Volume 15, Issue 35        Atari Online News, Etc.       September 6, 2013   
                                                                           
                                                                              
                  Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2013
                            All Rights Reserved

                          Atari Online News, Etc.
                           A-ONE Online Magazine
                Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
                      Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
                       Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor


                       Atari Online News, Etc. Staff

                        Dana P. Jacobson  --  Editor
                   Joe Mirando  --  "People Are Talking"
                Michael Burkley  --  "Unabashed Atariophile"
                   Albert Dayes  --  "CC: Classic Chips"
                         Rob Mahlert  --  Web site
                Thomas J. Andrews  --  "Keeper of the Flame"


                           With Contributions by:

                                Fred Horvat



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                                  =~=~=~=



A-ONE #1535                                                 09/06/13

   ~ NSA Cracked Encryption! ~ People Are Talking!     ~ NSA Leak Scariest!
   ~ Online Privacy Concerns ~ Pats Deploy Free W-Fi!  ~ Video Games Down!  
   ~ Facebook Hashtags Fail! ~ Copyright Czar New Digs ~ Heartbeat = Password!
   ~ Six Strikes Law A Bust! ~ Web Killing Admissions? ~ Yahoo Unveils Logo!  

                  -* Bushnell "Cynical" Over Games *-
               -* Xbox One Pre-order Supply Sold Out! *-
           -* Google Wants Right To Keep Scanning Gmail! *-



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->From the Editor's Keyboard              "Saying it like it is!"
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We hope that you had a terrific long Labor Day weekend!!  It was quiet here,
but fairly relaxing for a change.  A little bit of barbecuing, as is a
prerequisite for this holiday - the unofficial end of the summer.  I really
can't believe that we're already into September!  But, there's not much
that one can really do about it.

Until next time...



                                  =~=~=~=



->In This Week's Gaming Section  - Atari Founder 'Cynical' Over Games!
  """""""""""""""""""""""""""""    Microsoft: Most Xbox One Pre-order Supply Sold Out
                                   Microsoft Works To Save Face After Xbox Backlash!
                                   And more!


        
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->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News   -  The Latest Gaming News!
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        Microsoft Says Most Xbox One Pre-order Supply Sold Out


Retail stores in many markets have run out of Microsoft Corp's Xbox One
consoles available for pre-orders, a senior company executive said, ahead
of a major clash with Sony Corp's new lower-priced Playstation 4 this
November.

Microsoft's first new gaming console in eight years will go on sale
November 22 in 13 countries, Yusuf Mehdi, vice president of marketing,
strategy and business for the Xbox, said in an interview.

That will put it one week behind the PlayStation 4 in the United States
but ahead in many European countries where Sony's first new console in
seven years is slated to go on sale on November 29.

The third-generation Xbox marks Microsoft's strongest push so far to
dominate consumers' living rooms with an array of exclusive game and media
content.

It has gone into full production and pre-orders have so far outpaced the
available supply to retail stores in most markets.

"We have more pre-orders than any other Xbox console releases in history,"
Mehdi said, adding that the company would "enable some incremental,
additional units for the day one release." He declined to give further
details on the pre-orders.

The PlayStation 4, priced $100 lower than the Xbox One at $399, had more
than 1 million pre-orders worldwide, Sony said last month.

The U.S. company is sticking to November 22 for its U.S. launch date as it
is the anniversary of the 2005 launch of the Xbox 360, which helped
Microsoft take the lead in the then-thriving industry. The gaming hardware
industry has since lost much ground to casual gaming on smartphones and
other mobile devices.

In Europe, Microsoft has struck a partnership with Electronic Arts to
bundle its "FIFA 14" title from its popular soccer game franchise for free
with pre-ordered consoles.

Mehdi said an upgraded Kinect motion sensor, cloud-gaming services and a
lift in the consoles processing power to 1.75 gigahertz from 1.6 gigahertz
would differentiate the Xbox One from its rivals.

The 13 markets set for a November launch are Australia, Austria, Brazil,
Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the United
Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand.

The launch has been delayed in some markets until 2014 to work on
customizing the user interface and translating software to native
languages. These markets include Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands,
Norway, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland.



             Microsoft Works To Save Face After Xbox Backlash


When it comes to hyping next-generation hardware, the video game industry
doesn't typically opt for simplicity. However, during a presentation at
the GameStop Expo in Las Vegas to promote the upcoming Xbox One console
last week, a no-frills, old-school approach is exactly what Microsoft
employed when confronted with a convention room full of passionate gamers.

There were no flashy videos, sensational demonstrations or celebrity
appearances. Instead, Xbox Live programming director Larry "Major Nelson"
Hryb candidly took questions on stage from the crowd for 30 uninterrupted
minutes, a refreshing reprieve considering the backlash Microsoft has
continued to endure since unveiling the Xbox One in May.

"Look, at Xbox, we really care about the community," Hryb replied when
asked point-blank how Microsoft would win back consumers. "We're very
focused on what is right for gamers. Everybody at Xbox is a gamer. It's
not like we just show up, do our work and go home. We want to make this
the best game system that you are going to own for the next 10 years."

The presentation was apparently the first stop of an apology tour for
Microsoft, which originally said the successor to the Xbox 360 would be
required to go online every 24 hours and limit how users could access
previously purchased games. A month later, citing feedback from consumers,
Microsoft Corp. announced it decided not to implement such restrictions.

Microsoft's atypical about-face continued last month when the Redmond,
Wash., company declared that an updated version of its Kinect sensor,
which detects motion and voice, would no longer be required to operate
the Xbox One. That turnabout came after the company, at events like the
Electronic Entertainment Expo, defended how integral Kinect was to the
Xbox One.

