Microsoft gets patent for real-time f-bomb bleeping

By Jonathan M. Gitlin

Back in 2004 Microsoft applied for a patent for real-time censoring of audio streams, and now the USPTO has granted that patent.

As PC gamers have known for a long time, and Xbox gamers have known for a while, playing against other humans online is a much more enjoyable experience than beating a computer. Thanks to the advent of teamspeak, you can game with others as if they were in your living room, without having to worry about them knocking their drinks over and staining the carpet. However, the somewhat anonymous nature of the internet means you also encounter individuals who lack the sort of internal filter that prevents most of us from blurting out streams of profanity that would make Mr. Tourette blush.

More often than not, the profanasaurus on the other end of the mike is a schoolboy still at the age where yelling random insults at strangers seems amusing, but it only takes one moron to spoil a good time. The patent involves real-time (or batch) analysis of an audio stream that can recognize inappropriate language based on phonemes, and then overwrite objectionable words with bleeps, other noises, or silence.

But online gaming isn't the only area where this technology could show up. TV networks, fearing hefty FCC fines, would be able to broadcast live without fear of exposing the sheltered ears of their audience to a (possibly life altering) outburst or expletive. No more seven-second delay with an editor's finger hovering over the bleep button, no more being raked over the coals by the Parents Television Council, no more f***s, s***s, or m************* c********* slipping into the next award show.

I can also envisage a more sinister role, however, regardless of one's opinion on whether or not those seven words ought to be allowed to be said on television. Imagine the same system applied to digital telephony, then think how valuable such a system might be to an authoritarian regime. As we've seen to good effect in Burma and elsewhere, the ubiquity of cell phones has been a good thing for dissidents who need to get their message out or organize themselves. The Great Firewall of China already blocks objectionable web content from reaching Chinese computers; what's to stop cell phones from censoring anti-government conversations too?

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Lessons Linux Should Learn From Windows and Mac

Author: Ian McLean

It shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to assume that a good portion of those whom read this blog are Linux users, and so are involved to varying degrees in what is commonly called the ‘Linux Community’. Anyone who’s been into the whole Linux thang for a while has probably noticed this; I haven’t even been into it for very long (just a year and a bit, perhaps), but I’ve seen the following attitude on display here and there throughout the community.

When there’s not a massive amount of people whom are using Linux, or really anyone that shares a common interest in any particular thing in general, we’re going to tend to band together, to be a really close-knit community. By and large, you’re not going to find a whole lot of Windows users really getting too chummy because there’s literally millions upon millions of them. Even Mac, which only takes around 8% of a share of the market, that tiny 8% is millions as well. Linux takes less than 1%, according to statistics provided by Marketshare.

So when we’ve got such a small community we can tend to, well, get a bit caught up among ourselves. Sometimes we can be pretty quick to dismiss the competition and really try to aggressively push the Linux ’cause’, if you get what I mean. ‘Winblows’, ‘Micro$oft’, and all other kinds of oh-so-very-witty remarks get thrown around liberally and regularly, but it only takes a second of non-biased clarity to see that often, we’re walking in their footsteps. And really, we can see that Windows and Mac do a great number of things right, and not all of them are things that Linux gets perfect.

Windows XP

Microsoft’s baby may be holding 90% of the market due in part to their brute-force approach to marketing and business practices, but there’s also the little fact that Windows, in its current days, really isn’t all that bad of an OS. Nine of ten computer users are Windows users, and so it’s pretty safe to say that well more than nine of ten of us have tried it before. I’m only twenty years into my life so I grew up with Windows and the fact of the matter is, it’s not perfect, it’s not bulletproof (but what OS is? Really?), but it gets the job done pretty efficiently, once you know your way around it.

Firstly, there’s the little matter of hardware support. Windows’ position in the industry ensures that support from hardware vendors and OEMs is second-to none. It should be noted though, that an out-of-the-box installation of Windows XP or Vista don’t have this advantage. But nevertheless, since a large portion of Windows setups are OEM installations, it’s a boon that Windows enjoys and one that we’re still struggling with, so it’s always going to be an area that’s worthy of putting effort into improving.

One point we can’t argue with much is that Windows really makes an effort to be welcoming for the average computer newbie. You don’t need any knowledge of using the command prompt, you just click Start and you’re on your way to doing whatever you feel necessary. Plugging in hardware, it searches for drivers and installs them totally transparently (when it works). It makes a decent effort at configuring networks automatically and only tells you what the layman computer user needs to know, and nothing more unless you ask. Controls and options are in plain English more often that not, instead of tech-jargon that only an experienced user will understand.

Windows is the workhorse, the jack of all trades, and it does its job pretty well. In comparison to its competition, it’s not at all unique or incredibly special, but Microsoft selects its features very carefully and we get more or less what we need from it. No more, no less. And that doesn’t just apply to the computer savvy; it applies to the layman too, the kind of person some of us tend to forget about in between compiling kernels and configuring xorg config files.

Mac OS X

Love him or hate him, I’m under the impression that Steve Jobs has some kind of crystal ball telling him what should be the next big thing to try out with his operating system. Compositing windows? The dock? Expose? Where did we see all of these things first? I’m not lumping credit on Apple for the invention of these concepts, but it was way back in 2001 that they were really jumping on them and pushing them forward into the mainstream eye.

Innovation is the name of the game here and it seems to me like a lot of ideas or programs that get praised among the Linux and even Windows public appear to be things that the Mac already did ages ago.

One of the big things I love about Mac’s interface is that it looks awesome, partially because of the art style, but also because stays out of the way. Everything is streamlined, functional, logical, and nary a pixel of screen real-estate is wasted, not even on window borders. It’s also consistent, something that Windows and especially Linux users can’t always boast about so confidently, and it contributes a lot to the feeling that you’ve got a working environment before you that’s solid and always makes sense, no matter what you’re doing.

My last major point is that OS X is closer than any of the others to being an OS that really ‘just works’. When you turn on a Mac you’ve got everything you need right there in front of you, configured and working. No unstable software, no driver hunting, no dependency hell. In fact, in my experience, I’ve found it so stable and consistent to use it approaches being totally boring, and I actually found it preferable to focus on getting some work done!

Yes, Linux is at a disadvantage of not having official hardware to bundle with, and not having widespread hardware vendor support. But if you’re interested in improving Linux, these are things that need to be acknowledged as challenges to overcome, instead of excuses for coming up short.

Upstage them!

Being open source, Linux is blessed with a unique advantage that these mainstream, closed platforms don’t have. Microsoft and Apple pay employees to work feverishly to getting a polished product, but they’re still companies and they still have limits to their resources. The open source community has anyone who’s computer literate at its potential disposal! Even one who’s not an artist or programmer still has a voice, and that’s still a way to help mold the state of things for the future of Linux.

But we face a similar challenge to even the industry giants; we need to collaborate and we need to communicate. Inspiration and passion are our greatest assets and all that’s needed is a place that everyone can pool them.

So where to with Linux?

Everyone’s got their own ideas about how we could improve and progress, and I absolutely encourage anyone reading this to voice their thoughts too. So for now, here’s mine.

