by Declan McCullagh
July 30, 2008 10:56 AM PDT

New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's recent threats of adopting unspecified "legal remedies," potentially including criminal prosecution, against Comcast apparently worked. Comcast responded this week by saying it signed a memorandum of understanding with Cuomo's office.

United Online's NetZero also signed an agreement that deals with Usenet, the pre-Web collection of discussion groups. Cuomo, a Democrat, is pitching these agreements as a way to reduce the amount of child porn on Usenet. His latest prepared statement: "I commend the companies for working with my office to aggressively eradicate online child pornography and strongly urge all outstanding Internet service providers across New York and the nation to get on board."

His Web site even offers a handy "ISP complaint form." But in reality, Cuomo's pressure tactics have misfired. They led Time Warner Cable to pull the plug on some 100,000 Usenet discussion groups, including such hotbeds of illicit content as talk.politics and misc.activism.progressive. Verizon Communications deleted such unlawful discussion groups as us.military, ny.politics, alt.society.labor-unions, and alt.politics.democrats.

AT&T and Time Warner Cable have taken similar steps. It's not clear what the memorandum of understanding involves, and whether it would be legally enforceable (by either party) and in which circumstances. Complicating matters is that Comcast doesn't actually run its own Usenet servers. It outsources that to a third-party provider based in Austin, Texas, called Giganews, which previously confirmed to us that it had been contacted by Cuomo's office.

By Joel Hruska
July 30, 2008 - 12:42PM CT

Several years ago, Dell attempted to break into the Apple-dominated MP3 player market with a line of Creative-designed players marketed under the Dell DJ brand (a lucky Ars editor still owns one, and it continues to work flawlessly in all of its monochrome glory).

The company didn't see the response it wanted and scrapped the program back in 2006, citing competitive market pressure. The market hasn't changed much, since Apple still mostly owns it, but Dell appears to believe it has something new to offer; it will launch a new series of MP3 players within the coming months. The company currently sells several MP3 players on its site, including Microsoft's Zune, but chose not to ally with Microsoft when building its new device.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, Dell will offer a tighter, seamless experience between PC, music player, and music store. The player itself will be cheaper than Dell's previous line of Dell DJ products, will offer WiFi on at least some models, and should come in under the $100 price point. Also new this time around is Zing, a startup company Dell bought back in 2007.

Zing will serve as a comprehensive portal for a variety of Dell entertainment devices and services that will eventually encompass both consumer PCs and consumer electronics. MP3 players may be old business for Dell, but the company has never tried to launch its own media hub or an all-in-one media service.

By Egan Orion
30 July 2008, 3:58 PM

THE LINUX K Desktop Environment (KDE) community let loose upon the world its long awaited milestone KDE 4.1.0 release yesterday. As the version number implies, KDE 4.1 is built upon the rearchitected codebase that had been established previously by KDE 4.0.

That release disappointed some users because it was intentionally merely a structural skeleton, a new baseline for subsequent full-featured development, so it lacked desktop integration, features and some applications that they'd become accustomed to in previous releases culminating with KDE 3.5. Most, though not all of that, is delivered in KDE 4.1.

The developers consider 4.1 the first release of the new series that's suitable for installation by early adopters, although some features available in 3.5 are still missing. There are many improvements in 4.1, including a much improved Personal Information Manager, KDE-PIM, a video player, Dragon Player, a CD player, KSCD, a new filemanager, Dolphin, an Earth globe and streetmap, Marble, an improved window manager, KWin, and a spiffy panel controller, Plasma, to name just a few. There's a lot to discover inside KDE 4.1.

The new release also begins the extension of KDE to other operating systems, with early but not yet fully complete support for Open Solaris, Windows, and Mac OSX. KDE 4.1 is already beginning to appear in some beta releases of Linux distributions. Or the more technically inclined can acquire the source and compile it themselves on a test system.

By Yun Xie
July 30, 2008 - 06:10AM CT

Michael Leavitt heads the US Department of Health and Human Services, and he's the first Cabinet secretary to have a blog. Leavitt spoke yesterday at a Kaiser Family Foundation-sponsored panel on the impact of blogging, and he said that he began his own blog as an experiment designed “to figure out how to harness” the power of blogging.

