that life-changing call from Apple and will never get within sight of a top-five list.

“In many ways, developing a program is like writing a book,” said Jeffrey Tarter, the founding editor of a developers’ newsletter, Softletter. “You say, ‘I’m going to make something first of all that I like. Then I’ll worry about how to make money.’ ”

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

Original post: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/business/31digi.html?_r=1&th&emc=th


Reflecting back...

Tiananmen Square, 20 Years Later

Published: May 30, 2009

Two decades ago, China's largest pro-democracy protests ended when military tanks rolled toward Tiananmen Square and troops opened fire on the crowds. For this anniversary, the Op-Ed editors asked four writers, who were students or working at the time, to reflect back on the event.

China’s Forgotten Revolution


June 4, 1989, means little to young people.

Dance With Democracy


After the crackdown, fear trumped friendship.

‘Here Come the Workers!’


Notes from the protests outside Beijing.

Exiled to English


Why I left my native language behind.



Original post: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/opinion/31tiananmen.html?th&emc=th

BPL/PLC

Better Together: Wi-Fi and Powerline Networking

By combining a Wi-Fi router and powerline equipment, you pair the convenience and mobility of wireless with a dependable way to stream video or save files to a network drive. Our tests reveal the best of both kinds of gear.

Becky Waring, PC World

May 26, 2009 9:00 am

Wireless networks today are faster, more secure, and more reliable than their predecessors. But to some extent Wi-Fi is a victim of its own success: Search for a Wi-Fi hotspot these days, and you may find a dozen networks competing for the same 2.4GHz bandwidth-so nobody gets a good signal.

At the same time, changes in the way we use networks demand better performance than ever. Exacting applications such as network backup, high-definition video streaming, BitTorrent downloading, and VoIP can choke even the fastest Wi-Fi: At best, a draft-2.0 802.11n router delivers a little over 100 megabits per second in real-world throughput. If multiple Wi-Fi clients claim a share, performance can rapidly--and, in the case of streaming video, visibly--deteriorate.

For these reasons, our look at networking products has two components. The convenience and ubiquity of 2.4GHz Wi-Fi make it the technology of choice for the router at the heart of your network, so we evaluated six workhorse routers that support draft-2 802.11n Wi-Fi and gigabit ethernet:

In addition, we looked at six powerline networking kits:

Each of these kits lets you use your home's existing electrical circuits to hardwire devices requiring more reliable performance. These kits all performed at least as well as draft 802.11n Wi-Fi on our throughput tests, and each delivered rock-solid high-definition video streaming from a Sling Media Slingbox Pro. Using Wi-Fi gear in the same environment, we experienced frequent deterioration in video quality.

We believe that many people would benefit from a hybrid network incorporating both technologies; fortunately, this isn't difficult to set up (see "Adding Powerline to Your Network Is Easy").

With regard to product quality, we're happy to report that all of the draft-2 802.11n Wi-Fi routers we tested rated at least Good overall, and several earned marks of Very Good. This was not the case in our previous round of wireless networking tests, an indication that the category is maturing. The Belkin N+ and the D-Link DIR-655 scored highest, thanks to very good performance and setup tools, along with valuable features such as support for USB drive sharing and a security-conscious guest access mode.

Routers That Do More

Belkin N+ Wireless Router F5D8235-4
All of the Wi-Fi routers we reviewed have gigabit ethernet, an essential feature for network backup (you can use it to connect to a network-assisted storage (NAS) device next to the router and get much faster performance than you would with either a Wi-Fi or a powerline connection). Other key features include USB ports (present in the Belkin, D-Link and SMC routers) for linking standard hard drives and/or printers to the network, guest Wi-Fi access mode (in the Belkin and D-Link models), and strong parental control features (a paid option in the Linksys router).

One surprising finding from our performance tests is that some routers with two transmitting and three receiving (2x3) antenna arrays outperformed 3x3 configurations, even at long range. So a 3x3 router is not necessarily better than a 2x3 one.

On the other hand, a laptop with a 3x3 Intel Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 client card consistently outperformed one with the 2x3 Intel WiFi Link 5100 client adapter. The improvement was dramatic, too, ranging from 28 to 62 percent overall; so when buying a new notebook, paying an extra $40 or so for the higher-end client may well be worthwhile if you use Wi-Fi a lot.

A few vendors offer simultaneous dual-band 802.11n routers--devices that support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks at the same time (the Linksys model reviewed in this roundup can support either band, but not concurrently). 5GHz networks (which support legacy 802.11a clients) are more robust than 2.4GHz networks because their many nonoverlapping channels (a dozen 22-MHz channels versus only three in the 2.4GHz band) are far less prone to interference. Even so, we chose not to review these routers for several reasons: They are still rather uncommon; they are very expensive; and powerline generally offers better performance for the streaming video applications for which a 5GHz network is frequently used.

Draft-N Wireless Routers chart; click for full-size image.For a detailed comparison of the features offered by each Wi-Fi router we reviewed, see our chart, "Draft-N Wireless Routers: Most Perform Very Well."

For complete hands-on reviews of each Wi-Fi router in the roundup, click the links below:

More Power to You


D-Link DHP-303 PowerLine HD Network Starter Kit
Among powerline kits, the D-Link DHP-303 is our top pick. Its throughput was more than 30 percent higher than the competition's, and it carries a lower price tag. (Significantly, the D-Link device is also the only product in this group that uses powerline chips from a Spanish firm called DS2; as a result, it isn't compatible with the others, which are based on the HomePlug AV standard.) That said, we obtained rock-solid HD video streaming with all six powerline kits we tested.