Hryb said he'll embark on a cross-country tour this month, making stops in
U.S. cities to similarly assuage concerns about the next-gen console 
just like he did at last week's GameStop Expo. The 180-degree reversals
and low-key repentance are unprecedented moves for a company like
Microsoft, which once hired Cirque du Soleil to theatrically unmask the
first Kinect.

Microsoft announced this week that the Xbox One will debut Nov. 22  a
week after Sony Corp. unleashes its PlayStation 4 console on Nov. 14. The
PS4 will cost $399 and feature comparable computing power, high-definition
graphics and online features to the Xbox One. Microsoft's console is
pricier at $499, but the system comes bundled with a Kinect sensor.

"I've pretty much made up my mind that I'm getting a PS4 and not an
Xbox," said Jeff Lane, a gamer from Reno, Nev., who paid $100 for VIP
access to the GameStop Expo. "I know Microsoft has changed course on a
lot of their unfounded policies since they announced the Xbox One, but
what's to stop them from just implementing them next year after the
console is out?"

The worries come at an important time for the gaming industry, which has
seen sales slide in recent years as Microsoft's 7-year-old Xbox 360 and
Sony's 6-year-old PlayStation 3 have entered their golden years. The
arrival of Nintendo's Wii U last year didn't invigorate game sales, which
research firm NPD Group said have dropped 9 percent over last year.

"Education is job one," said GameStop CEO Paul Raines at last week's
event, which primarily served as the training grounds for the retailer's
5,000 managers. "We have thousands of people in classrooms upstairs
receiving training on the Xbox One and others on the PS4. We're trying to
arm our staff on how these devices will be different and how they'll
work."

Raines said GameStop expects this fall's debut of the PS4 and Xbox One to
make for the biggest console launch in history, while Microsoft announced
that pre-orders for the third-generation Xbox have sold out faster than
both the original Xbox and Xbox 360, which was released in 2005 and has
been the best-selling console for the past two years.

No doubt Microsoft could use a boost to its bottom line in the coming
months. The company's stock fell this week after announcing it was
spending $7.2 billion to buy Finnish smartphone maker Nokia in an effort
to better compete in the hot mobile market. And Microsoft absorbed a $900
million charge in its last quarter to account for the flop of its Surface
tablet, which runs a version of its Windows operating system.

David Wesley, author of "Innovation and Marketing in the Video Game
Industry," believes Microsoft is headed in the right direction with its
refocused Xbox One strategy. Wesley and other analysts don't expect the
fallout from this year's botched unveiling of the Xbox One to ultimately
affect sales or the public's perception of the console this holiday
season.

"The reality is these concerns likely won't affect Microsoft's marketing
of the Xbox One," said Wesley. "The challenge for Microsoft is conveying
the value of the console without overhyping aspects that don't really
meet expectations. They don't want to create such high expectations that
people are letdown when the console is actually launched."



   Microsoft Will Continue To Support Xbox 360 for Three More Years


Microsoft will release the Xbox One on November 22nd, but that doesnt
mean the Xbox 360 will stop getting support. In fact, Xbox CMO Yusuf Medhi
said during the Citi Global Technology Conference that Microsoft is
shipping more games than ever and the Xbox Live subscription service is
still growing. Eurogamer reports that he even went so far as to call the
console incredibly profitable as it nears the last years of its life
cycle.

As proof of just how much time the Xbox 360 has left, Medhi claimed that
over 100 new games will ship for the 8-year-old console. Microsoft expects
multiplatform games to perform very well for buyers who have yet to make
the jump to the next-generation Xbox One. This is to be expected,
especially considering that many of the Xbox One launch titles will also
make their way to the Xbox 360.

If you look at 360 that platform lasted for seven to eight years and its
going to go for another three years, he explained. Its incredibly
profitable now in the tail. Some of these things take some time in the
launch year in which you invest, and then they they play out over time.



Q2 2013 US Spending at $2.88 Billion, Digital Sales Contributed $1.77 Billion


Down 3% when compared to the $2.97 billion spent on video game content in
the United States during the second quarter of 2012, the second quarter
of 2013 (April  June) saw sales of $2.88 billion, according to a report
by the NPD. When you add together spending from accessories, hardware,
and total content, it actually went down 9%, which they contribute to the
decline in hardware sales as we draw nearer to the PS4 launch on November
15th and Xbox One on November 22nd in the US.

For a breakdown, $769 million was spent on new game software (including
PC), $343 million was spent on other physical forms of content (used and
rental), and digital content accounted for $1.77 billion.

Liam Callahan, Industry Analyst at The NPD Group, had this to say about
the sales totals:

    The decrease in new physical spending is partly due to the decline in
the number of new SKUs released at retail, (with 37% fewer new SKUs in Q2
2013 compared to Q2 2012) which is to be expected as developers,
publishers and consumers alike prepare for the next hardware generation.
Increases in digital format spending offset nearly all the losses from the
declines in physical format spending, with digital full game downloads and
downloadable content spending experiencing a combined 27 percent increase
(when compared to Q212). Spending increases occurred across both video
games and PC games in the digital format.



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->A-ONE Gaming Online       -       Online Users Growl & Purr!
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                      Atari Founder 'Cynical' Over Games


The founder of the groundbreaking video games manufacturer Atari has said
modern consoles with hefty pricetags "may be disappointing" to gamers.

Nolan Bushnell, whose Atari 2600 paved the way for cartridge plug-in games
in the 1970s, said the small "incremental improvements" in consoles such
as the PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One did not justify the 400 dollars
(256) they sell for.