A year into the experiment, he is still at it and believes that blogging is a "powerful engine for public policy." Blogging appeals to Leavitt because "it's more of a personal statement" that is not generated by the Department. He uses the blog to discuss public policies and personal experiences without the formality of a press conference; he "chooses the topic, not a reporter." The blog is also useful as "a shortcut in communications" for reporters and staff members.

Instead of repeating himself, he can simply ask people to look at his blog, where he lays out his thoughts on common areas of inquiry. (Tragically, despite the vast resources of the US federal government, teens in their basements throw up Wordpress sites on a daily basis that look more professional than the HHS blog. We can pay for wars all over the world; can we at least get some decent federal web design templates?)

Due to his positive experiences with blogging, Leavitt encourages his staff in "using new media tools throughout HHS," especially for reaching the youth. This has lead to developments like a partnership with YouTube that is slated for the fall, where the public will become involved in the creative process for discussing health issues. But is there such a thing as too much blogging?

by Caroline McCarthy
July 30, 2008 5:00 AM PDT

MySpace, the social network owned by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, announced Wednesday that it has hired five new members for its executive team--three senior vice presidents and two vice president--in fields ranging from engineering to customer service. They're coming from a mixed background of media and tech.

Manu Thapar, former vice president of engineering at Yahoo, has been hired as MySpace's senior vice president of engineering, a role that involves architecture and security management as well as the creation of an offshore development team. Another Yahoo veteran, Tish Whitcraft, has joined MySpace as senior vice president of customer care and will oversee the construction of a "self-help" tool for MySpace users.

On the media side, Angela Courtin has been hired as MySpace's senior vice president of marketing, entertainment, and content. She comes from MTV Networks, where she was vice president of integrated marketing. Jason Oberfest, a former biz-dev guru at Los Angeles Times Interactive, has been hired as vice president of business development to work in both deal making and developer relations.

And Abe Thomas, a former employee of eBay and its PayPal subsidiary, has been hired as vice president of online marketing. But the revolving doors at MySpace are moving fast. TechCrunch reported Tuesday that the company was looking to lay off as much as 5 percent of its workforce, which chief operating officer Amit Kapur confirmed to the blog later in the day.

by Larry Dignan
July 30th, 2008 @ 8:08 am

Intel said Wednesday that it has inked a pact with the Portuguese government to supply 500,000 Classmate PCs to elementary school students. The chip giant is part of the Magellan Initiative, Portugal’s education technology plan. It was launched by Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates and Intel Chairman Craig Barrett.

The parties said that the plan is to deliver the Classmate PCs (all resources) in the upcoming school year. Intel added that it will provide technology advice and support to Portugal to manage and promote the education technology plan. Intel’s Classmate effort competes with the One Laptop Per Child’s XO laptop (all OLPC content).

By Juan Carlos Perez
July 29, 2008

Amazon.com Inc. on Tuesday launched hosted e-commerce payment services for merchants that want to outsource all or some of their online transaction processing tasks. The two new offerings, called Checkout By Amazon and Amazon Simple Pay, are the latest services for businesses introduced by Amazon, which is best known for its massive online retailing operation.

The products join a crowded and diverse market for online payment services, which includes providers such as eBay Inc.'s PayPal unit and Google Inc. with its Google Checkout application. Amazon described Checkout By Amazon as a "complete checkout solution" equivalent to the one that the company provides at its own online store.

Among its features are Amazon's 1-Click functionality, as well as tools for managing shipping charges, sales tax, promotions, refunds, cancellations and chargebacks. Merchants can also let buyers access their Amazon.com account information to complete their purchases, as well as extend to buyers the protection of Amazon's "A to Z" transaction guarantee.