Powerline Networking Kits chart; click for full-size image.For a chart comparing specific features of the six powerline networking kits w eincluded in our roundup, see "Powerline Networking Kits: A Connection at Any Outlet." For hands-on reviews of those six kits, click the following links:

A hybrid Wi-Fi/powerline network solves many problems: By using powerline wiring to connect bandwidth-intensive devices that you rarely move around (such as network-attached storage drives, printers, game consoles, home entertainment center components), you improve their performance and that of mobile Wi-Fi gear (such as a laptop or a smartphone), by reducing the overall network demand on the wireless bandwidth.

Adding Powerline Adapters to Your Home Network Is Easy

Wi-Fi is unquestionably the home networking technology of choice for laptops and other portable devices, but for applications that require high bandwidth and a reliable data stream, such as streaming video, powerline networking trumps wireless. Fortunately, the two technologies complement each other nicely. If you can plug in a power cord and an ethernet cable, you can set up a powerline network.

Adding powerline adapters to your home network; click for full-size image.Start by plugging a powerline adapter into a wall socket. Don't use filtered power strips or surge protectors, though, because they will interfere with the network connection. Next, run at ethernet cable from the powerline adapter to a free LAN port on your Wi-Fi router.

Now plug a second powerline adapter (or a powerline switch containing multiple ethernet ports) into a wall socket in any room where you want to be able to gain access to the powerline network. After a few seconds, the two powerline devices will recognize each other and become connected.

After that, you can connect any device that has an ethernet port to your network. In the living room, for example, you can hook up your game console, TiVo box, DVR, Blu-ray player, Windows Media Extender, or network media player. You can even hook up a Wi-Fi access point to bring coverage to a dead area.

To prevent neighbors who are operating on the same electrical circuit as you from hopping onto your network, you can change the default encryption passphrase on all of the kits simply by pressing buttons on each adapter.

You can even move the adapters from one outlet to another, and they will keep their settings. Power outages shouldn't wreak longterm havoc on your network: It should pop right up again when the power comes back on.

The only installation issue you're likely to have is poor performance due to bad circuitry. In my 100-year-old house, the older outlets had severe interference problems, but on my newer circuits the adapters worked perfectly. If you're unsure of your circuitry, buy from a vendor that has a good return policy.

When you use a multiport adapter or more than one remote adapter, all of the devices they connect will share the available 200-mbps bandwidth; your performance will slow when multiple devices run on the network simultaneously.

When shopping for powerline gear, check model numbers carefully. Many earlier and slower (14- and 85-mbps) kits are still being sold, and they are not interoperable with the current crop (though an older powerline network can coexist with a newer one).

Also take note of the powerline technology that the powerline kit uses. Most of the kits we tested were designed for the HomePlug AV standard and worked fine together in my tests. But utilities from one vendor may not work on another vendor's gear, and firmware updates sometimes muddy the waters further. The exception to the HomePlug AV rule was D-Link's powerline kit, which incorporates competing (and incompatible) Universal Powerline Association-compliant technology from a Spanish company called DS2. (An IEEE standard combining HomePlug and a third powerline technology, Panasonic's HD-PLC, is still in the works.)

Your best bet for avoiding standards issues is to stick with one vendor's products. Our top picks among powerline options are the D-Link DHP-303 and the Belkin Powerline AV+ Starter Kit F5D4075. The D-Link offers superior performance and informative LEDs, while the Belkin has interchangeable wall and desk mounts, plus three ethernet ports in the remote adapter.

Original post: http://www.pcworld.com/article/164241/wifi_powerline_together.html?tk=rss

p/s. thanks to AKI for the link.


Saturday, May 30, 2009

Careful What You Call Your Wives...

Malaysian men who call wives ugly could face jail

AP - Friday, May 29

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - It soon could be a crime for Malaysian men to call their wives ugly, a women's rights group and a news report said Thursday.

The governmental Women's Development Department plans to ask Parliament to ban "emotional violence" against women, who currently have legal protection against physical assault only, The Star newspaper reported.

Women's groups told the department that husbands who "demonstrate a pattern of causing mental and psychological damage" should face counseling, fines and jail terms, Ivy Josiah, director of the Women's Aid Organization, told The Associated Press.

Offenders include a husband who "tells his wife she is ugly or humiliates her until she feels emotionally pressured," the government department's head, Noorul Ainur Mohamad Nur, said during a conference on violence against women, the newspaper reported.

Noorul Ainur said there was a need to criminalize emotional abuse because it could deeply scar a woman's dignity and self-confidence, the report said.

There were no immediate details about when Parliament would discuss the plan.

About 90 percent of some 800 women who called the Women's Aid Organization for help last year reported being psychologically abused, though some were also physically assaulted, Josiah said.

A government representative said Noorul Ainur and other officials familiar with the plan could not immediately be contacted Thursday.

Original Post: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ap/20090528/tap-as-malaysia-belittling-wives-1st-ld-b3c65ae.html

Presto!

Presto! In 10 seconds, you've got an Internet desktop.

Posted by Jason Perlow @ 10:39 am

Have you ever had the need to boot your laptop in a Starbucks, an airport lounge, or a buddy’s house, but don’t want to go through the agonizing multi-minute procedure of starting up your operating system with all of its managed software and utilities? If you’re a corporate Windows user on the go, chances are your PC might take several minutes to get up and running if you just want to get onto the Internet, GMail, surf, Twitter, FaceBook, instant message, Skype, or what have you. Well, now there’s a solution: Presto.

The Presto Linux desktop.

Presto is actually an ultra-stripped down Linux that has been optimized to boot on even the oldest PC laptop hardware in a matter of seconds. Unlike other Linux environments that require re-partitioning of your system, Presto actually is stored in the C:\Program Files\Presto directory on your native Windows NTFS file system and installs just like a regular Windows Program.