The 70-year-old said he was "a little bit cynical" and did not believe the
arguments given by modern games developers that " my photographic reality
is better than your photographic reality".

He said: "I look at the games today and they're so damn good that the
incremental improvement, I'm not sure is worth 400 bucks - so I think they
may be disappointing."

The pioneering entrepreneur also said he feared Nintendo, whose character
Super Mario has been adored by fans for decades, may be left behind in the
race between the major computer games manufacturers.

While Mr Nolan praised the original Wii, he said: "I think the Wii U is a
terrible product, and I think Nintendo's going to be struggling.

"The standalone game systems, the handheld, I think that's over for them.

"I don't see their consoles having a significant place in the marketplace
right now."

He added: "If I were Nintendo, I'd be scratching my head."



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                           A-ONE's Headline News
                   The Latest in Computer Technology News
                       Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson



            Study Finds Online Privacy Concerns on the Rise


Lynn Boyden, a college professor in Los Angeles who teaches website
design, says she has developed two identities online: a public one for
her professional life and a private one that only a few close friends can
access. She tries to block advertising trackers when she can and limits
what personal data might wind up on public sites.

It's an approach that she says works, although it takes time and
attention.

"It's a sliding scale," said Boyden of what information she chooses to
share. "Some things are and should be private."

Americans might be sharing more personal information online than ever
through social networking sites and email. But they also want to better
control who can see it, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew
Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.

The study reported that privacy concerns among Americans are on the rise,
with 50 percent of Internet users saying they are worried about the
information available about them online, up from 33 percent in 2009.
Meanwhile, 86 percent of people surveyed have tried at least one technique
to hide their activity online or avoid being tracked, such as clearing
cookies or their browser history or using encryption.

While trying to avoid snooping  at least in some circumstances  is now
commonplace, people cite varying reasons for doing so. About one-third
said they had tried to conceal their activity from hackers or criminals,
while 28 percent have tried to block advertisers. Others said they wanted
to keep information private from family members or spouses, employers or
the government.

"These findings reinforce the notion that privacy is not an all-or-nothing
proposition for Internet users," said Mary Madden, a senior researcher at
Pew. "People choose different strategies for different activities, for
different content, to mask themselves from different people, at different
times in their lives. What they clearly want is the power to decide who
knows what about them."

Abby Drumm of Indianapolis and Dennis Wingo of Mountain View, Calif., are
examples of people who want precise control over their information but
for different reasons.

Drumm, a 20-year-old junior in college, said she isn't worried about
advertisers or government spies digging into her digital life. She's
mostly worried about offending family members. Drumm said she was
confronted twice as a teenager about blog and Twitter posts that were
perhaps "not family appropriate" but something she had assumed only close
friends were reading.

Now, she says she has taken various steps to hide her online activity so
fewer people can see what she posts or find her on various social
networks.

Wingo, who owns an aerospace company, said his concern is the aggressive
action being taken by the government, advertisers and hackers to invade
consumers' privacy online. He says that consumers shouldn't have to opt
out of advertising tracking and that businesses should pay him for
anything they acquire about him online. He also says the government
should have to encounter the same legal hurdles to read a person's email
as it does a private letter or document inside someone's house, which
isn't the case because of outdated electronic privacy laws.

"Just because we're on the Internet doesn't mean we don't have rights,"
Wingo said. "That's a part of public policy that has seriously lacked."

The study found that 68 percent of people agreed that the law is
insufficient to protect their privacy.

Boyden agreed that more could be done to protect consumer privacy. But
because the Internet is largely an unregulated global enterprise, she
thinks it's probably more practical to start with educating people on
basic steps they can take to protect themselves.

"There's a lot of gray area in privacy," she said. "And people's comfort
levels are different."

The Pew study, done with help from Carnegie Mellon University, is based
on data from 792 Internet and smartphone users contacted by telephone by
Princeton Survey Research Associates International from July 11-14. The
margin of error is 3.8 percentage points.



                      NSA Cracked Most Online Encryption


The National Security Agency, working with the British government, has
secretly been unraveling encryption technology that billions of Internet
users rely upon to keep their electronic messages and confidential data
safe from prying eyes, according to published reports based on internal
U.S. government documents.

The NSA has bypassed or altogether cracked much of the digital encryption
used by businesses and everyday Web users, according to reports Thursday
in The New York Times, Britain's Guardian newspaper and the nonprofit news
website ProPublica. The reports describe how the NSA invested billions of
dollars since 2000 to make nearly everyone's secrets available for
government consumption.

In doing so, the NSA built powerful supercomputers to break encryption
codes and partnered with unnamed technology companies to insert "back
doors" into their software, the reports said. Such a practice would give
the government access to users' digital information before it was
encrypted and sent over the Internet.

"For the past decade, NSA has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to
break widely used Internet encryption technologies," according to a 2010
briefing document about the NSA's accomplishments meant for its UK
counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. Security
experts told the news organizations such a code-breaking practice would
ultimately undermine Internet security and leave everyday Web users
vulnerable to hackers.

The revelations stem from documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden, who sought asylum in Russia this summer. His leaks, first
published by the Guardian, revealed a massive effort by the U.S.
government to collect and analyze all sorts of digital data that Americans
send at home and around the world.

Those revelations prompted a renewed debate in the United States about the
proper balance between civil liberties and keeping the country safe from
terrorists. President Barack Obama said he welcomed the debate and called
it "healthy for our democracy" but meanwhile criticized the leaks; the
Justice Department charged Snowden under the federal Espionage Act.

