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BetaNews.Com (9 non lus)

Yahoo to close GeoCities

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 10:58pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews
AOL took down its Journals and Hometown services, and now Yahoo's following suit with its own GeoCities, the hosting service that once upon a dot-com bubble seemed to include half the personal sites on the Web.
Yahoo isn't currently providing a lot of detail about what users can expect from the shutdown process, other than that it'll happen "later this year," probably in the summer timeframe. As that unknown date nears, says GeoCities Help Page, "We'll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time."
Long before MySpace, GeoCities was responsible for a great number of sites put up by ordinary folk, often operating with more enthusiasm than design sense. ("Eye-searing" is a word that comes to mind.) The firm was one of the big buys of 1999, as Yahoo picked up the company, which was founded in 1994 as "Beverly Hills Internet," later "Geopages," for $2.87 billion. (Which even at the time we thought was a lot to have one's eyeballs seared.)
The "Cities" part of the name came from the early conceit of choosing a city appropriate for one's pages -- "Hollywood" for a fan site, for instance. Over the years the site hosted tens of millions of pages, though traffic has dropped in recent years as users switched to even simpler (and less eye-searing) blogging sites.
Rest in peace: The infamous GeoCities watermark from 1999.
As of today, GeoCities is accepting no new users. The Help page suggests that current users consider switching to the (paid) Yahoo Web Hosting service.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Judge's impartiality questioned in Pirate Bay trial

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 10:51pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews
Tomas Norström, the Stockholm District Court Judge who presided over the Pirate Bay copyright infringement trial in Sweden is now himself under scrutiny for being a member of two copyright protection organizations, the Swedish Copyright Association (SFU), and Swedish Association for Industrial Property (SFIR).
While the guilty verdict against the four keepers of the Pirate Bay has already been appealed, Pirate Bay attorney Peter Althin said he has filed for a re-trial on the grounds that the court was biased.
The groups to which Norström belongs are outspoken advocates of copyright law reform. SFU's membership includes members of the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau, and members of the IFPI, the organization which earlier this year claimed that 95% of all music downloads are unauthorized.
"Every time I take a case, I must assess whether I am personally involved. I did not feel that I am biased because of those commitments," Norström said in an interview on Sveriges Radio P3.
"It's quite clearly a delicate balance, " said Leif Silbersky, one of Sweden's most famous lawyers and legal pundits. In Swedish law, the concept "Delikatessjäv" (lit: "Delicate Shuffle") refers to the understanding that in important matters, it is practically impossible to be fully impartial, so the next best thing to be is flexible. If someone is capable of bias in one way, he must be equally capable of bias in the opposite way.
Since the judge is responsible for evaluating the bias in jurors, he must also weigh his own bias and decide whether he is capable of being swayed in either direction, or else recuse himself. During the jury selection, Norström dismissed a potential juror on the grounds that he had some degree of personal involvement with copyright organizations.
Rick Falk Vinge, head of the Swedish Pirate Party, said, "This is corruption and decay on a completely inexcusable level. The judge in the most high-profile legal case of the whole year turns out to be a member of a highly partial interest group for one party in the proceedings, and also spent time privately with the prosecuting lawyers. The whole trial must be declared a material loss and redone from scratch."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
For the desktop, AMD covets the budget enthusiast with 3.2 GHz quad-core