When you reboot your PC, your BOOT.INI menu now gives you a choice of Windows or Presto. If you pick Presto, it boots your computer within seconds into a Linux OS that is optimized for Internet Browsing, Instant Messaging, and Skype VOIP. You can even access files such as Powerpoint and Word documents on your Windows hard disk and view them or even modify the files using the built-in OpenOffice software.

Presto includes Firefox, Instant Messaging, Skype and the ability to browse/view/and alter files on your NTFS drive.

The technology which Presto uses to co-exist with Windows on the NTFS file system has also been applied to other Linux operating systems, such as Ubuntu, which offers the free WUBI installer for Windows. However Presto is much more stripped down than Ubuntu, and is really geared for Windows-based netbooks, older laptop hardware, or for anyone who wants to get their system up and running quickly.

Presto installs in a matter of minutes and as soon as my Lenovo laptop rebooted, it instantly detected my wireless networks. Presto is also extensible through a special “Click and Run” web site that it uses in combination with the Application Store program pre-installed on the system. Need some games or other special programs, such as the GIMP image editing software? or Picasa? Just add it for free through the online App Store.

The Application Store allows you to add thousands of applications to Presto with just a simple click.

Unlike WUBI, Presto is commercial software — it costs $19.99. But this is a no-brainer purchase for the busy traveller on the go.

Have you played with Presto yet?

Original post: http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=9990

RIM and Google: The Perfect Storm?

Posted by Jason Perlow @ 9:30 pm


A “Perfect Storm”: The Linux-based Android OS, and tight integration with Google’s web services, running on BlackBerry hardware and connected to RIM’s corporate messaging/calendar syncing infrastructure would be an unstoppable mobile enterprise device platform that not even Apple’s iPhone, Windows Mobile or Palm webOS could dare to challenge. But could the marriage ever be consummated? (GoogleBerry Storm concept by Spidermonkey)

In my previous piece about Palm and the potential for webOS to be used for derivative tablet-sized devices, I talked a bit about Google’s problem with having to brand Android and finding a major device manufacturer with brand and sex appeal to attract customers in order to make a major commercial success of the platform.

It occurred to me that the perfect manufacturer, brand and partner for Android devices already exists: Research In Motion.

There is of course, the issue that RIM already has it’s own software platform, the BlackBerry OS, which has been under development for about 8 years.

While Android is Linux based, and Blackberry is completely proprietary, both share quite a bit in common from the developer perspective, in that the applications are written in Java. There are of course some religious differences as to how Java is implemented on both systems — BlackBerry uses a licensed derivative of the Sun J2ME JVM and version 4.x implements a subset of MIDP 2.0, whereas Android’s Dalvik is an Open Source re-implementation of Java that uses a unique Google-developed bytecode that is incompatible with that of J2ME, so it cannot be certified as “true” Java. Nevertheless, from a developer perspective, the two systems are very similar in terms of skill sets that are needed to create software that would run on either device.

Still, in order to develop Android and Blackberry apps today, developers need to maintain separate code bases and separate developer platforms. However, if BlackBerry and Android ran on the same JVM, they could in fact share the same developer environment. Developers would not need to prioritize which platform to develop for — their application development target would in fact be the same.

How could this be done? Either by porting Dalvik natively to the BlackBerry OS, so that Android apps could run side by side with conventional BlackBerry apps and eventually phasing out the licensed Sun J2ME JVM over time, or by having RIM move to Android and port all of their enterprise messaging/calendaring integration services for BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) to that platform, adding any branding and UI customizations required in order to make it more “BlackBerry-like” and including the legacy J2ME JVM on the device to provide legacy app support during that transition period. In terms of level of effort, the second option would probably make a lot more sense.

There are a number of reasons why RIM might want to consider abandoning their own in-house OS for Android. For starters, both RIM and Google are facing three competitors that are encroaching on their space rather quickly — iPhone, Windows Mobile and Palm webOS, and to a certain extent in the European and Asian markets, Symbian. A strategic alliance between the two where BlackBerry becomes the premier mobile Android platform for enterprise and heavy messaging users and would include tight integration with Google’s web services would send shockwaves down Infinite Loop and Microsoft Way.

A RIM/Google alliance would not preclude the existence of other Android devices on the market, such as the T-Mobile G1, but presumably only RIM Android devices would be BES capable. RIM could also run their own Android store with apps that take specific advantage of RIM Android devices, maintaining the unique value of what makes a BlackBerry a BlackBerry.

RIM could also take advantage of Google’s massive datacenter infrastructure, and enlisting Google’s help in order to provide redundant NOCs, as opposed to the single NOC in Ottawa which they maintain now. This would render BlackBerry system outages a thing of the past, or at least much more infrequent than they occur now.

Would a RIM and Google alliance make sense and result in a “Perfect Storm” for their competitors, or are the two companies incompatible?

Original Post: http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=10181

Brilliant Must-Read!