Thursday's reports described how some of the NSA's "most intensive
efforts" focused on Secure Sockets Layer, a type of encryption widely
used on the Web by online retailers and corporate networks to secure
their Internet traffic. One document said GCHQ had been trying for years
to exploit traffic from popular companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft
and Facebook.

GCHQ, they said, developed "new access opportunities" into Google's
computers by 2012 but said the newly released documents didn't elaborate
on how extensive the project was or what kind of data it could access.

Even though the latest document disclosures suggest the NSA is able to
compromise many encryption programs, Snowden himself touted using
encryption software when he first surfaced with his media revelations in
June.

During a Web chat organized by the Guardian on June 17, Snowden told one
questioner that "encryption works." Snowden said that "properly
implemented strong crypto systems" were reliable, but he then alluded to
the NSA's capability to crack tough encryption systems. "Unfortunately,
endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find
ways around it," Snowden said.

It was unclear if Snowden drew a distinction between everyday encryption
used on the Internet  the kind described in Thursday's reports  versus
more-secure encryption algorithms used to store data on hard drives and
often requires more processing power to break or decode. Snowden used an
encrypted email account from a now-closed private email company, Lavabit,
when he sent out invitations to a mid-July meeting at Moscow's
Sheremetyevo International Airport.

The operator of Lavabit LLC, Ladar Levison, suspended operations of the
encrypted mail service in August, citing a pending "fight in the 4th
(U.S.) Circuit Court of Appeals." Levison did not explain the pressures
that forced him to shut the firm down but added that "a favorable
decision would allow me to resurrect Lavabit as an American company."

The government asked the news organizations not to publish their stories,
saying foreign enemies would switch to new forms of communication and make
it harder for the NSA to break. The organizations removed some specific
details but still published the story, they said, because of the "value
of a public debate regarding government actions that weaken the most
powerful tools for protecting the privacy of Americans and others."

Such tensions between government officials and journalists, while not
new, have become more apparent since Snowden's leaks. Last month,
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said that British government officials
came by his newspaper's London offices to destroy hard drives containing
leaked information. "You've had your debate," one UK official told him.
"There's no need to write any more."



               Why The Latest NSA Leak Is the Scariest of All


The National Security Agency programs revealed yesterday (Sept. 5) in
three media reports were perhaps the most important revelations yet this
summer, and have profound implications for everyone who uses the
Internet.

The reports make clear that the NSA and its British counterpart Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), have been methodically undermining the
vast encryption-based "web of trust" that makes possible secure online
financial transactions, communications and other sensitive transmissions.

The spy agencies' activities have gone on for more than a decade. Like a
silent but pervasive cancer, they have penetrated and weakened every
corner of the Internet.

"Not only does the worst possible hypothetical ... appear to be true,"
wrote Johns Hopkins cryptographer Matthew Green on his blog last night,
"but it's true on a scale I couldn't even imagine."

"The companies that build and manage our Internet infrastructure, the
companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the
companies that host our data: We can no longer trust them," wrote American
encryption expert Bruce Schneier on the website of the British newspaper
The Guardian.

The surveillance programs, named "Manassas," "Bullrun" and "Edgehill"
after battles in the American and English civil wars, not only built
powerful computers to crack encryption protocols.

They also coerced technology companies into handing over encryption keys,
infiltrated NSA and GCHQ personnel onto corporate staffs, broke into the
computer servers of uncooperative companies to steal information and
ensured that some companies built "backdoors" into their technology so
that the spy agencies would always have access.

Perhaps most egregiously of all, the NSA and GCHQ deliberately poisoned
publicly distributed encryption standards, used by hundreds of millions
of people across the world every day, so that the standards would be
secretly  but fatally  flawed.

"The (actually substantial) goodwill that NSA built up in the public
crypto community over the last two decades was wiped out today," tweeted
University of Pennsylvania cryptography expert Matt Blaze.

The implications are that, if they wanted to, the spy agencies could
access nearly every Internet-based purchase, money transfer, email,
Internet phone call, instant message or file transfer made by anyone,
anywhere.

The programs were revealed by documents provided in June to The Guardian
by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who has since taken refuge in
Russia.

The Guardian, which has come under pressure from GCHQ to stop publishing
Snowden material, shared the documents with The New York Times and the
American nonprofit online outlet Pro Publica.

All three publications simultaneously posted stories on their websites
yesterday afternoon.

The media outlets, wary of undermining national security in both
countries, did not specify which encryption protocols have been
compromised. (The spy agencies had asked that the stories not be
published at all.)

But at least one has already been identified: Dual Elliptic Curve
Deterministic Random Bit Generator, or Dual_EC_DRBG, a random-number
generator developed by the NSA and endorsed by the U.S. federal
government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in
2007. (Random-number generators are essential to the operation of many
encryption protocols.)

That same year, Schneier noted that Dual_EC_DRBG was subtly flawed in a
way that permitted the holder of a secret key  an unknown numerical
constant  to completely undermine encryption protocols based on it.

"Not only is [Dual_EC_DRBG] a mouthful to say, it's also three orders of
magnitude slower than its peers. It's in the standard only because it's
been championed by the NSA," Schneier wrote in a November 2007 Wired
article. "We have no way of knowing whether an NSA employee working on his
own came up with the constants  and has the secret numbers."

Schneier, a source for some Tom's Guide articles, revealed yesterday that
he has been helping The Guardian analyze the Snowden documents, and for
that purpose had even bought a new computer that "has never been connected
to the Internet."

"What I took away from reading the Snowden documents was that if the NSA
wants in to your computer, it's in. Period," Schneier wrote in an opinion
piece published on the Guardian website yesterday.