Collaborate!

This is an inherent problem with open source software; if you’ve got the talent for it, you can split off on your own and produce something that’s entirely under your control and you can take all the credit for it. In that sense, that’s often the reason why we’ve got hundreds of Linux distributions.

Hundreds of distributions may present a good amount of choice for the discerning Linux user, but for the average newbie it’s daunting, and not only that, when you’ve got hundreds of distros, you’re spreading resources thinner on the ground.

If we had everyone working together on just a tiny handful of distributions as opposed to hundreds, just what would those few distributions be like?

This works on the level of individual programs too. Take for example, the numerous dock programs we’ve got lying around. We’ve got Avant Window Navigator, Cairo Dock, Kiba Dock, KsmoothDock, Engage Dock and SimDock, just to start with. That’s six different programs made to do the exact same thing, and they’ve all got their own strengths and weaknesses. Why should we have to choose? Why don’t we just work together on one single dock that does everything right?

Microsoft and Apple may be huge, but even so, the entire Linux developer community, if they were to band together to a common cause, would dwarf them. All that’s required is some focus in the community of users and developers, to shape one thing and make it incredible. Don’t let your ego get in the way, and if you’ve got ideas on how to make a distro better, don’t fork, contribute to one that’s already in progress and improve it. An idea by itself will go nowhere, but a lot of them in once place, can make a great amount of difference.

Doing Something New

It’s easy to derive your ideas from that which already exists. If I’m playing music, it’s easier for me to cover a song than to come up with my own. But you never see cover bands selling out shows in arenas, and you’ll never see Linux dominating the mainstream market if it’s just seen to casual folk as a ‘me too’ OS.

Take again, the example of a dock program. I think a dock is a really cool feature, but it’s already been done by the Mac, and because of that, it was only the Mac doing it that ever made me raise an eyebrow and think, “That’s so cool, I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

To be honest, I didn’t personally become interested in Linux because I woke up one day thinking, “Gee, I wish there was an operating system that I could use that was free of charge, open source and community developed.” Actually, I became interested because I saw Compiz Fusion on YouTube spinning multiple desktops across a 3D cube and setting windows on fire, Gnome-Do navigating around the whole computer with a few key presses, Conky throwing up computer statistics that integrated seamlessly with the desktop. I’m sure that sounds silly and shallow, but it’s true, and I don’t think I’m the only one like that either.

Being unique is a universal quality that can apply to every level of the Linux community, from the entire community’s vision, to a distribution, to a program, down to the tiniest details. If we’re willing to break new ground instead of treading the safe path, that’s when we’ll end up with something that will not just impress fellow Linux users, but will impress anyone.

Original here

Kernel Log: Ext4 completes development phase as interim step to btrfs

Linus Torvalds has integrated a large collection of patches prepared by (Ext) filesystem developer Theodore Ts'o (tytso) into the main development branch of Linux. It contains a patch for Ext4 which allows it to present itself as ext4 instead of ext4dev. This signals that with the next kernel version 2.6.28, the successor to ext3 will finally leave behind its "hot" development phase. The kernel developers integrated an early version of Ext4 in the main development branch of Linux 2.6.19 in order to jointly develop it to maturity there.

This by no means concludes the development of Ext4 and it is expected that the developers will steadily continue to develop the filesystem in the same way they developed Ext3, not only fixing bugs but also adding the occasional function. The filesystem structures used on storage media are no longer going to be affected by these changes – therefore, the file backup and media reformatting tasks required during the development of Ext4 within the official Linux kernel should no longer be necessary. Users will also no longer be required to ensure that their kernel version, Ext4 utilities (e2fsprogs) and storage media formats match up.

It is a matter of opinion whether this makes Ext4 ready for production use – administrators in corporate environments and the developers of the Enterprise distributions of Novell and Red Hat will probably wait a little longer and observe how the filesystem functions on an everyday basis for Fedora and OpenSuse users. A Red Hat developer has already integrated the patches intended for 2.6.28 into the kernel of Fedora Rawhide. Rawhide is going to be basis of Fedora 10, which is due out at the end of November. The installer will only be able to set up Ext4 file systems if the system is booted particular parameter set. A separate boot partition containing one of the current filesystems is also required because boot loaders like Grub are still incapable of loading the kernel from a partition in Ext4 format.

Probably as important as the completion of Ext4's development phase may be is the information posted by Theodore Ts'o to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) in a long email a few days ago. In his contribution to the discussions around a possible inclusion of the btrfs filesystem, usually pronounced "butter FS", recently mentioned in the kernel log (1, 2), Theodore Ts'o mentioned that he and several other well-known filesystem developers met for a "Next Generation Filesystem" workshop (NGFS) a little less than a year ago. According to Ts'o, participants agreed that Linux needs a "next generation filesystem":"At the end of the that workshop, there was unanimous agreement (including from yours truly) that (a) Linux needed a next generation filesystem to be competitive, (b) Chris Mason's btrfs (with some changes/enhancements discussed during the workshop) was the best long-term solution for NGFS, and (c) because creating a new enterprise filesystem always takes longer than people expect, and even then, it takes a while for enterprise users to trust a new filesystem for their most critical data, ext4 in the next generation of filesystems was needed as the bridge to the NGFS.".

With these hardly publicised recommendations, the workshop participants hoped to inspire various companies and their developers to contribute to the development of btrfs. The participants also hoped to get the distributions to back up their plans. This seems to have worked to some degree, because according to Theodore Ts'o, "But I think it is fair to say that btrfs isn't just a private a project of a single Linux kernel developer, but rather the design has been discussed and reviewed by a large number of experienced filesystem architects."

The Ext4 developer also praised btrfs developer Chris Mason who used to be responsible for Reiserfs at Suse and now works for Oracle. He said that Mason is a respected and trustworthy kernel developer who can write good code and also maintain it. Theodore Ts'o, like Andrew Morton recently, advocates the inclusion of btrfs into the main development branch of Linux in the near future. There, it can continue to be developed and mature in the coming months and years – similar to how the kernel developers handled Ext4 in the last few months and years.

In Brief

• It's not just the developers of ext4 and btrfs who have been busy. The programmers of ntfs-3g, which was developed using FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace), have had some success. Version 1.5012 is the first version to be able to create or delete any number of files and directories within the maximum limits defined by NTFS. The developers successfully used a predecessor of the new version to create 54 million files on a parition formatted with NTFS.

• The developers of the Gutenprint collection of printer drivers have released the first release candidate of Gutenprint 5.2.

• Peter Hutterer has given an overview of the "device properties", in his blog. Device Properties are intended for X Input Extension 1.5 which will allow users to adjust, the parameters of input devices such as Synaptics touchpads during operation.

• The developers of the radeonhd graphics driver have released versions 1.2.2 and 1.2.3. Amongst the changes, these versions offer Xvideo support and, if used with current versions of X Server, Mesa 3D support for graphics hardware incorporating the R5xx (Radeon X1000 series) and RS6xx (for example the 690G mainboard chipset) Radeon GPUs.