The BNality of evil
Dean Johns
On this glorious autumn morning in Sydney, an absolute cliché of a perfect day, the air as clear as crystal and the sky a stunning blue.
By rights I should be revelling in the feeling that it’s great just to be alive.And I guess I am, in a physical sense.
But emotionally it’s another matter entirely, as with this column to write, I sit here cheerlessly confronting the cold eye of my computer screen and its mindlessly blinking cursor, struggling to strike a spark of inspiration from an uncooperative keyboard.
But I can hardly blame an innocent computer for the contrast between the brilliance of the day and the bleakness of my mood. In fact the fault is entirely my own.
Somehow I’m constitutionally incapable of the feeling that ‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world’ when the same alleged God that some imagine created this heavenly day perversely permits such hellish situations in so many other parts of the world.
Sometimes it seems that evil lurks almost everywhere on earth.
There seems no end to the pain and suffering and death that it causes, and no sign that any amount of intervention, divine or otherwise, will ever diminish it, let alone bring it to an end.
And for those of us who are driven to write or fight against it, it has an extra and especially excruciating dimension: it’s incredibly, endlessly boring.
The phrase “the banality of evil” is as apt today as it was back when Hannah Arendt coined it to describe the personality of Nazi genocide organiser Adolf Eichmann.Eichmann, she claimed, committed his atrocities not out of hatred for his victims, but out of a lack of imagination so total as to deprive him of any shred of empathy for fellow human beings.
I don’t believe that all of today’s major-league evil-doers are as motiveless as Eichmann, but they’re every bit as callous, banal and ultimately boring as he was in their insatiable cravings for power and feelings of self-importance.
Surely the most vivid embodiment of the banality of evil in the world today must be Kim Jong-Il of North Korea. A man, like his father before him, who has enslaved and starved his people in his demented quest to maintain a million-strong army and build a nuclear weapon for the single, pathetic purpose of expressing his paranoid egomania.
Then there’s Robert Mugabe (left), driven by a hatred for whites that Eichmann, according to Arendt, lacked for the Jews he slaughtered, but every bit as empty as Eichmann of any capacity for sympathy or empathy with anyone but himself and the supporters he needs to survive.
And he is as boring as every other tinpot dictator I can think of in his greed for such banalities as grand mansions, branded merchandise and shopping sprees for his stupid wife.
The leaders of Iran are another case in point, still tediously employing timeless sectarian hatred and insane religious extremism in the pursuit of sordid, mundane cravings for some shred of self-esteem.
And so it goes around the globe, such an endless parade of banality and evil as to disgrace the human race and bore us columnists - and our unfortunate readers - to tears.
Beyond banality
Of course the most crying shame of all to me, because I happen to read and write about it so much, is the chronically tedious situation in Malaysia. After more than half a century of monopolisation by Barisan Nasional (BN), the situation has gone way beyond banality to utter BNality, and seems to get more evil by the day.
The whole country is held to ransome by a bunch of people so BNal that all they can muster in the way of a slogan for a nation they’ve so strenuously kept divided all these years is a ludicrous lie like ‘1Malaysia’.
And all these so-called leaders seem to care about are BNalities like money, ridiculous titles, luxury cars, big houses, offshore holiday retreats and overseas junkets for themselves and their families.
The BNality of evil; the evil of BNality. Have you ever heard or read an utterance by a BN politician that wasn’t so dim, dull or such a litany of obfuscation and outright lies that it was anything but stupefyingly boring?

And no, fans of Dr Mahathir Mohamad (right) needn’t claim that their hero is an exception, as his every utterance is drearily, predictably false and sarcastic, and thus not a whit witty.
BNality of speech is, of course, just a symptom of BNality of thought. And just as I’ve never heard an even remotely interesting remark from a BN politician or official, nor have I seen evidence of a single creative idea.
There’s been no shortage of projects, I grant you. Like the Twin Towers, for example, which have proven a big tourist attraction. But they were built by Japanese and Korean contractors using mostly Indonesian labour, and when it came to the BNality of who paid the bill, the evil fact is that the Malaysian people did, through Petronas accounts so compromised that they’re an official state secret.
So, as with every project on which the BN government spends public funds, there’s no accounting for how much loot was siphoned-off in kickbacks, ‘commissions’, fraud and embezzlement. Just as there’s no way of telling which individuals and corporations evade tax by paying bribes in return for deep discounts.
But the greatest cost of all this venality isn’t financial, it’s social. For evil of such BNality to prosper and perpepuate itself, the populace has to be deprived of such safeguards as a proper police force, honest judiciary, trustworthy media, enlightened education system and independent civil services.
Deprivations that lead in turn to rampant corruption, uncontrolled crime, ceaseless suspicious deaths in custody, growing risk of arrest and detention without charge, heavily-skewed elections and, as recently experienced by the DAP, police harrassment of opposition politicians and supporters.
As I write this, people are being arrested in Ipoh for participating in a hunger strike to protest the recent power-grab in Perak. So at least I haven’t entirely wasted this beautiful day by spending it at the keyboard.
As long as courageous activists keep on fighting and we critics keep on typing, someday the majority of Malaysians will finally revolt against the intolerable reality - not to mention the flagrant immorality and growing illegality - of BN evil and banality.

Repost from: http://thewhisperer-lonewolf.blogspot.com/2009/05/must-read-another-brilliantly-written.html

TDM & PM Getting Divorced?

Mahathir and Najib in Divorce Court


Friday, 29 May 2009 14:55

The former PM appears about ready to have a go at yet another successor

After appearing to embrace the idea of Mahathir's "crooked bridge" proposal to replace half of the narrow, congested causeway that links Singapore with the southern state of Johor, Najib has announced he would go along with a plan favored by the Singapore government for a third bridge.

Asia Sentinel

The honeymoon between Malaysia's new prime minister, Najib Tun Razak, and the irascible 84-year-old Mahathir Mohamad, who played a major role in driving Najib's predecessor from office, is over almost before it began.

Najib, gambling that the former premier's influence is waning within the ranks of the United Malays National Organisation, has broken decisively over a number of hot-button issues with Mahathir, who held office for 22 years before stepping down in 2003 in favor of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Many of them involve a cozier relationship with the Singapore government, with which Mahathir carried on a rocky relationship.

So far, Mahathir, although said to be privately furious with Najib, has held back from attacking him publicly.