On the Guardian site, Schneier offered advice to readers seeking to keep
their data private: Use the anonymizing Internet service Tor, encrypt
emails and other communications and use open-source encryption software
instead of commercial encryption products.

"My guess is that most encryption products from large US companies have
NSA-friendly backdoors," Schneier wrote, "and many foreign ones probably
do as well."

Yet even Schneier's informed recommendations may be only hopeful guesses.
Because the Snowden documents did not name all the encryption protocols,
pieces of software and technology companies compromised by the NSA and
GCHQ, few people know what's safe and what's not.

Tor only offers partial security, and the Times' story implied that the
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) open-source security standard, which underlies
nearly all secure Web transactions, had been compromised.

Likewise, the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) open-source encryption standard,
which Schneier also recommended, is so old, so widely used and was once
such an irritant to the U.S. government that it would be first on a list
of things for the NSA to crack.

However, just because the NSA and GCHQ could be watching you, it doesn't
mean they are.

"Assume that while your computer can be compromised, it would take work
and risk on the part of the NSA  so it probably isn't," wrote Schneier.

It's likely some of the newer open-source technology, such as the
Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 Web-security standard (meant to replace
SSL but not yet widely adopted), or the free RedPhone and Secure Text
Android apps, are not compromised. Their code is openly available for
expert review and revision.

It's also likely that closed-source technology developed by major U.S. or
British corporations has been compromised. The paranoid rants dating back
to the 1990s about NSA backdoors in Microsoft software or Intel chips
suddenly make sense.

Even the story published last month by the German magazine Die Zeit, which
suspected that Microsoft's Trusted Computing chips were secret NSA
backdoors, and which we dismissed as exaggerated, no longer seems
unreasonable.

"I'm no longer the crank," wrote Green on his blog yesterday, referring to
his own speculation about NSA activities. "I wasn't even close to cranky
enough."

The NSA and GCHQ will argue that undermining every possible piece of
encryption and security is necessary for the greater good of keeping the
U.S. and Britain free from terrorism, and that their adversaries in Russia
and China are trying to do the same thing. (Some intelligence experts
think Snowden has been a Russian agent all along.)

"Throughout history, nations have used encryption to protect their
secrets, and today, terrorists, cybercriminals, human traffickers and
others also use code to hide their activities," the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, said in a statement
today (Sept. 6) and posted on Pro Publica's website. "Our intelligence
community would not be doing its job if we did not try to counter that.
 The fact that NSA's mission includes deciphering enciphered
communications is not a secret, and is not news."

"The stories published yesterday, however, reveal specific and classified
details about how we conduct this critical intelligence activity," the
statement said. "Anything that yesterdays disclosures add to the ongoing
public debate is outweighed by the road map they give to our adversaries
about the specific techniques we are using to try to intercept their
communications in our attempts to keep America and our allies safe and to
provide our leaders with the information they need to make difficult and
critical national security decisions."

But the collateral damage from these programs may be worse than a
terrorist attack. From now on, suspicion will be cast on all products from
major U.S. technology companies  the key players in an industrial sector
in which the U.S. is trying to maintain dominance.

Why should consumers, business or foreign governments trust software from
Microsoft or McAfee, hardware from Intel or Cisco, or anything from
Apple? Why buy American when cheaper Chinese products are no less secure?

A statement made a month ago by Ladar Levison, founder of the small secure
email provider Lavabit, which shut down in response to government
pressure, has even more resonance today.

"I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to
a company with physical ties to the United States," Levison said in a note
explaining the Lavabit closure.



           Google Argues for Right To Continue Scanning Gmail


Attorneys suing Google say the firm violates privacy and takes personal
property by electronically scanning the contents of people's Gmail
accounts and then targeting ads to them.

"This company reads, on a daily basis, every email that's submitted, and
when I say read, I mean looking at every word to determine meaning," said
Texas attorney Sean Rommel, who is co-counsel suing Google.

But in a federal court hearing Thursday in San Jose, Google argued that
the case should be dismissed, and that "all users of email must
necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated
processing."

Judge Lucy Koh said she would consider Google's request to terminate the
case, but she said she is also interested in scheduling a trial for next
year, indicating she is unlikely to dismiss. She did not say when she
would decide.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of 10 individuals, is expected to be
certified as a class action and is widely seen as a precedent-setting
case for other email providers.

The plaintiffs say Google "unlawfully opens up, reads, and acquires the
content of people's private email messages" in violation of California's
privacy laws and federal wiretapping statutes. The lawsuit notes that the
company even scans messages sent to any of the 425 million active Gmail
users from non-Gmail users who never agreed to the company's terms.

And Rommel said "the data that's being amassed by this company" could be
used for more than just targeting advertising, although the parts of the
lawsuit discussing what more Google might be doing with private
information is currently under seal.

"The injury is two-fold: the privacy invasion and the loss of property.
Google is taking people's property because they can get it for free as
opposed to paying for it," Rommel said.

Scrutinizing Google's privacy policy, Judge Koh noted that it doesn't
specify that Google is scanning Gmail when it describes the type of
information it's collecting.

"Why wouldn't you just say 'the content of your emails?'" she asked.

Google attorney Whitty Somvichian said that the company is attempting to
have a single privacy policy for all of its services, meaning it didn't
separately reference every single product.

But he said it's "inconceivable" that someone using a Gmail account would
not be aware that the information in their email would be known to Google.

Google has repeatedly described how it targets its advertising based on
words that show up in Gmail messages. For example, the company says if
someone has received a lot of messages about photography or cameras then
it might display an advertisement from a local camera store. Google says
the process is fully automated, "and no humans read your email..."