• First results of the survey about the Git source code management system used in Linux development and started by Linus Torvalds have recently gone online.

Further background and information about developments in the Linux kernel and its environment can also be found in previous issues of the kernel log at heise open:

• Kernel Log: Linux 2.6.27 Released
• Kernel Log: problem with e1000e bypassed, Morton praises Btrfs
• Kernel Log: 2.6.27 nearing completion; Btrfs to be added to the kernel?
• Kernel Log: Kernel Summit info; Plumbers keynote online; the latest on the e1000e problem
• Kernel Log: The second day of Kernel Summit 2008; criticism of Ubuntu at the opening of the Linux Plumbers Conference
• Kernel Log: Hard core Linux developers discuss the future of Linux at the Kernel Summit

Older Kernel logs can be found in the archives or by using the search function at heise open. (thl/c't)

Original here

Pirate Bay Tricks Anti-Pirates with Fake Peers

Written by Ernesto

The Pirate Bay has always made it clear that they don’t obey takedown requests from content owners. That doesn’t stop Hollywood from going after the Pirate Bay’s users, however, and they do so on a large scale. The Pirate Bay is well aware of these pirate tracking outfits, and does what it can to give them a hard time. Reporting fake peers is one of the tricks they use.

Most often, companies such as BayTSP and MediaSentry are hired to connect to BitTorrent trackers, and send takedown notices to the users (via their ISP) who download movies, TV-shows or music albums of a company they represent. This is a fairly easy process, since BitTorrent is far from anonymous: Every user necessarily broadcasts his or her IP-address to other peers in the swarm.

Sometimes anti-piracy outfits use their own trackers to gather evidence. Last week we reported that The Pirate Bay started to actively remove these suspicious trackers from their torrents, with some help from torrenteditor.com. Running a tracker is not required though, to collect information from BitTorrent users. In fact, many attempt to use publicly available trackers such as The Pirate Bay to do so. However, the tracker owners are aware of this, and trick these tracking companies by polluting the list of IP-addresses the tracker returns. That is one of the techniques The Pirate Bay uses, just to show how flawed the evidence gathering is.

Polluting the evidence works like this. When a client asks for a list of peers who are downloading the same torrent, the tracker software automatically inserts several “random IP addresses” that are not in the swarm. They are based on existing sub-nets, but might be from people who may not even be aware that BitTorrent exists. This means that the evidence that’s being gathered by anti-piracy companies includes IPs that belong to people that were not downloading the movie or album they are accused of. Perfect deniability, as the people who coded the tracker software explain.

Of course, this doesn’t work when the pirate-tracking company requires itself to connect to the peer, before the IP-address is collected, since it is impossible to connect to a non-existing peer. A representative from BayTSP told TorrentFreak that they have such a requirement, but several others are less thorough, which makes their claims useless, and impossible to defend in court.

The best solution is of course to ban these anti-piracy companies from using the tracker in the first place. This is something The Pirate Bay is working on as well, and they have blocked many IP-ranges already, but it’s impossible to ban them all. Unlike most of the suits in Hollywood, the companies that go after illicit file-sharers are experts in their field, and know more about BitTorrent than many users. They try to circumvent blocklists such as PeerGuardian whenever possible, and change IPs when they are marked.

Pirate Bay co-founder TiAMO told TorrentFreak that he has several criteria on which he can pick out the suspicious users that might be collecting IP-addresses. He also said that he’s working on a automated warning system which will operate as a sniffer on a monitor port. That project is far from complete, but has the potential to detect suspicious behavior more easily.

Nevertheless, it is impossible (as the name might give away) to keep the prying eyes of Hollywood off public trackers. Even private trackers are far from secure, as most anti-piracy companies have accounts at the larger communities. The private in “private tracker” merely refers to the fact that you have to login, and has nothing to do with “security”. The Pirate Bay (and other tracker owners) take several measures to prevent their users from being tracked by anti-piracy outfits, but there’s only so much they can do.

Original here

40 brilliant Gmail hints, hacks and secrets

Be a more productive Gmail user with these handy tips

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Gmail goes from strength to strength as Google rolls out new features every few months.

We've dug deep to bring you 40 top tips that'll make you a Gmail super-user, with total control over every aspect of the service.

1. If you haven't already created a Gmail account, you no longer need an invitation to do so. Just go to www.gmail.com and click Sign up for Google Mail.

2. Gmail blocks most executable filetypes as a virus protection measure. If you absolutely have to send EXE or DLL files to a colleague, use something like DropSend. You can send up to five files per month for free.

3. Attachments sent in formats that Google Documents can read can be opened direct in your browser. That list includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and RTF files.

4. When you attach image files in JPEG, GIF or PNG formats, users will get the option to download the attached file or view in their browser. You can also download or playback MP3 files direct in Gmail.

5. To retrieve your email from accounts other than Gmail, go to Settings then the Accounts tab. Choose Add another mail account. This takes you through a two step process for configuring a POP3 mail account. You'll first be prompted for an email address. On the next page of the form, you'll be asked for the associated password and, crucially, the POP server address for this account. You should be able to find all this information from your email provider's documentation. Once the POP details are configured click Add Account and Gmail should try to fetch messages from your old account straight away.

6. Once you've configured Gmail to receive messages from another account - what do you do with your old inbox? Google Email Uploader has a solution for that. It enables you to transfer old emails stored in Outlook, Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird to a Gmail account - even creating labels from folder names.

7. POP integration brings with it another perk; the ability to back up your old messages. Go to the Settings section, then choose Forwarding POP and IMAP. In the POP Download section select either Enable POP for all mail or Enable POP for all mail that arrives from now on. Select whether to keep or delete mail from the server when it's been downloaded then click the Configuration Instructions link to find out how to set up your particular mail client - whether it's Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Thunderbird.

8. There's a bonus to the account access tips we've already outlined. You can set up as many Gmail accounts as you like - creating different email addresses for different tasks - but receive all the mail at the same account. As we've described, any POP compatible email account can be added to a Gmail account - including other Gmail accounts. For example - you could set up different Gmail accounts for friends, family and work - but have all the messages sent to one inbox.

9. Of course, when you've got lots of email all coming into one place it's important to be able to organise it. Gmail doesn't use folders though - it uses Labels. You can apply these manually to a message by selecting a post in the main window, clicking the More Actions drop down menu and choosing New Label. A JavaScript prompt allows you to type in a label name which is immediately applied.

10. Apply colour coding to labels by clicking on the square next to a label name in the Labels sidebar box. Choose a colour from the pop-up swatch.

11. The More Actions menu also enables you to create Google Calendar events from emails... Select the mail in question then choose Create Event from the menu.

12. If Calendar options don't appear in Gmail, try going to Settings > General and choosing English (US) in the Google Mail display language menu.

13. Create rules that automatically apply labels to your messages as they arrive. For example, let's say that you know any messages from littlebob@yourclient.com are going to be work related. Go to Settings then Filters. Click Create a new filter. This opens a form that prompts you to enter search criteria that Gmail uses to apply rules to messages. Enter the email address littlebob@yourclient.com in the From: field, then click Next Step. On the next page you'll be asked to select an action. Choose Apply the Label, then select New Label from the drop down menu. When prompted, name it Work. You can then click Create Filter to finish. Now - any new mail that arrives from that address is automatically labelled Work, making it easy to find and distinguish from your other mail.