"I believe this is for a number of reasons," says a lawyer with ties to the Mahathir faction. "Remember, we are after all in a recession -- and what good would it do to try to force him out in an all-out war? But Najib is pushing the envelope by making his own mistakes. I think the die is cast, but it's not full blown war yet."

Earning Mahathir's enmity could be dangerous. Badawi, who came into office as a reformer but stumbled, was attacked by Mahathir almost from the time he became prime minister, especially after cancelling a series of Mahathir's favorite projects. He was beset by a series of other problems, including a fading economy, perceptions of rising crime and a passive personality and He led his party to disastrous elections in 2008 in which the Barisan Nasional, or national ruling coalition, lost its two-thirds hold on the national parliament for the first time since independence.

Given Badawi's weakness, it is questionable how much influence Mahathir actually had in engineering his downfall. Mahathir in 2007 left the party he had headed when the government announced he would be investigated on allegations he had rigged judicial appointments. Blasting away from the sidelines, he didn't return until April, when Badawi finally stepped down.

Nor was he especially charitable to Najib. Although he returned to share the podium with Najib at the UMNO national conclave in April, those close to him say he regards Najib as a potentially weak leader because he didn't break with Badawi soon enough. He thinks Najib is tainted by a long series of scandals and, in the words of the source, is "yellow" because he lacked the nerve to take on the opposition in a by-election in the state of Penang that is set for May 31.

Najib, according to polls, actually took office with a lower approval rating than the ill-starred Badawi. Party insiders say he recognizes his weakness and feels he has to act fast to try to get the voters to forget his weaknesses. He has cracked down hard on protesters and the opposition at the same time he has instituted measures to try to revive the economy, which shrank at a disastrous 6.2 percent annual rate in the last quarter.

After appearing to embrace the idea of Mahathir's "crooked bridge" proposal to replace half of the narrow, congested causeway that links Singapore with the southern state of Johor, Najib has announced he would go along with a plan favored by the Singapore government for a third bridge. He has also publicly endorsed the massive Iskandar project directly across the causeway in Johor over the objections of Mahathir, who famously said Singaporeans would take over the project and drive Malays out to live in the forest.

Najib has also made a series of appointments to top positions in UMNO and the government over Mahathir's objections, including provisionally naming a former close Badawi associate, Omar Ong as a non-executive director of the state oil and gas company Petronas, which observers in Kuala Lumpur view as a prelude to making him the Petronas CEO when Hassan Merican is expected to retire in 2010. Ong is a member of a group called the "fourth-floor boys," top advisors to Badawi and Badawi's son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, in particular a bête noir for Mahathir. To Mahathir's consternation, a number of the fourth-floor boys, perhaps Khairy himself, are gaining influence in Najib's government.

Despite Najib's early pledges to clean out the party and install reformers, as Mahathir has repeatedly demanded in his "Chedet" blog, Najib has also named several individuals to top UMNO party posts despite allegations that they were tainted by money politics. They include Mohd Ali Rustam, who was made a member of the UMNO Supreme Council after Ali Rustam had been suspended from competing for the job of party deputy vice president after being caught buying votes. Another is Rafidah Aziz, the long-time trade and industry minister who lost her job as head of the women's wing of the party because of allegations she had been steering contracts to members of her family.

In early April, Mahathir spoke out publicly against Najib's appointment of Mohamed Nazri Aziz as a cabinet minister and Johari Baharum as a deputy minister , whom he called "unsavory characters."

"It is quite obvious that he (Najib) does not depend upon me, for example, he appointed ministers, deputy ministers who I think don't deserve to be ministers, who are involved in corruption," he told reporters.

Most recently, on May 18 Najib announced he wouldn't lead the Barisan Nasional into contesting a by-election in the Penanti district of Penang State, where an opposition figure, Mohammad Fairu Khairuddin, quit as a state assemblyman after stepping down as Penang deputy chief minister in a spat with party leaders. Mahathir told Najib to find a candidate to go for the seat and reportedly said he would lead the campaign himself, although the opposition is extremely strong in the district and so far the Barisan has lost five out of six by-elections since disastrous national elections in March of 2008.

Najib appears to be gambling that the dyspeptic former leader's influence has waned to the point where he can't do the kind of damage to Najib that he did to Badawi. In an unsigned article that appeared last week in the Internet publication Malaysia Insider, the author said that "Pragmatism, and not bending to the will of former prime ministers, has emerged as the dominant principle behind decision-making in the early days of the Najib administration. (Najib) seeks to reconnect the Barisan Nasional government with the elusive non-Malay and younger vote bank."

Najib, the article said, fears leading the Barisan into defeat in the next general election, and that he has less than two years to win back some of the support that has evaporated to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat.

Accordingly, Najib has opened the financial services sector to multinational investors, removed affirmative action quotas for 27 sub-sectors in the services sector and taken on the emotion-laden issue of religious conversion, in which some parents who have converted to Islam have attempted to take their children with them into the new religion over the objections of their spouses. That is particularly galling to the UMNO old guard, who have never given up a single convert from Islam.

Najib faces serious challenges. In addition to the widespread perception of his own corruption in connection with billions of dollars in contracts let to UMNO cronies when he was defense minister, he has the continuing millstone of the economy around his neck. As late as two weeks ago, the stimulus package he put into place was expected to result in gross domestic product growth of plus or minus 1 percent. However, the economy slipped disastrously, by 6.2 percent year-on-year in the first quarter and Najib said Thursday that it could contract by as much as 4 to 5 percent for the full year.

And, as Mahathir has pointed out, despite his promises to rid the party of the old-guard rent-seekers that got UMNO in trouble with the wider public prior to the 2008 election, he has brought them back in growing numbers.