"Users, while they're using their Google Gmail account, have given Google
the ability to use the emails they send and receive for providing that
service," Somvichian said in court. "They have not assumed the risk that
Google will disclose their information and they fully retain the right to
delete their emails."

Privacy advocates have long questioned the practice, and were closely
watching the lawsuit.

"In this Gmail case Google is trying to argue that its technology is
exempt from privacy and wiretap laws. If they win, it will set a horrible
precedent that they will try to apply to other Google technologies
greatly threatening consumers' privacy rights," Consumer Watchdog Privacy
Project director John Simpson said on Thursday.



Former White House 'Copyright Czar' Appointed CEO of Powerful Tech Lobby Group


Victoria Espinel, who until recently served as the White House's first
intellectual property enforcement coordinator, will now head one of the
most powerful trade groups in the tech industry. She's been tapped to
become the new president and CEO of The Software Alliance (or BSA)
starting September 3rd. In her new role, she'll be tasked with pushing
the anti-piracy interests of major players like Microsoft, Dell, Apple,
Oracle, and Intel. And while the BSA spends a large part of its time
lobbying Congress and other governments to push that agenda, Espinel will
be barred from engaging in such practices herself  at least initially.
According to Politico, an ethics pledge Espinel took to secure her
"copyright czar" position under President Obama prevents her from
lobbying for at least two years.

During nearly four years at the White House, Espinel took aggressive
strides to combat piracy. She coordinated with federal authorities to
carry out a large number of domain seizures, effectively shutting down
websites responsible for illegally streaming live sporting events and
selling counterfeit drugs. She also helped craft the controversial
"six-strikes" policy that has seen adoption among all major US internet
providers. The rules authorize ISPs to punish users caught stealing
copyrighted content with slower internet speeds or service disruptions.
Those measures earned Espinel a favorable rapport with record labels,
Hollywood studios, and software vendors.

But she also drew cheers among internet activists when the White House
came out in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA); Espinel
co-authored a letter citing the administration's concerns with the bill.
President Obama has yet to fill Espinel's former role after she vacated
the post two weeks ago.



Six Strikes Copyright Alert System Has Done Absolutely Nothing To Stop Piracy


After a great deal of controversy and several extensive delays, the
anti-piracy Copyright Alert System was finally implemented this February
for five of leading Internet service providers in the United States. And
according to TorrentFreak, the program has had no noticeable effect so
far. The service providers have yet to release any information about how
many of their customers are receiving alerts for torrenting copyrighted
material or how effective the program has been since launching six months
ago, so TorrentFreak decided to resort to exterior data to determine the
programs effectiveness. What follows is a graph of The Pirate Bays
traffic from the beginning of 2012 through July 2013.

If the six strikes program was working, the first logical result would
be a decrease in traffic at the most visited peer-to-peer site. Instead,
traffic has been trending even higher than last year, with an especially
spiteful spike in March, right after the Copyright Alert System was first
implemented. TorrentFreak also checked in with another popular site,
ExtraTorrent, and was informed that traffic had stayed steady there as
well since February. Back to the drawing board.



                      Erasing The Password in a Heartbeat


The Nymi is a biometric wrist band that turns the user's heart rhythm into
a universal, unique authenticator for accessing everything from online
banking to social media.

Created by Bionym and touted as the world's first wearable authentication
device, the Nymi uses an embedded electrocardiogram sensor to monitor and
recognize the wearer's heartbeat and then communicate his or her identity
to a device, meaning that remembering PIN numbers and passwords could
very soon be a thing of the past.

The wristband communicates information to a wirelessly connected
smartphone, tablet or PC running the supporting app, essentially creating
a three-factor authentication process of heartbeat, wristband and app, for
the tightest security.

"When it comes to identity, privacy is a chief concern," said Karl Martin,
CEO of Bionym, "The Nymi has been built by the principles of Privacy by
Design. This means that each user has complete control over their data and
identity. Transparency is very important to Bionym's culture, and every
user has a right to know where their data is going."

At the moment, the Nymi can only be used to unlock and use electronic
devices capable of running the app, the idea being that whenever a Nymi
wearer sits down at their desktop or picks up their phone or even
approaches their car it is unlocked and ready to go, but is inaccessible
to others. But that's just the start. Bionym has also launched a Software
Developers Kit (SDK) which will enable developers to build other apps
that support the technology and for companies to embed authentication via
Nymi into their web services.

Interest in biometric authentication is about to explode. The next iPhone
is expected to use the technology, via a fingerprint sensor in order to
offer similar levels of protection while simplifying authentication, and
Google has made no secret of its aims to kill off the traditional
password in favor of a physical token or biometric technology. Therefore
the Nymi is the first step on a journey towards the eradication of the
traditional password and, hopefully, an era of safer and more secure web
use.

According to a study by Nuance commissioned in May, in the US, the
overwhelming majority of consumers (85%) have already lost faith in the
password partly because two-thirds of web users already have 11 different
usernames and passwords they need to remember. And as more and more
services migrate from the physical to the virtual world, the number of
passwords is growing much faster than the average person's ability to
create and remember them. Little wonder that 80 percent of consumers
admit to reusing and recycling the same password for multiple sites
despite the security risks this entails. Therefore, the future can't come
quick enough.

The Nymi is available to order now for a special price of $79 (plus $10
shipping to destinations beyond North America) and will ship in early
2014.



        Facebook Hashtags May 'Do Nothing' To Help Promote Posts


#Bummer.