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 9:48pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
If you've ever had the pleasure of owning a Nissan Z car (I've owned two in my lifetime), you understand the extra feeling of confidence you get from still being able to afford your house, your clothes, and food. They're very solid performers, they look presentable in a crowd full of Porsches and BMWs, and yet their owners are conscientious folk who can also maintain a budget.
Every time I tell the fellows at AMD that I've been a Z owner, they shout back at me, "Well then, you know what we're talking about!" They're hoping that there's a certain niche of enthusiast system builders who aren't all that interested in displaying the measurements of their disposable income in public. For them, on time, AMD released its next version of sensible high-performance: the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU.
The "Black" theme is to give the buyer an image of high-class. It's also perhaps to dim the lights a bit on the whole theme of competition, which is usually what enthusiasts like to do most with their systems. Despite the fact that AMD is now comfortable with clocking its Shanghai series processors above 3.0 GHz -- the 955 is set at 3.2 GHz, and AMD encourages overclocking -- its principal competition from Intel is the sixth CPU down on its most recent price list, well within the upper-middle-class of its product range, and not nearly its best competitor.
At $245 for 1,000-unit quantities (street prices may be higher, though Newegg.com isn't charging a nickel more), the quad-core 955 is priced well below Intel's current $999 premium (in 1K units) for its Core i7 965. AMD is very happy to remind you that you're paying one-fourth the price. But in Tom's Hardware tests published today, the 965 performs generally better -- for example, about 11% better in the 3DMark overall score, and nearly 19% better in the PCMark suite score. Still, that's not four times the performance; and anyone whose Z car has been beaten in a drag-race by a Maserati, but not by a full body length, knows what it's like to stand toe-to-toe with legends and not feel ashamed.
Today, the Phenom II X4 955 takes its place at the top of AMD's Dragon platform, which features its 7-series chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card. When AMD premiered the Phenom II X4 series back in January, its goal was to keep its best performing platform components under $1,000. If you're investing in a Core i7 platform, a buyer's component prices put together may end up doubling his investment in the Dragon platform. And AMD's move today knocks $40 off the price of the same 2.8 GHz model 920 CPU it introduced in January.
But today's entry adds a new wrinkle to the equation: The 955 uses AMD's new Socket AM3. This means you can purchase a 955 and drop it into a motherboard to replace the 920, or any other Socket AM2+ CPU. But despite the way things sounded back in September 2007 when AMD announced Socket AM3, you cannot drop a Socket AM2+ CPU into a Socket AM3 motherboard. AMD issued a nasty little warning about this earlier this month.
So what would you really be spending to take full advantage of Socket AM3? Checking today's prices at Newegg.com, we were able to put together a system that includes the 955 Black Edition, Asus' M4A78-E motherboard with AMD's 790GX chipset, Asus' version of the Radeon HD 4890 card with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, a pair of Corsair 4 GB DDR2 memory modules (the Dragon platform does not yet use DDR3), and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB hard drive. That gave us a subtotal of $879.95, which doesn't give us much breathing room for extras such as power supply, case, lights, cooling, and cabling if our aim is to stay under $1,000.
On the other hand, what would our price be for an Intel system that's comparable in performance to the new Black Edition -- not Intel's premium CPU, but something that performs about as well as the 955. Tom's Hardware tests reveal that the closest performer in the Intel category is the 2.83 GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550, which Intel sells for $266 (Newegg's markup isn't that high at $269.99). And yes, you read right, Intel's 2.83 GHz model is matched with AMD's 3.2 GHz model.
Right now, Newegg is selling an Asus motherboard with Intel's P45 chipset, for $99 after rebate. That more than compensates for the CPU price premium, since with this motherboard we can still use DDR2 memory. I can keep the other Dragon components and still save ten bucks, paying $869.94.
At that point, the question becomes whether I want to go up against Maseratis and lose by a length, or go up against a Chevy Caprice Classic and get beaten by a nose. AMD's new platform components may have the "Black Edition" theme, but until they catch up to Intel in the architecture department, the source of that blackness may be smoke.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Microsoft net income tumbles over 30%; are layoffs ahead?