Original post: http://mt.m2day.org/2008/content/view/22545/84/


TDM: The Digital NWO

Tun Dr. Mahathir: “Envisioning a New World Order and its Implications on the Digital Age”

SPEECH BY

TUN DR MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD

AT THE SEOUL DIGITAL FORUM

IN SEOUL, KOREA

ON 28 MAY 2009

——————–

“Envisioning a New World Order and its Implications on the Digital Age”

1. Firstly I would like to thank the Seoul Digital Forum for this invitation to speak on Envisioning a New World Order and its implication on the Digital Age.

2. In my view envisioning is not about wishful thinking, or planning about what the future should look like.

3. Envisioning is about guessing or trying to foretell what the future is likely to be like, about predicting the future based on what we know from our observation of the happenings in the past and at present and upon the trends and where they are likely to lead us. No crystal ball will be needed for this but long experience may help.

4. For centuries now we have been living in a Eurocentric world. Our thoughts and our ideas, our values, systems and ideologies, our overall behaviour are largely due to European influence if not of European origins. The way we conduct our lives and we dress are basically European. The way we manage our economy and our Governments are European, including of course the belief that Democracy is the only form of Government that everyone must have.

5. And when the Europeans went to war with each other the whole world was dragged in. Like them we have come to believe that war is a way to settle dispute between nations. And like them we expend huge sums of money on armaments. This must have a bearing on any New World Order.

6. But not all the influence of the Europeans is bad. The greatest contribution of the Europeans to the world is the introduction of systematic and universal education. Prior to this education in even the most advanced non-European civilizations was about religion and philosophy. They were important but they did not directly lead us to progress and development. It is the Europeans who introduced what we may call secular education in which the focus is on facts and scientific truth together with mathematical accuracy rather than on spiritual and social values. True much of this knowledge originated in Asia but the separation between truth and fantasy was made by the Europeans.

7. As secular education spread throughout the world the mystery of progress and development was resolved and it became possible for the rest of the world to develop. To succeed in life one no longer had to rely on omens and fate but one can largely design the route by accessing the knowledge of the properties and the character of the resources around us.

8. Secular education is a great leveller and soon the rest of the world was able to catch up with the Europeans. Very quickly the East Asians in particular became able to do almost everything that the Europeans can do. Mastery of science, technology and mathematics enabled East Asians in particular to grow their industries and develop their countries until the gap between them and the Europeans was largely reduced. As we shall see this equalisation between the capacities of the countries of East Asia and Europe will affect the shape and character of the new world, and the New World Order.

9. When Japan was defeated in the last Great War the condition imposed by the Europeans on Japan was that it may not spend more than 1% of its GDP on its defence forces. That was 1946 when Japan was bankrupt because of the war. 1% of Japan’s GDP was practically nil. Today 1% of Japan’s GDP is probably bigger than what most European countries spend on defence. Japanese military power would therefore match its economic power and by extension its influence over the world.

10. There is no such restriction on other countries. Thus if China for example spends just 1% of its GDP on defence it would already become a great military power. The likelihood is that China would spend more than 1% on defence. Again this means that China’s influence on the world and its future would be very considerable.

11. Japan, China, South Korea, India have all become richer than in the heyday of European domination and their wealth and thus their military strength and international influence would be able to match those of the West. A military confrontation between East and West can literally destroy the whole world. This is no longer an option.

12. The European powers, in particular the United States, presently the greatest military power in the world must accept that things have changed. The old equation no longer holds true. Western hegemony cannot be sustained. Like it or not the ethnic Europeans must accept that if there is to be a New World Order, the emergence of the new powers in Asia must be given due consideration.

13. There must clearly be a sharing of power between East and West, between Europeans and non-Europeans. There is now much talk about this among the Europeans and also the Asians.

14. Ideally the world would like to see a smooth devolution into a new world order without need for confrontation and violence.

15. There has been some talk about a 2-G world, a world dominated by the United States and China. If our experience of the Cold War confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union is anything to go by, a smooth sharing of power by the two is not likely to happen.

16. The third world had only recently gained their independence. I do not think they would relish the idea of a world dominated by two great powers any more than they did a world dominated by one great power.

17. During the Cold War they had to seek protection from one or the other of the two superpowers. Will they now have to align themselves with one or the other of the 2-G powers?

18. Besides there is still Russia, a resuscitated world power. It is not going to stand on the sidelines and watch the Unites States and China shape the New World Order. It will want to play a major role and be one of those whose opinions must be sought as the new World Order is shaped.

19. If the weak nations are to be asked their preference in a New World Order, I think they would prefer there being no world powers dictating to them. They would prefer a truly democratic world centred perhaps on the United Nations with no one having veto powers. They would opt for decisions based on majority interest rather then the might of the nations. Unfortunately this is not what we can envision. The weak will still have to submit to the strong.

20. From what I think is the present situation and the trends we can envision a world that is slightly less Eurocentric but with European influence moderated somewhat by the emergence of powerful economies, and therefore military clout in Asia. If common sense prevails the transition would be gradual and smooth. But common sense has no place in international relations. The rivalry would still go on as each one of the three super powers manoeuvre to promote their interest. That is the way of the world.

21. How would this less Eurocentric World Order affect the Digital Age. The Digital Age would mature whatever the shape of the New World Order. This is because this new age has been able to resist pressures from the politically or militarily powerful. But over the years it has been noticed that the brains which move the Digital Age are very mobile and much influenced by the compensation they receive. As a result there has been an increasingly massive brain drain from the poor countries to the rich. Without doubt this will result in the poor getting poorer and the rich richer. The Digital Age is thus going to see an even more lopsided development and greater disparity between rich and poor.