14. Use a similar trick to filter mail sent to you at different email accounts. For example, if you own your own domain name your hosting company will probably forward all mail received at that domain to an address of your choosing. A Gmail account is ideal for that. You can tell your friends that your email address is "mates@yourdomain" while reserving "work@yourdomain" for business. Use Gmail's filter system to create rules based on the To: field - and apply an appropriate label.

15. You can also use filters to apply labels to posts that are already in your inbox - receipts from all your online shopping for example. Go to Settings > Filters as before and choose Create a new filter. In the subject box type receipt OR order OR payment - then click Next Step. Tick the Apply the label box and create a new label called receipts. When you click Create Filter tick the box labelled Also apply filter to the xx conversations below.

16. Looking through your inbox for a mail that came with an attachment? Add has:attachment to your search query.

17. You can also search for mails that have specific filetypes as attachments, like this: has:attachment filename:doc.

18. By default, search only looks in your Inbox. To look for mail in other places, use the modifier in: For example, to search your Spam folder, add in:spam to your query.

19. To look for messages to or from people, use the to: or from: modifiers. For example, to find emails from someone called Jake, add from:jake to your search query.

20. You can exclude words from your search in the exact same way you exclude words from all Google searches, using the - symbol. For example to search for apples but not oranges, enter apples -oranges as your search query.

21. To view all messages with a specific label, enter the query label:labelname in the search box. For example, label:receipts returns all messages labelled receipts. You can specify multiple labels if you want, like this: label:receipts label:orders. This query will return messages that are labelled receipts and messages labelled orders.

22. One of our favourite Gmail features is the ability to configure your account so you can appear to be sending mail from any email address you own. You can configure this in Settings > Accounts in the Send Mail As section. Click Add another email address. Enter the address you want to use in the text box that appears. This will send a verification message to the inbox for that address so that you can confirm you're the real owner.

23. With multiple accounts associated with your Gmail address, you can choose which address to send from on a case by case basis - using the drop down menu next to the From: field in the Compose Mail window.

24. Gmail even has a Smart Reply feature, so it automatically knows which address to use in the From: field. This is ideal for consolidating the multiple email accounts that long term net users tend to pick up over the years.

25. Want to open mail links in Google Mail with Internet Explorer? Download and install Gmail Notifier. During the installation, check the box labelled Use for outgoing mail. The setting won't show up in Windows Internet Options dialogue, but Google Mail will now be configured as your default email service.

26. In Firefox 3 it's even easier. Launch the browser and go to Tools > Options. Click Applications and find the default configuration for mailto: links. Use the drop down menu to select Use Google Mail. Upgrade Firefox if the option doesn't appear.

27. Install Google Talk and go to Settings, then choose Open Gmail when I click on email links. That will set your registry so that Gmail is launched in your default browser whenever you click on a mailto: link in ANY web browser.

28. If you miss being alerted every time a new mail arrives, Gmail Assistant will cure what ails you. This Java based application connects to multiple Gmail accounts by IMAP and lets you know when new mail arrives in any of your inboxes. You can even access headers and choose which messages to read.

29. If you're still juggling multiple email and instant messaging accounts, there's Digsby. Still in beta and free, this desktop client connects to all the main mail services, several instant messaging clients and the most high-profile social networks, keeping you updated with any changes.

30. Use Gmail's Keyboard Shortcuts to speed up your workflow. Hit c to compose a new message, / to place the cursor in the search box or ! to report spam. You can navigate up and down the message list with j and k, hitting x to select a conversation. A full list of shortcuts can be found at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=6594

31. Firefox add-on Gmail Macros takes shortcuts a step further. You'll need to install Greasemonkey first then install the script Modified Gmail Macros v. 2.0. This adds further shortcuts to the default configuration - including key combinations for advanced editing.

32. Gspace at turns any Gmail account into 3GB or more of free online storage.

33. Want to speed up Gmail on slow connections or computers? Scroll to the bottom of the page and choose Basic HTML - then click Set basic HTML as default view. Gmail will now load in half the time.

34. For an even faster Gmail experience, use the mobile version.

35. Want to track where that spam list got your address from? Use this little known Gmail trick. Insert a + symbol in your email address and Gmail will ignore everything between the + and @ symbols. For example - if your Gmail address is yourname@Gmail.com you could tell Amazon that it's yourname+amazon@Gmail.com. The mail will still be routed to you...

36. You can still use filters to capture mails sent to addresses containing the + symbol, enabling you to give different addresses to each of the online services you use, then filter them accordingly. For example, add a receipt label to all mail from PayPal.

37. Gmail ignores periods in email addresses too. So, if you signed up as bob.spod@Gmail.com - you can send mail to bobspod@Gmail.com or even b.o.b.s.p.o.d.g.o.d@Gmail.com and it will still go to the same address.

38. It doesn't matter whether mail is sent to you @Gmail.com or @googlemail.com - they both route to the same domain.

39. Send mail to other Gmail users without having to type @Gmail.com or @googlemail.com at all. Just type their username in the To: field.

40. Want to try out new and experimental Gmail features? Go to Settings > Labs and select from the list.

Now read 101 tips, tricks and hacks to help you search smarter with Google

By Karl Hodge

Original here

Report: Yahoo plans cost-cutting moves, layoffs

Posted by Steven Musil

Yahoo is expected to announce cost-cutting moves this week, including another round of layoffs, according to a report Sunday in The Wall Street Journal.

The exact number of layoffs is unknown, but job cuts are expected to come from all departments in the 14,300-employee company, according to the report. Yahoo, which is set to announce its third-quarter earnings Tuesday, has reportedly asked managers to identify areas where the company can achieve operating budget reductions of 15 percent. In January, Yahoo laid off an estimated 1,100 employees in a bid to cut costs and trim operations that weren't performing as well as others.

Rumors of layoffs at Yahoo have been circulating for weeks, with Alley Insider's Henry Blodget calling for the elimination of 3,000 jobs at the company.

At the same time, Yahoo's stock has been under tremendous pressure, closing at $12.90 on Friday. Just a week before that, its stock traded as low as $11.37, the lowest price since March 2003. Yahoo, as a result, now has a market cap of $17.88 billion.

Although Yahoo's shares continue to give up ground, the company's stock performance during recent trading sessions has largely mirrored the broader markets. Likewise, many tech companies are resorting to layoffs to stem their financial losses.

What's different for Yahoo is that five months ago Microsoft walked away from its buyout offer of $47.5 billion to snap up the entire company.

CNET News reporter Dawn Kawamoto noted that painful reality last week:

No doubt, most tech companies are getting pummeled on Wall Street, but Yahoo's drop has to be particularly galling, given how much more Microsoft was willing to pay for the company.

Yahoo's stock price got a goose on Thursday after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer noted Yahoo's declining stock price in saying that a takeover of the Internet search pioneer still made sense, putting even more pressure on Yahoo executives.