Its been several months since Facebook implemented the hashtag (#)
element in its social media network, a trending topic tool first made
popular by Twitter. Though the site might have originally liked the idea
of piggybacking on the success of the Twitter hashtag, new data suggests
that its not quite working out that way yet.

In a recent blog post on the Facebook analytics site EdgeRank Checker, ERC
employees explained that they had dug into the data to measure the impact
of hashtags on Facebooks news feed and that, to their surprise, found
that there was none. In fact, according to EdgeRank Checkers findings,
posts with hashtags have less Viral Reach than posts without hashtags.
The viral reach of posts with hashtags and those without.

EdgeRank Checker studied 500 Facebook pages in the month of July to
calculate the data shown. In the over 35,000 posts by these pages, only
6,000 included hashtags. Factoring in the number of fans/friends of each
page, the posts without hashtags, on average, garnered more attention by
way of likes and comments.

Posts on Twitter, meanwhile, displayed an uptick in retweets when a
hashtag was included, per EdgeRank Checker. For [tweets], using a hashtag
typically resulted in roughly double the likelihood of being ReTweeted.
Over 70% of the brands experienced an increase in RTs when using a
hashtag versus not using one.

And its not as if Twitter is the only social network to see the
popularization of posts via hashtag. Instagram, a Facebook property, sees
a much higher Like rate for picture posts that include a hashtag vs. those
that do not, according to data put together by social media scientist and
author Dan Zarrella.

So why is Facebook on the outside looking in when it comes to lucrative
hashtagging? The EdgeRank Checker blog concludes that, on Facebook,
Hashtags are often used in promotional materialBy nature, campaigns are
promotional, therefore more likely to drive less engagement, less clicks,
and ultimately less Reach.

When contacted by Yahoo News, Facebook said that its simply too early to
gauge its users temperature on hashtags.

"When we introduce a new product at Facebook, we focus on getting the user
experience right; hashtags are no different, a Facebook representative
told Yahoo News. Since they are prone to abuse from, for instance, meme
Pages, we've been focused on fine tuning the ranking algorithms before we
surface them more prominently to people.

In addition, Facebook seems to think that, at least for now, the quality
of posts is more important than simple hashtag placement, explaining that,
Pages should not expect to get increased distribution (what some call
virality) simply by sticking irrelevant hashtags in their posts.

As Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are clearly different animals, should
we expect the device to play the same role across all social network
platforms? At least for now, the answer seems to be #no.



Patriots Deploy Free Stadium-wide Wi-Fi To Compete with the Comforts of Home


Nothing can replace watching a sports game at the local stadiumexcept for
HD TVs, warm living rooms and nearby snacks. A recent ESPN poll found that
41 percent of fans would rather watch a game at home than at a stadium.

You have your own bathroom, the fridge is 10 feet away and the cost of a
big-screen TV is less than it ever was, says Fred Kirsch, publisher and
VP of content at the New England Patriots football franchise. Those are
really hard to compete with.

But the Patriots are hoping to do just that by rolling out free Wi-Fi at
Gillette Stadium this season to give fans a more connected experience at
the teams eight home games. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell endorsed this
idea in May, saying every NFL stadium should have high-speed Wi-Fi for
its fans.
Too many stadium selfies for cellular networks

The Patriots stadium used to rely on cellphone networks for mobile
traffic, but that approach couldnt handle the large number of photo
uploads and status updates fans transmitted during games.

After piloting Wi-Fi in 2012, the team and networking vendor Enterasys are
rolling it out in full for the upcoming 2013-14 football season. The
network will have 360 access points and enough bandwidth to handle at
least 16,000 concurrent users.

"The app will include live play-by-play, bathroom wait times, a tool for
ordering concessions from your seat, and access to NFL RedZone."

Along with the Wi-Fi network, the Patriots developed a mobile app called
Patriots Game Day Live, available to anyone attending a game at Gillette
Stadium. The team tested a version of the app last season with fans in
luxury club seats and although only 10 percent of those fans used it,
Kirsch says the team hopes to see that number increase by offering content
thats only available through the app.

We are trying to give things here that you cant get in your living
room, he says.

The app will include live play-by-play, bathroom wait times, a tool for
ordering concessions from your seat, and access to NFL RedZone, a live
compilation of all the scoring plays from games around the league.

The Wi-Fi network is expected to allow 40 percent of the 70,000 fans in
the stadium to connect simultaneously. Kirsch says that, down the line,
the team hopes to add unique content such as audio from players wearing
microphones and video from the sidelines or locker room.



              Yahoo Unveils New Logo in Turnaround Makeover


Yahoo has refreshed its logo for the first time since shortly after the
Internet company's founding 18 years ago.

The new look unveiled late Wednesday is part of a makeover that Yahoo
Inc. has been undergoing since the Sunnyvale, Calif., company hired
Google executive Marissa Mayer to become Yahoo's CEO 14 months ago.

Mayer has already spruced up Yahoo's front page, email and Flickr
photo-sharing service, as well as engineered a series of acquisitions
aimed at attracting more traffic on mobile devices. The shopping spree has
been highlighted by Yahoo's $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr, an Internet
blogging service where the company rolled out its new logo.

The redesigned logo retains some of the elements of the old one, including
the company's official color, purple. Yahoo's familiar exclamation point,
meant to punctuate a yodeling sound that has long been the company's
calling card, is still there, too, but with a twist. When visitors come to
Yahoo's front page or an app, the exclamation point dances across some of
the lettering before settling at the end of the company's name at a slight
tilt of nine degrees.

"We knew we wanted a logo that reflected Yahoo  whimsical, yet
sophisticated," Mayer wrote on her Tumblr account. She hailed the
redesigned looks as "modern and fresh, with a nod to our history. Having
a human touch, personal. Proud."