On the other hand, Amazon Simple Pay provides a number of payment products and allows customers to access Amazon.com account information on the participating merchant's Web site. Simple Pay doesn't include the broad transaction-processing features of Checkout By Amazon, such as real-time shipping cost and tax calculations and order-management capabilities.

by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
July 29th, 2008 @ 1:57 pm

Dell customers are unhappy with the BIOS patch released by Dell to counter the problem with faulty NVIDIA GPUs, and quite rightly so! Here’s just a small selection of comments left by Dell customers on the Direct2Dell blog:

“IMHO having the BIOS activate the fans sooner to compensate for a defective chipset is a band aid solution.” “Well, since this BIOS update won’t mysteriously change the die packaging material, the only real thing you can do is to extent warranty or premium support to the amount of years you wanna use the computer, and still then live with the fact that your computer could die on you any time.”

“So rather than replacing the faulty parts you are going to just turn up the fans, at the expense of battery life and noise. I would rather just leave the bios as it is and get a proper fix if the problem occurs. Even if the problem occurs out of warranty I think there is a strong case for Dell fixing it for free since there is an admitted manufacturing defect.”

“With this solution, you try to push the issue outside the customers warranty-time.. but what’s after that time? will you repair the notebooks for free?” “nice to see that a hardware issue is fixed by software update. how is a physical defect suppose to be fixed by software? time to step up to the plate dell and start offering a replacement device.”

by Steven Musil
July 29, 2008 5:00 PM PDT

With the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games a mere 10 days away, members of the media have learned that there is at least one thing they can expect not to be open: the Internet.

Despite earlier assurances that journalists would have unfettered access to the Internet at the Main Press Center and athletic venues, organizers are now backtracking, meaning that the some 5,000 reporters working in Beijing during the next several weeks won't have access to a multitude of sites such as Amnesty International or any site with Tibet in the address, according to an Associated Press report.

When Chinese officials were bidding for the right to hold the games seven years ago, they assured international organizers that there would be ''complete freedom to report.'' In April, Chinese organizers told International Olympic Committee members that Internet censorship, which is routine for China's citizens, would be lifted for journalists during the games.

However, IOC members issued a clarification Tuesday, saying that Internet freedom applied only to Web sites related to ''Olympic competitions.'' Some journalists expressed frustration at the slow download rates and even voiced suspicion that it was deliberate and intended to discourage use. ''This type of censorship would have been unthinkable in Athens, but China seems to have more formalities,'' Mihai Mironica, a journalist with ProTV in Romania, told the AP.

By Jon Stokes
July 29, 2008 - 04:15PM CT

Intel, Yahoo!, and HP have announced a joint cloud computing effort, called the Cloud Computing Test Bed, which will allow researchers from allied academic institutions and industry to and test software written for cloud infrastructure.

The idea is to provide a large cloud computing infrastructure where researchers can test distributed software at all levels of the stack, from low-level OS, storage, and networking technologies all the way up to user-facing applications. The CCTB will consist of six actual sites, ostentatiously dubbed "centers of excellence," each of which will house about 1,000 to 4,000 processor cores.

When those six initial centers are ganged together into one large cloud, the resulting machine will have a core count that should put it somewhere in the Top 20 supercomputers list, depending on the number of cores per site. (Of course, comparing a "cloud" to anything in the Top 20 list is apples-to-oranges on any number of levels, but I bring it up to give a sense of the size of the core count.)

With Intel and HP providing the hardware, Yahoo! will contribute much of the open-source software that the testbed will run initially. Apache Hadoop—an open-source implementation of Google's MapReduce that's used by Yahoo!'s search engine—and the parallel programming language Pig are both mentioned as Yahoo! contributions.

By Nick Farrell
29 July 2008, 7:53 AM

WANNABE GOOGLE KILLER Cuil's first day in the search engine playground turned out to be a disaster. While the new search engine was high in the list of Google's Trends listings, for most of the day the site was off-line. The on-again oh-look-its-off-again search engine kept turning up pages that were empty other than the words "cuil shuttered.png" and "cuilfail4.jpg".

Users also moaned that search results were inaccurate. A quick search on the name 'Nick Farrell" [who he? Ed] showed my stories, or books, next to pictures that had nothing to do with me. Then the other Nick Farrell, the one who people are actually interested in seeing his sex tape, had a couple of INQ pictures beside his name. The word "penguins" or "failure" returned zero results, although we can't understand what inspired punters to type those words in. CrunchGear notes that culi.com leads to an Italian porn outfit, but we couldn't possibily investigate that further.