Original here

Woe to Web 2.0 Start-Ups: Too Few Ads to Go Around

By Michael Learmonth

Published: October 20, 2008

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Start-ups of the second web boom -- so-called Web 2.0 companies -- have revolutionized the way we communicate (Twitter), consume media (YouTube) and relate to one another (Facebook). But most have one thing in common: They are built on the notion that if they can build scale, a near-bottomless well of advertising awaits, allowing them to offer tools, software, bandwidth and media to consumers for free.

In the past five years, trends have justified that optimism and helped fuel massive venture-capital investments in online start-ups that will, theoretically, one day be advertising-supported. But what if the advertising isn't there, or if the shift doesn't happen as fast as once thought?

That's the new reality filtering down to start-ups: If advertising was your panacea, better think of something else and quick.

"My concern is the really great concepts that are features, not companies," said Ross Levinsohn, former CEO of Fox Interactive and partner in Velocity Interactive Partners. "There isn't enough advertising to support all those features, and in compression times, advertisers tend to flock to safe names and sites that have real traction."

One could excuse the latest crop of start-ups for their undue optimism; almost all were conceived, funded and began operating in boom times. Online advertising rebounded from three years of negative growth in 2003 and has grown at more than 20% a year (actually, more than 30% in 2004, 2005 and 2006) in the five years since.

But onetime hyper-growth is coming to an end. If trends hold, online advertising will grow in the low double digits or high single digits this year, driven largely by search. While declining growth seems unlikely, the venture-capital community is preparing its portfolio companies for coming years of lesser incremental growth.

Modest growth
"The last three years have been boom times. My guess is there will be a 5% to 6% increase next year in an overall flat advertising market," said Warren Lee, partner at Canaan Partners, whose portfolio companies include Tremor Media, Associated Content and Motionbox.

Raising money for an ad-supported web business is going to be tough for anyone who can't demonstrate a clear, relatively quick path to profitability, and advertisers are about to get a lot more conservative than they've been for the past three years. Marketers likely won't decrease their online spending, but they'll be under pressure to justify it and show results, which means a flight to search and proven sites and less experimentation with social media and new platforms such as Meebo, Twitter, FriendFeed, Drop.io and even YouTube.

"When you have a contraction like this, people stay with the best brands," said Andy Chapman, a digital media buyer at WPP unit Mindshare Interaction.

Less experimentation means less playing in social media, which won't spell trouble just for MySpace and Facebook, but for the burgeoning economy of ad-supported applications that live within those networks peddled by well-funded start-ups such as Slide, which raised $50 million, and RockYou, which raised $52.5 million. Those companies have raised plenty of cash to weather the downturn, but some of the other app makers may not make it.

Start-up veteran Hank Williams, who writes frequently on the topic of free vs. fee, doesn't believe any productivity or communications tools are compatible with advertising because they don't get a meaningful slice of user attention.

"The vast majority of stuff is not going to be ad-supported; they can't be," he said. "There is going to be a revolution in that people are going to have to start paying for really useful productivity tools."

Consolidation
Few believe the market will support all of the 400-odd ad networks that have launched in the past five years. Consolidation seems inevitable as those with no unique technology or selling proposition are swallowed by those with either scale or expertise in a particular niche.

That process has already begun, as Microsoft, AOL, Google and WPP Group have snapped up the largest ad networks and targeting firms over the past few years and will accelerate as prices come down.

Publishers may not be immune to a big cull after growing up in what Spark Capital principal Dennis Miller calls a "fantasy marketplace." "You will probably see a healthy movement to two or three in each category that are delivering visitors and time spent on the site," he said.

In video, there is plenty of pent-up advertiser demand for professional product from the TV networks, and new inventory will be snapped up as soon as it's created. That's good news for ABC.com and News Corp. and NBC Universal joint venture Hulu, but not so for the myriad sites peddling user-generated video, considered experimental by advertisers even in the best of times. Sites such as Daily Motion, Metacafe and Megavideo could be looking at tough times ahead.

Selling services
It's telling that YouTube's latest revenue gambit, a buy button for content partners, has nothing to do with advertising. Like all online social networks, LinkedIn has big plans for advertising, but the network is not counting on it and has a subscription model and job listings to fall back on.

Less than a year ago, the idea of charging people fees for stuff on the web, and for media in particular, seemed quaint enough that analysts clamored for Rupert Murdoch to pull down the pay wall on WSJ.com after his acquisition of Dow Jones.

It's been a while since anyone has made that argument convincingly. So does this mean consumers are going to be asked to start paying for things? Probably not. "For certain businesses subscriptions work, but for most, they don't," Mr. Levinsohn said.

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ACLU, EFF challenge constitutionality of FISA amendments

By Julian Sanchez

The controversial FISA Amendments Act, which passed this summer over the fervent opposition of civil libertarians, was supposed to kill the lawsuits filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union against telecoms charged with complicity in the National Security Agency's clandestine program of warrantless wiretaps. But in a brief filed yesterday, the two civil liberties groups urged a federal court to strike down the retroactive immunity provision of that law, which they argue violates the Constitution.

The arguments offered up in the EFF/ACLU brief largely mirror those reported by Ars last month in our preview of the looming constitutional fight. The groups also submitted to the courts two full boxes of evidence designed to show that, contrary to administration claims, the surveillance engaged in by the NSA was not narrowly targeted at suspected terrorists, but swept up the communications of millions of innocent Americans. Those claims are outlined in a 60-page "Summary of Voluminous Evidence" also provided to the court. EFF attorney Cindy Cohn told Ars that their overview draws on public information to establish the "open secret of widespread warrantless surveillance of ordinary Americans—discussed in news reports, Congressional testimony, whistleblower evidence and administration admissions "

Five for fighting

The arguments against immunity fall into five main categories. First, the plaintiffs charge that Congress has illegitimately sought to block judicial redress of a Fourth Amendment claim—in essence, preventing the court from considering whether a constitutional right has been violated. This may sound odd insofar as the suit presents a claim against private actors—the telecoms—rather than the government. But EFF attorney Kevin Bankston explains that courts have in the past recognized valid constitutional claims against private entities acting essentially as agents or arms of the government, as he alleges the telecoms did via their participation in the NSA program. EFF is also suing the government directly, but Bankston argues that the government cannot just foreclose one avenue for seeking remedy of an alleged constitutional violation.

Second, as Ars reported previously, the brief argues that immunity violates the separation of powers established in Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, by delegating to the executive branch excessive discretion to determine when and how the law will apply. The argument filed Thursday adds a novel analogy to the line item veto, which the Supreme Court has found to be unconstitutional. Congress, according to this argument, has the right and responsibility to make law, and while the Constitution gives the president the power to sign or veto legislation, it does not allow him (or, a fortiori, his subordinates) to tweak it according to his own policy preferences—even if Congress would like to give him that authority. The retroactive immunity provision of the FISA amendments, says Bankston, gives the Attorney General "unfettered discretion" to selectively void a preexisting privacy statute, without any providing any "intelligible principle" binding his exercise of that authority.