22. In the rich countries the digital age brains may be employed in developing new ideas for the general good. It may also be for the development of unhealthy ideas such as the financial markets or for inventing newer weapons to kill more people more efficiently. All these are already happening of course but as the digital age develops, we can expect more abuses of the digital age brains.

23. Currently we are facing a financial and economic crisis. Some of the best brains have used the computer to work out schemes for making money without producing any goods or creating any employment. By promoting freedom of the market place they have been able to abuse the financial systems and to make literally tons of money for themselves. Unless Governments restore their power to rule, the Digital Age will bring frequent disasters to the world.

24. But of greater consequence is the implication of the Digital Age on the New World Order itself. Obviously the rich and the powerful would be able to make greater use of the knowledge of the Digital Age. This is because money would be needed to do research in the applications of the Digital Age knowledge. Digitization has enabled greater precision to be achieved in every product or application. Thus it is possible for satellites to be located in a pre-designated location in outer space and for a shuttle to dock with it even as the earth from where the shuttle-bearing rocket is fired moves in space. The mathematics of the Digital Age is clearly very precise because finding the moving space station in the vastness of space is far harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

25. Just as miraculous is the digitisation of sound and colour so that their reproduction is perfect and does not fade even over very long periods of time.

26. Cameras are now carried by satellites which can take very high resolution pictures of earthly objects including human beings. Already data on everyone is carried on microchips and electronic records. With the ability to take clear pictures from satellites there will be no privacy for anyone. The data collected on any person can be incriminating. The Government or the agency which collects these data will be in a position to blackmail.

27. It could be like George Orwell’s “1984” where everyone would be under scrutiny, where Big Brother controls everything through the information that he gets. Already we are being finger printed, undressed electronically and scanned by powerful machines, and tracked through GPS etc. Will the three big powers and the other rich nations collect and store data on people so as to control them? What we are seeing today about the war on terrorism is not very reassuring.

28. These are the implications of having a New World Order in the Digital Age or of a Digital Age affecting a New World Order.

29. Actually present day human civilizations are quite unable to cope even with the technological advances which we have already achieved. Certainly our superior knowledge of science and technology today has not created for us a world order worthy of the human race, a world order of peace and prosperity. Currently we are facing a financial and economic crisis of unprecedented proportion partly as a result of the abuse of the knowledge of the Digital Age. As the Digital Age advances, as new knowledge becomes available to more and more people, our capacity to bring order in a New World may not be adequate. The Digital Age has outstripped our civilizational capacities.

30. In envisioning the New World Order I wish I can be optimistic. Unfortunately I cannot. We are really still a primitive people. We still believe in killing people in order to solve our problems. Right at this moment scientists are busy developing newer and more efficient ways of killing people. This is the sum total of our mastery of the digital age, the age of knowledge, the age of science and technology.

31. There must be a radical change in our values and culture if we are going to see a New World Order enhanced by the advances of the Digital Age or a digital age benefiting from a New World Order.

Original post: http://bigdogdotcom.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/tun-dr-mahathir-%e2%80%9cenvisioning-a-new-world-order-and-its-implications-on-the-digital-age%e2%80%9d/


More about Google Wave

Google Wave Could Transform Net Communications
By Jennifer LeClaire
May 29, 2009 8:35AM

Google has unveiled Google Wave, which provides instant communication in multiple forms, including e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, wikis and other tools. Google Wave allows formatted text, photos, videos and even rewinds as needed. Google plans to open-source its Wave code to let developers build on it in the cloud and in mobile forms.

What do you get when you use e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, wikis and other collaboration tools as a starting point for an entirely new communications model? The answer is Google Wave.

Google previewed its latest Web-based application at the Google I/O developer's conference this week. The Google Maps team, lead by Lars and Jens Rasmussen, developed the application to allow people to communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and other tools.

Wave is the Rasmussens' answer to questions like: Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the Web today, in one smooth continuum? And what if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating nonelectronic forms? It took the brothers two years to come up with some answers that take the form of Wave.

Catching the Wave

In Google Wave you create a wave, which often starts with instant messaging, and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets and even feeds from other sources on the Web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly.

"It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave," said Lars Rasmussen, a software engineering manager at Google. "That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content -- it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use 'playback' to rewind the wave and see how it evolved."

Wave is an HTML 5 app, but it can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other Web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves. The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves. Google plans to open-source the code.

"Google envisions Wave evolving over time as an open-source project," said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. "It's somewhat analogous to Android in that it's a fairly major project that Google is going to open-source and hope that developers build on it and popularize it."

The Cloud Factor

Wave is positioned as a successor to e-mail and instant messaging, a reinvention of these tools that takes a fresh look at what people need in communication and collaboration online. It also appears to be part of a larger cloud Relevant Products/Services strategy, where computing is moving away from the desktop onto the cloud through browsers.

"The big picture is the cloud. Then one level down is Chrome as an alternative to the desktop. Then there apps that exist within the browser and the cloud that are not on the PC. Then there's the mobile component, because mobile is now an important extension for how people access content on the go," Sterling said. "There's a coherent logic behind all of this, but it's a complex shift for the end user. It will be difficult to change ingrained user behavior with e-mail and IM."

Original post: http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13100C1G0NPJ&nl=2

Better Safe Than Sorry

The Scrap Value of a Hacked PC

Computer users often dismiss Internet security best practices because they find them inconvenient, or because they think the rules don't apply to them. Many cling to the misguided belief that because they don't bank or shop online, that bad guys won't target them. The next time you hear this claim, please refer the misguided person to this blog post, which attempts to examine some of the more common -- yet often overlooked -- ways that cyber crooks can put your PC to criminal use.

hackdpc.JPG

The graphic above (click it for a larger version) shows the different reasons criminals may want access to your system. I've explained each category in more detail below:

Illicit Web Hosting

Cyber criminals commonly use hacked PCs as a host for a variety of dodgy Web hosting schemes, including:

- Spam Web sites

- Phishing Web sites

- Malware download sites

- "Warez" servers, or hosts for pirated software and movies.