July 29, 2008
By Elizabeth Montalbano

With the Internet increasingly taking on the role of the PC operating system and the growing prevalence of virtualization technologies, there will be a day when the Microsoft Windows client OS as it's been developed for the past 20-odd years becomes obsolete.

Microsoft seems to be preparing for that day with an incubation project code-named Midori, which seeks to create a componentized, non-Windows OS that will take advantage of technologies not available when Windows first was conceived, according to published reports. Although Microsoft won't comment publicly on what Midori is, the company has confirmed that it exists.

Several reports -- the most comprehensive to date published on Tuesday by Software Development Times -- have gone much further than that. That report paints Midori as an Internet-centric OS, based on the idea of connected systems, that largely eliminates the dependencies between local applications and the hardware they run on that exist with a typical OS today.

The report claims Midori is an offshoot of Microsoft Research's Singularity OS, which creates "software-isolated processes" to reduce the dependencies between individual applications, and between the applications and the OS itself.

By Sharon Gaudin
July 28, 2008

Gateway will no longer be selling computers directly to customers. The company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Acer Inc., will no longer sell PCs online through its Web site. Customers will have to buy them through retail channels such as Best Buy, Circuit City and Costco.

"We are shifting Gateway's distribution method to better align with Acer's successful global strategy, which was built upon an indirect model," said Mark Hill, a general manager at Acer Group U.S., in a statement. "As the only top-tier PC company without a competing U.S. direct sales force, our commitment to the channel is unparalleled in the industry."

Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, said the move could be a positive and a negative for Gateway's consumers. As Gateway competes head-to-head against other vendors for space on the shelves of major retailers, the company may be pushed to lower its prices to compete for market and mind share, Olds noted.

However, consumers may no longer be able to special-order specific configurations like they would have from a vendor selling directly. Acer announced almost a year ago that it was going to acquire Gateway Inc. in a deal worth $710 million. J.T. Wang, Acer's chairman, called the move the biggest acquisition in Acer's 30-year history.

By Egan Orion
29 July 2008, 9:01 AM

PRINTER INK company and leading PC vendor HP has put the lie to Microsoft's claims that Vista has sold over 100 million copies and is flying off the shelves even faster than XP. At the Australian launch of new business notebook models, HP revealed how Microsoft is twisting still strong XP shipment numbers to count them as Vista sales.

"From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with an XP licence," said Jane Bradburn, a marketing manager for HP Australia. "However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today." Therefore the Vole's claims for high Vista sales figures are merely so much steer manure.

The major PC vendors are still preloading Windows XP, but Microsoft is counting those XP preloads as Vista sales. That's not looking like its about to turn around any time soon, either. "Looking into the crystal ball, I don't think businesses will see much value in upgrading to Vista until late next year, and even so, Microsoft will probably have come out with something else by then," said Rob Kingston, a group manager for HP Australia marketing.

The Vole's stance is that it will no longer allow major PC vendors to preload XP after next January. But Jerel Chong, an HP Australia commercial notebooks marketing development manager, said that the company is already in discussions with Microsoft about pushing back its XP cutoff date.

by Christopher Dawson
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:23 pm

This is just a quick followup to my post on Google Knol, a slick new service from Google that lacks the breadth of Wikipedia, but seems intent on compensating in verifiable depth.

Comments were mixed, ranging from agreement with my position that, pedagogically at least, Knol is already on its way to pedia superiority, to concerns over bias in Google products in general. However, a couple of reader comments were not only worth a chuckle, but struck me as very interesting assessments of the Wikipedia family of sites. User lmsweetapple wrote:

Because I am a sci-fi geek and he thought it up first, I am disappointed that BBC and Douglas Addams H2G2 site never caught on. The best thing we can teach our students in this over info world is how to be critical consumers of education. Darn fine point, right? User dave.leigh took the cake with his response, though: Ah, but the IDEA caught on…It’s called Wikipedia. The big difference is that the entry on “Earth” has more than two words.

Now if we can just put Wikipedia in an offline format on a Kindle, expand the entry on the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster (which is actually fairly complete and, notably, not covered by Google Knol), and stamp the words “Don’t Panic” on the Kindle, we’d almost be there!