Third, the attorneys argue that immunity violates their clients' due process rights by allowing the Attorney General, rather than an impartial magistrate, to effectively decide the outcome of pending litigation. The plaintiffs vested claim against the telecoms, they say, is a kind of property right that cannot be abrogated by the executive, or even by Congress, but only disposed of by a judge.

The fourth argument is a more narrow objection to the secrecy clause of the immunity provision, which direct the court to consider evidence provided by the attorney general, establishing the telecoms' eligibility for amnesty, in secret. This, the groups argue, conflicts with their clients' First Amendment interest in access to documents in a civil proceeding, and impinges on the court's prerogative to determine the disposition of its own records. Of course, the judge could potentially agree with this claim without invalidating the broader immunity provision, or indeed, seeing any need to release any of the secret evidence submitted by the government.

Finally—and perhaps most interestingly—the brief argues that even if the immunity provision is constitutional, it does not apply to the NSA surveillance program, or to the telecoms that participated in it. The argument here rests on language in the FISA Amendments Act providing immunity only if the attorney general certifies that a telecom rendered cooperation in surveillance "designed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation for a terrorist attack, against the United States," and empowering the court to review any such certification for "abuse of discretion."

This is where that "Summary of Voluminous Evidence" comes in. The EFF and ACLU contend that the government was not engaging in surveillance narrowly "designed" to prevent a terrorist attack, but rather sweeping up Americans' communications in bulk. Here, Bankston stresses, what matters is not what the government told the telecoms about the NSA program, or even whether the government sincerely intended or believed it to be sufficiently narrowly tailored to prevent terrorism, but whether it was, objectively, so tailored. In light of the documentation suggesting that the program was far broader in scope than the Bush administration has claimed, the argument runs, the burden is on the government to provide substantial evidence—not merely an assertion—that the program was sufficiently narrow in scope to satisfy the requirements of the immunity language.

OK computer?

Here we bump up against a question Ars has previously considered at some length: Can computers eavesdrop? Because Attorney General Michael Mukasey has denied the allegation that NSA conducted sweeping "dragnet" surveillance, but he has done so in a conspicuously careful and selective way. Mukasey's public filing with the court asserts that there was no broad "collection" of the "contents" of communication "for the purpose of analyzing those communications through key word searches." But the EFF/ACLU brief argues that "the failure of the Attorney General to define the phrase 'collection of content' indicates that he may be subsuming within his certification a dangerous new interpretation of the Constitution and the surveillance statutes: that, even where the government uses surveillance devices to acquire the communications of millions of individuals as part of a suspicion-less dragnet, there is no government search or seizure of communications content ... unless and until those contents are processed by the government’s computers, or made available for use by a human analyst."

In the past, going at least as far back as the controversy over the FBI's "Carnivore" surveillance software, the government has argued that the "collection" or "acquisition" of a communication does not occur until it is recorded in some human-readable format. On this theory—which EFF and the ACLU vehemently reject—computer filtering of large quantities of data does not yet constitute "collection"; only the data actually flagged by the computer for later analysis is actually "collected" or "intercepted."

The denial of collection "for the purpose of... key word searches" is also rather specific. It does not appear to rule out, for instance, filtering communications for particular voiceprint matches, or the use of a particular language, or a specific regional accent. And since "content" in surveillance law has traditionally been defined as information concerning the "meaning or purport" of a communication, it is not yet clear whether a filtering process keyed to those features would be considered analysis of "content," or only of information about the communication, akin to a phone number or e-mail header.

To Bankston's chagrin, however, the government has not made that argument explicitly in this instance. "We wish they would make it," he says. "Verizon made it in one of their responses, but the government hasn't. I hope the legal issues implicit in the Attorney General's weirdly cabined reply become explicit, because those issues are at the heart of this case."

In defense of immunity

The government has until early November to submit their reply to the EFF/ACLU arguments. But Robert Alt, a legal scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Ars he saw serious flaws in the civil liberties groups' core contentions.

Most of their arguments, says Alt, "seem to arise from their frustration at trying to get at the government through the telecoms. They're trying as hard as they can to cram claims they'd like to make against the government against the telecoms." One of these, he avers, is their Fourth Amendment claim, which is properly targeted at the NSA, rather than the telecoms that may have provided the spy agency access to their networks. And he argues that even where constitutional rights are at issue, Congress is free to establish rules limiting whether and under what circumstances particular parties have a cause of action without entirely eviscerating the general right to seek remedy.

Neither is Alt much impressed with the separation of powers argument. "This is an ordinary delegation of an administrative determination," he says. "Since the 1930s, the courts have recognized the right of congress to delegate decisions of this sort to executive agencies." Invoking the recent Wall Street bailout, Alt argues that the discretion afforded the attorney general under the FISA Amendments Act is, if anything, far more constrained than the broad leeway to dispose of hundreds of billions of dollars that Congress recently granted Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

On due process, Alt cites Dames & Moore v. Reagan and United States v. Pink, in which the Supreme Court permitted the executive branch to block American citizens' civil litigation against the governments of Iran and the Soviet Union, respectively. Both cases turned in significant part on the president's supremacy in question of foreign affairs under the Constitution. But as far as the due process question is concerned, argues Alt, those precedents still cut against the idea of any absolute right to have a pending lawsuit settled by a judge without executive interference.

As for the "design" of the NSA surveillance program, Alt invoked Lyndon Johnson's characterization of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: "It's like grandma's nightgown; it covers everything that needs to be covered." Here too, he suggests, the intent of Congress was plainly to block civil action against the telecoms. If the government's surveillance procedures were poorly designed, he contends, that's an issue to raise in a suit against the government.

EFF's Bankston, who is keeping his powder dry for the upcoming showdown with the government, declined to respond to potential counterarguments in any detail. But he emphasized his confidence that "the court will agree it's an unconstitutional violation of separation of powers to try to dictate to a judge how to decide our case."

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Mozilla for Mobile

Mozilla Has Officially launched its Mobile version of Browser Under The codename “Fennec”


The first release is for OS2008 ("Maemo") Platform which is there in Nokia N810 Internet tablet.

The reviewer are quite amazed with The interface of this new browser and are saying that it will capture the mobile market in real time.

Few amazing Feature of This Browser ( Fennec):

• Bookmarking and that too with Tags
• Tabbed Browsing Support
• Easy Access To major Search Engines
• Inbuilt Pop-Up Blocker
• Password Manager( I love this Feature)
• Download Manager
• Customization and Preference Tab

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RIAA now wants to avoid trial in innocent infringement case

By Eric Bangeman

The RIAA has apparently had a change of heart towards a Texas woman accused of sharing music over KaZaA when she was 16 years old. In Maverick v. Harper, the industry group has backed off its demand for a jury trial and has instead opted to accept a judge's $7,400 damage award: $200 for each of 37 songs downloaded in whole or in part by the RIAA's hired investigative gun, MediaSentry.

Whitney Harper admits to using KaZaA, but said that she had no idea that it was illegal to download and share music over P2P. She cited a lack of warnings from the KaZaA software that the music contained on the popular network was "stolen or abused copyrighted material" and a general lack of understanding of copyright infringement, P2P applications, and P2P networks.