- Child pornography servers

Zombie Grunt Work

Infected PCs also frequently are turned into zombies designed to carry out all sorts of monotonous, repetitive tasks for cyber crooks, such as:

- Relaying junk e-mail

- Participating in so-called denial-of-service attacks designed to extort money from Web sites by pelting them with massive amounts of bogus Web traffic if they refuse to pay protection money;

- Engaging in "click fraud," which uses zombies to gin up fake mouse clicks for networks of phony Web sites that siphon money from advertisers.

- Serving as a proxy through which bad guys route their Web traffic.

- Providing computational power that criminals use to help solve CAPTCHA challenges, the squiggly lines of numbers and letters many free Web mail services require you to solve - designed to tell humans apart from zombies.

E-Mail/Webmail Attacks

An infected PC potentially has great value to spammers and attackers beyond simply acting as a relay for junk e-mail. For example, compromised systems typically are harvested for e-mail addresses that will be sold and used in future phishing and spam attacks.

An attacker doesn't need to compromise an Internet user's computer to wreak havoc with their identity and online life. A compromised Webmail account, for example, can yield a bounty of useful information because many people often will use the same e-mail address and password for multiple services. (Even if the victim uses different passwords at each service, usually those passwords can be reset as long as the attacker has access to the victim's inbox).

Hacked Webmail accounts also frequently are used to scam the victim's friends. Sometimes, crooks will use a hijacked Webmail account to blast out tailored spam to all of the victim's contacts, usually recommending some no-name, bargain basement e-commerce site that is set up merely to steal credit and debit card information.

Another long-running scam involving hacked Webmail accounts goes like this: Scammers blast out a note to all of the victim's contacts, claiming that the victim has become stranded in some foreign country and desperately needs friends and family to wire money.

Account Credentials

Any stored credentials -- particularly user names and passwords for online services - are fair game on hacked PCs. Stolen eBay credentials often are used to abuse the victim's good reputation and used to list non-existent or stolen items for auction. Compromised Paypal records can aid in these bogus auctions as well, or drained of its funds. Credentials for voice-over-IP or Internet-based telephone services like Skype also are a hot item on underground cyber criminal forums, because they can be used to mask the caller's location and aid in a variety of scams.

Credentials that victims use to administer Web sites -- even social networking site Web pages -- can be of huge value to cyber crooks. A number of automated threats will scrape credentials that victims use to transfer files to and from any personal or professional Web sites they may administer. Stolen file transfer protocol (FTP) credentials, for example, give attackers control over the victim's site, which is often then use to host malicious programs or other illicit content that helps further a variety of online criminal schemes.

Finally, credentials that allow access to the network of the victim's employer or company can be of great interest to digital thieves. In many corporate environments, employees cannot log in remotely without having a special, password protected encryption certificate saved on their computer. Some families of malicious software -- including the Sinowal or Torpig Trojan -- will try to steal these certs from infected systems.

Virtual Goods

Virtual goods, those that have seemingly intangible value, are among the most sought-after commodities in the general hacking scene. Entire families of malware exist to harvest license keys for thousands of computer games and steal credentials that gain access to online games in which a player's worth is determined largely by the amount of virtual goods his or her character has amassed. There is a mature, multi-billion dollar market for these accounts, and the goods themselves, at least some of which is stolen from compromised PCs.

Financial Credentials

When casual Internet users think about the value of their PC to cyber crooks, they typically think stolen credit card numbers and online banking passwords. But as we have seen, those credentials are but one potential area of interest for attackers.

This is by no means an exhaustive list.

By Brian Krebs | May 26, 2009; 2:12 PM ET

Original post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/the_scrap_value_of_a_hacked_pc.html

Friday, May 29, 2009

A New Communication Platform For A New Web

Sergey Brin: Google Wave Will Set A New Benchmark For Interactivity

by Leena Rao on May 28, 2009

Google unveiled its new communication tool, Wave, this morning with a bang at Google I/O. The blogosphere is a buzz with talk of the new product, which blends email, instant messaging, collaboration and real time functionality into one platform. And Wave will open up its API soon to developers and will eventually be an open source product, letting the developer community take an active part in shaping the platform. We spoke to Wave’s creators yesterday, brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon. One question that’s is on everyone’s minds is whether Gmail and Google Apps become obsolete with the emergence of such powerful platform?

TechCrunch IT Editor Steve Gillmor caught up with Google co-founder Sergey Brin (who he also talked to about Chrome yesterday) after a Q&A session with Wave’s creators, and asked him about the future of Google Apps and more.

Brin says that Google has been using Wave internally for a couple of months and remained mum about how and when Gmail and Google Apps will be integrated. Brin points out, however; that developers of Chrome have been collaborating with Wave developers to make the platform extra speedy on the browser. Wave has also been working with the Google Web Toolkit, says Brin.

It’s apparent from the video that Brin is enthusiastic about Wave and its potential. Brin, who only works on a handful of Google’s products, handpicked Wave as a compelling project on which to focus his efforts.

Brin also says in the video that he didn’t know that Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, launched today but he did say that he has played around with Wolfram Alpha and is interested in exploring that search engine a little bit more (fun fact: Brin spent a summer interning for Stephen Wolfram).

Original Post: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/sergey-brin-google-wave-will-set-a-new-benchmark-for-interactivity/