Mayer, 38, said she spent most of one weekend this summer figuring out
what the new logo should look like with four other Yahoo colleagues: Bob
Stohrer, Marc DeBartolomeis, Russ Khaydarov, and an intern, Max Ma.

In an effort to drum up more interest in the changeover, Yahoo spent the
past 30 days showing some of the proposed logos that Mayer and her helpers
cast aside.

The revision is the first time that Yahoo has made a significant change to
its logo since a few tweaks shortly after co-founders Jerry Yang and David
Filo incorporated the company in 1995.

Since Yahoo's logo is so recognizable, it's a good thing they kept the
changes relatively sedate, says branding expert Laura Ries, of the Atlanta
firm Ries & Ries.

"One of the worst things in the world you can do is have a logo around for
two decades and then do something totally different. It's quite unsettling
for consumers," she said. Keeping the purple and the exclamation point was
a good idea, she said.

Mayer's overhaul of Yahoo has attracted a lot of attention, but so far it
hasn't provided a significant lift to the company's revenue. Yahoo depends
on Internet advertising to make most of its money, an area where the
company's growth has been anemic while more marketing dollars flow to
rivals such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc.

A new logo is an important part of updating Yahoo, Ries said, but at the
end of the day the company has to do a better job of "verbalizing what
exactly Yahoo is."

"There's nothing wrong with improving something, putting lipstick on
something, but at the end of the day is it a pig or not? That is the
question," Ries said.

Yahoo's stock has climbed by nearly 80 percent, but most of that gain has
been driven by the company's 24 percent stake in China's Alibaba Holdings
Group. Investors prize Alibaba because it has emerged as one of the
fastest growing companies on the Internet.



       How The Internet Is Killing The Dreaded Admissions Essay


Five years ago, Tufts University was among the first higher-education
institutions to accept short-form videos, perhaps shared with the school
via YouTube, as an alternative or addition to a written application essay.
Lee Coffin, the schools dean of undergraduate admissions, recalls that
there was some drop-jawed skepticism about the legitimacy of this option
at the time: To some the notion sounded not only less than credible, but
downright silly.

But in 2013, it seems clear that technology shifts are reshaping the
parameters of venerable admissions rituals at many schools. George Mason,
William and Mary, and St. Marys College of Maryland have all accepted
video and multimedia materials; traditional essay-question prompts are
changing to reflect the reality of Internet culture. The University of
Virginia this year asks: To tweet or not to tweet? MIT recently heralded
the opening of its current online application form with some snappy GIFs.
And applicants to Tufts grappled with a question linking the ancient Roman
notion of carpe diem with a more contemporary idea: What does #YOLO mean
to you?

Of course, the intersection of Web culture and higher ed aspirations
hasnt always been pretty. The discovery of a Google doc collection of
Columbia University application essays became fodder for Gawker snark.
And arguably the most viral bit of college-admission content ever was an
op-ed earlier this year from a high schooler complaining about (or
lampooning) the gap between university and applicant expectations.

The whole notion of new media incursion into the staid realm of the
application essay may sound a little fishy to you. But the reality is
almost exactly the opposite of the knee-jerk stereotype.

The influence of technology on the application process is more subtle;
nobody is getting into a school because of a good tweet. The University
of Chicago uses its alumni and student email networks, for example, to
crowdsource its famously clever essay prompts. And the vast majority of
applicants even to new-media-friendly schools still opt for the
traditional written essay. And thats fine, says Tufts Coffin. The point
isnt to force potential students to play by a new set of rules, let
alone provide them techno-shortcuts. The point is to acknowledge that
there is more than one way to identify promising students.

Interestingly, Coffin says that at Tufts the decision to accept video or
Web-based material had decidedly analog roots. Some years ago, Robert
Sternberg, then the schools dean of arts and sciences, pushed for new
ways of exploring conceptions of merit among applicants  by including
in the admissions process a challenge to do something with an 8X11 piece
of paper. This experiment yielded compelling responses from art,
architecture, and theater hopefuls that demonstrated demonstrations of
student merit that you dont necessarily capture if you only let them
write an essay, Coffin recalls.

Building on that insight is what led to trying out videos and other
Web-based material  not as a replacement to essays, but as an option.
And as it happens, this more tech-forward approach played into broader
trends.

It seemed consistent with the way teachers are developing their
curriculums in high school, Coffin adds. The pedagogy has shifted; its
not just a chalkboard anymore.

The mere willingness to accept new-media application material, assistant
director of admissions Justin Pike suggests, bolsters Tufts image as a
school thats in tune with the Internet era: Even students who submit
traditional essays often note their appreciation of the schools
recognition of new-media alternatives as perfectly legitimate.

And that was true even back in 2009, when Betty Quinn was among the earlier
Tufts aspirants to supplement her application with an impressive
stop-motion video  which racked up tens of thousands of views as a result
of media coverage at the time. Turns out that while then-Virginia-resident
Quinn was accepted, she ended up going to the University of Virginia.

But from what she told me recently, making that video for Tufts seems to
have had a much more lasting effect than most essay-writing exercises do.
At the time she was thinking of pursing a journalism or pre-med degree,
and had never made a video. Telling my story in a completely different
media was an eye-opener, she recalls, and ultimately she shifted her
focus to the creative side of marketing, particularly film, animation,
and interaction design; today shes in grad school at Parsons. And people
still randomly bring up her Tufts video.

I loved the entire process, she says now  and when you consider that
shes talking about the process of applying to college, thats a pretty
remarkable statement.



                                =~=~=~=




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