Judge Xavier Rodriguez ruled in September that, while Harper was guilty of copyright infringement, she was an "innocent infringer." So instead of having to pay up to $30,000 in damages for each of the 37 songs, Harper was directed to pay $200—below the usual $750 lower limit for violations of the Copyright Act.

Initially, the RIAA resisted the judge's ruling, opting instead for a trial on the amount of damages. The RIAA has since altered its stance, filing a motion for entry of judgment and fighting Harper's request that the trial go forward. Harper makes "no cogent argument to demonstrate why Plaintiff's Motion should not be granted," argue the record labels. "Instead, Defendant attempts to resurrect an issue that has no bearing on Plaintiffs' motion and that has already been decided by the Court, twice."

The issue referred to by the RIAA is whether simply making a file available over a P2P network is sufficient to constitute copyright infringement. Judge Rodriguez had ruled previously in Maverick v. Harper that making available constituted infringement, notes the RIAA, and Harper's attempts to get him to reconsider are "vexatious."

What the RIAA fails to note is that the landscape has changed, not only since Maverick v. Harper was originally filed in 2007, but in the weeks since the judge's $200-per-song award was made. Just days after the RIAA rejected that award, a federal judge in Minnesota overturned the $222,000 verdict against Jammie Thomas, citing an incorrect jury instruction on the "making available" issue.

Harper's attorneys included that opinion in their motion asking that the trial go ahead as planned. While it would be appropriate in a "normal lawsuit" to stick with the $7,400 judgment, argue her attorneys, this case is anything but normal. "[I]in this case we have this single case, one of tens of thousands of lawsuits filed as a part of a massive campaign to preserve a business model currently dominant in the music," reads the motion. "This Court is aware that this case is not about the actions of Whitney Harper, a young lady who was 14 to 16 years old at the time of alleged infringement. It is instead about an 18 billion dollar industry that was once on a rising trend, now facing its comeuppance by rapidly evolving technology and eroding morals."

An RIAA spokesperson declined to comment on why the group has reversed course and decided to accept the $7,400 judgment mere weeks after angling for a much higher number. We suspect there are a couple of factors. First is the making-available issue mentioned above. It's a bedrock of the group's legal campaign against P2P users, and the RIAA is anxious to avoid having that eroded by yet another adverse ruling.

Another reason is bad PR. That's right—despite appearances, the RIAA does have concerns about its public image. RIAA and record label executives are on record that the lawsuits are not meant to make money; rather, they are meant to educate users and act as a deterrent. We noted in our previous coverage of this case that rejecting the court's award and pushing for what could be a six-figure damage award made the RIAA look hypocritical.

Should the judge deny the RIAA's motion for entry of judgment, the trial would take place in mid-November.

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Cafero Entertainment Bot Keeps Day Job as Bionic Barista

By Wilson Rothman

The wizards at Korea's Yujin Robot have invented a coffee-serving robot. I wish I could tell you more about it, particularly why coffee; looks like it wouldn't have any trouble just as easily serving beer, absinthe or cupcakes. Aving didn't post any additional descriptions, just great photos, so I'm not even sure Cafero knows how to make the coffee it serves. Whatever, it's a cool-looking semi-humanoid robot—with its with tray-friendly arms, a big wheely foot and a touchscreen face—so I decided to share it with you, in depth description or no. [Aving]

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How About That iPhone Bump?

Om Malik

It has been widely reported that iPhone owners use data connections to surf the Internet more often than people whose smartphones have built-in browsers do. Indeed, flat-rate data plans, a bigger screen, a near-desktop quality web browser along with the ability to connect to multiple networks (3G and Wi-Fi) are all contributing to the heavy Internet usage on the part of iPhone owners.

Now the very same dynamics are working their magic on all those applications that were made available on the iTunes App Store in July alongside the launch of the 3G iPhone. Demand for iPhone apps is so great that their makers are getting what could be called an “iPhone bump” — where the release of an iPhone application boosts the fortunes of a mobile application maker overall. The impact is going to be even more pronounced for mobile software makers that had previously been selling to other platforms.

This realization came on the heels of a long conversation with Andrew Fisher, chief executive officer of Shazam, a London-based mobile music software maker that’s a little over four years old. That’s how long it took get his music recognition application into the hands of some 20 million mobile users in 60 countries.

The software lets you hold up the phone to a radio to have it figure out which song is playing; it then helps you get the track from one of the music download stores. On average, the app was getting used between three and five times over the life of a cell phone.

Then came the iPhone. In the 10 weeks since the app has been available for the iPhone platform via the iTunes’ App Store, it’s been downloaded 1.5 million times. The result has been some 20 million “calls” from the app to Shazam’s servers — indicating that people were using it to look up between two and three songs every week.

Shazam experienced an iPhone bump. To be sure, Shazam is not alone. An increasing number of startups are seeing a sharp rise in their user base due to the iPhone. Take for example fellow London-based startup Truphone, maker of mobile VoIP services. Since 2006, it’s been offering up a way to place cheap long distance calls using the Wi-Fi network instead of more expensive mobile minutes.

When I spoke with Truphone’s chief technology officer, Alistair Campbell, last week, he told me that Truphone for iPhone now accounts for about one-half of the total number of Truphone users. And while he wouldn’t disclose the total number of downloads, he did say that the company is focusing more of its resources on Apple’s platform.

That’s probably a good idea. Shazam’s Fisher, a veteran of the mobile industry, thinks there’s a larger strategic implication of the iPhone bump: A bigger installed base that is more engaged with the device means that now companies such as his can take the concept of mobile advertising more seriously and think of it as a relevant revenue stream.

AdMob, a mobile advertising company based in San Mateo, Calif., is already seeing a big jump in the number of ads it is serving on the iPhone – about 103 million in September vs. just 35 million in August Apple’s iPhone is already the fourth most-used device through which AdMob’s ads are accessed in some form or the other – a good proxy for application developers. And perhaps an indication of where companies will be looking to place their ads throughout the economic downturn.

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Please Fix The iPhone: A To-Do List For Steve Jobs

by Erick Schonfeld on October 20, 2008

iPhone addicts love their iPhones, but nothing is perfect. Customer feedback for Apple just went public on Please Fix the iPhone. The site let’s iPhone owners, or anyone else, list and vote on the features that most need fixing on the iPhone. The features that get the most votes rise up the ranks.

Right now the top requests are:

1. Copy and paste.
2. Landscape view for emails.
3. Ability to hide unwanted icons.
4. Use the iPhone as a 3G modem for the MacBook
5. Make Flash work.

Looks like Steve Jobs has a new to-do list. What would you add? Don’t tell us, go vote on the site.

(The site is a side project of online marketing firm Fullsix).

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The Psystar Myth - Not as cheap as advertised

Earlier today, I came across an ad for Psystar which was advertising a 2GHZ computer running OS X with 2GB of Ram for only $554. Psystar likes to market itself as a cheaper alternative to Apple, but a closer look reveals that a Pystar computer running OS X isn’t as cheap as Psystar would lead you to believe, and that the $554 price tag is completely misleading.

Psystar likes to advertise a picture of a desktop tower, accompanied by a monitor showing Leopard, alongside a price tag that says “From $554″. In reality, to get the setup pictured in the ad costs almost 500 dollars more and is about the same price as a comparable iMac.

For starters, the $544 price tag doesn’t include a monitor, and if you’d like one, Psystar will add one on for 200 dollars more. It also doesn’t come with a mouse and keyboard, but Pystar will add one in for 29 bucks. Their computers also don’t come with FireWire, but you can get a FireWire port for only 40 extra bucks. You want a wireless card? Add in another $100. Are you a bluetooth man? If so, chalk up another 40 bucks. That brings the grand total to $961 for a complete desktop system. And at this point, it still isn’t up to speed with what the iMac offers. The entry level iMac offers a 2.4 GHZ processor, and if you want to upgrade the 2.0 GHZ processor that comes with your Psystar computer, you’ll have to add in another 60 bucks. This leaves us with a desktop configuration that comes in at $1,021.99. You can get an equivalent iMac from Apple for as low as $1098 after rebates. All in all, Psystar saves you around 75-100 bucks, but carries a disproportionate amount of risk as future software upgrades from Apple might cripple your Psystar hardware. Dropping more than a grand for a computer that might stop working if you want to keep it up to date doesn’t seem wise. To combat this, Psystar has turned off the automatic software updates, so you’re essentially stuck with the version of Leopard that shipped with your computer. Moreover, Psystar’s setup involves a tower and a monitor, whereas the iMac has the monitor and CPU all in one case. And one more thing, Psystar’s version of OS X doesn’t come with iMovie or iPhoto since iLife isn’t included in the retail version of Leopard. iLife retails for around $79 bucks, so all in all, an iMac and equivalent Psystar system are essentially the same.

Psystar might claim that it’s giving consumers more bang for their buck, what they’re really offering is a Mac mini clone for $544. Only thing is, their version of the Mac mini isn’t so mini. It’s a tower.

The Legal Battle

Apple and Psystar have sued and counter-sued each other, but both recently agreed to enter into Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), meaning that they will both try and avoid litigation and settle their claims via meditation or arbitration. This is a move that caught many off guard as the crux of Psystar’s allegation is that Apple has a monopoly in the OS X market, an argument that doesn’t have any legal legs to stand on. Clearly Psystar couldn’t argue that Apple has a monopoly in the PC market as they have less than a 10% market share. So instead, Psystar came up with the somewhat specious argument that Apple has a monopoly in the OS X market since it won’t allow its operating system to run on any non-Apple hardware. It’s curious, though, how Apple can have a monopoly in a market that Psystar essentially made up out of thin air. Think about it - there is no OS X market. Apple puts OSX on computers that it sells in the computer market. I mean, you can’t sue Coke for refusing to put its formula into a different can on the notion Coke has a monopoly over the coke formula. Admittedly, its an original idea, but legally it should fall flat on its face.

But for some reason, Apple has chosen not to litigate. Perhaps it didn’t want to spend the resources necessary to fight the lawsuit, or perhaps the risk, however small, that they would lose wasn’t a risk Apple was willing to take. If Apple lost, it would give every other company a green light to put a hacked version of OS X in whatever box they wanted, sell it for a little bit less, and take business away from Apple, much in the way that the clones did way back when Apple did, in fact, license its OS.

Psystar’s questionable history

But did Apple have anything to fear at all? Psystar has been shrouded in shadyness since its inception, with the Miami Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau both showing no record of its existence. The president of Psystar, Rudy Pedraza, also seems to be a shady fellow, and Psystar has previously run into trouble for taking Credit Card numbers but not actually processing them. But that’s not all. The physical location of Psystar’s supposed offices have changed at least three times (all within a matter of days), with one of the locations having no trace of Psystar ever being there or leasing any space. Psystar was founded by Roberto and Rodolfo Pedraza, two brothers from South Florida in their mid-20’s, and the two have been involved in a host of other corporations, many of which have since been dissolved by the state due to the lack of properly filed paperwork.

Apple’s original motion to dismiss Psystar’s claims can be found here.

Engadget reviewed a Psystar machine back in April, which can be read here. Gizmodo’s review can be found here.

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Why Apple Won't Get Crushed By The Recession

Henry Blodget

Apple's stock has been cut in half this year as investors worry sick that, as the recession takes hold, consumers and companies won't be able to afford its slick, expensive products anymore. Many analysts have also noted that most of the growth in the laptop market is at the super-low-price end, and that Apple still doesn't play there. The lack of the announcement of an $800 laptop last week further fueled these fears.

Fear not!

Apple is handling these latest challenges the right way. It is a premium brand with premium products and premium profit margins, and it would be a terrible mistake for the company to suddenly begin to compete on price. (Or, worse, to throw its whole value proposition out the window because of a temporary dip in the economy.)

People buy Apple products because of the magical halo of quality and cool that Steve "Sex in a Box" Jobs endows them with, and they understand and accept that--to get that halo--you have to pay up. Once Apple's marketing pitch becomes "costs the same as a Dell", this sexiness will evaporate, and the company will become just another box maker.

It is true that it will be more and more challenging for Apple to maintain its amazing growth and margins as it moves out of a small, passionate high-end market and into the mass market, but the company is gradually positioning itself to do this without sacrificing its premium positioning. Importantly, its prices are coming down, just not enough to where anyone will accuse it of trying to compete on price.

• A $1,000 laptop is not really much more expensive than an $800 laptop, especially for a product that should last a few years. Apple will never win over the folks who choose purely on price anyway, so it would be dumb for it to sacrifice its premium positioning to try.
• The $200 iPhone has much of the functionality that many people once looked to laptops for, and some potential buyers of $500-$800 laptop will opt for that instead. Apple's iPhone, moreover, is still the highest quality product in the market, so no one who buys it will ever feel like they're settling for less.

In short, Apple has positioned itself to sell products to all but the most price-sensitive segment of the market. and because that segment is also the least profitable (except at Walmart-like scale), the company is smart not to sacrifice its brand and value proposition to play there.

But Won't a Recession Flatten The Company?

No. BMW, Mercedes, and--more relevantly--Toyota don't go out of business every time the economy weakens. They get hit, of course--everyone gets hit--but their value proposition doesn't suddenly disappear.

What will likely happen to Apple over the next 18 months?

• Its growth will be slower than expected (because some customers will either delay purchases or choose cheaper options).
• Its margins will be lower (because it will be spreading its fixed costs over a smaller sales base)

The stock market has already foreseen this, which is why the stock has gotten so beaten up. There is a big difference between this and Apple being in any sort of trouble, however. And that's why you've also seen such aggressive buying every time the stock gets near $90 a share.

Apple has $20+ billion in cash, no debt, and the highest margins and fastest growth rate in the industry. At $90, after excluding the value of the cash, the stock trades at just under 10X free cash flow, which is an extraordinarily low multiple for a company of this quality. In a market environment like this, the stock could obviously go lower, but if it does, this won't be because of any mistakes Apple has made.

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