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 8:35pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews
For the company's fiscal third quarter ended on March 31, Microsoft on Thursday is unveiling some highly unattractive numbers, including a net-income drop of 32% and an EPS decline of 30%, to 33 cents per share (in GAAP earnings; non-GAAP earnings weighed in at 39 cents/share, precisely as had been predicted). Revenues for the quarter were $13.65 billion, a decrease year-to-year of 6%; net income was up by 3%, to $4.44 billion.
As the company prepped for its 2:30pm EDT phone call, a skim of the earnings-report press release reveals that compared to the third quarter of last year, the Online Services and Entertainment and Devices divisions had a rotten few months, with operating-income losses of $575 million and $31 million respectively. Online Services has a history of bleeding out -- they lost $226 million this time last year -- but the folks who bring you the Xbox 360 and other amusements are normally profitable, showing $106 million in operating income a year ago.
The Client division's not exactly in the red, reporting $3.404 billion in revenue and $2.514 billion in income for the quarter, but that compares to $4.033 billion and $3.115 billion last year. Only the Server and Tools division shows year-to-year improvement, reporting $3.467 billion in revenue and $1.344 billion in income for the quarter. Consolidated numbers for all divisions were $13.648 billion in revenue and $4.438 billion in income.
Considering those numbers, it's easy to understand why the great question winging around Seattle today is layoffs, how many?. Rumors aren't proof anything's going to happen, of course, and the numbers one hears batted around in conversations with Redmond folk vary radically (though most seem to have four figures).
Still, in a week that opened with Sun and Oracle's new mind-meld and included Apple's best-ever non-holiday quarter, these are interesting times for The House That BillG Built. We'll have the details as the call unfolds.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Public Broadcasting joins the streaming pack

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 8:19pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews
PBS has unveiled the beta site for online consumption of its most popular programs in the way that network counterparts ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW have already done.
Like Hulu, both clips and full-length episodes are presented in Flash, however, they are not embeddable in other sites, as they are through PBS' YouTube page. Videos include a pre-roll sponsorship slot and no in-video advertisements.
Currently, featured programming is limited to 13 PBS shows such as Nova, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, and The NewsHour, and the remaining content is linked off of a program's respective sub-site. NerdTV, for example, requires that programs be downloaded (either directly or from a Torrent site), and all PBS Kids programming is first routed through PBS Kids Go!
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Seeking refuge in Asia, EBay makes moves in South Korea

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 7:22pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews
Earlier this month, eBay began to jettison its mismatched properties, such as content location service StumbleUpon, and VoIP messenger software Skype to concentrate on its original strength, the online marketplace.
In the current economy however, those marketplace properties -- which include eBay, StubHub, and Shopping.com -- are actually creating significant drag on the company's revenue. EBay's first quarter earnings report yesterday showed that while the company's overall revenue dropped about 8%, revenue from its marketplace segment dropped nearly 18%. This was attributed to the strengthened US dollar devaluing overseas transactions, which account for more than half of eBay's business.
"Yes, internationally the business is growing faster than it is here domestically", said eBay CFO Bob Swan.
Shortly after it announced its divestitures, eBay made a public tender offer of $1.2 billion to gain a controlling stake in Korean auction site Gmarket.
CEO John Donahoe said yesterday, "We are focusing our portfolio by divesting assets that are not closely aligned with our two core growth businesses...And we are strengthening our core eBay business by signing an agreement to acquire Gmarket, Korea's largest marketplace." (Our thanks to Seeking Alpha for the transcript.)
South Korea's antitrust watchdog group, the Korea Fair Trade Commission, issued a statement today that conditionally approved eBay's acquisition of Gmarket, provided that eBay does not raise sales commissions for at least three years, and that measures are taken to protect independent sellers.
EBay's current Korean marketplace is called Internet Auction Co. (IAC), and it will be combined with Gmarket, ensuring a foothold for growth not only in Korea, but in the broad Asia/Pacific region.
This move looks like an attempt to further entrench eBay in the fixed-price secondary market, dealing in closeouts and out-of-season goods. Donahoe said, "North Asia, Korea, and China have always been primarily fixed-price markets, so IAC has been a truthfully fixed-price market. Gmarket in essence is fixed-price."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
More speed to come from the first Firefox 3.6 alpha

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 6:06pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
While awaiting the first public (non-nightly build) copy of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, we noticed this week the first nightly alpha build of the Mozilla browser to come afterward: the first 3.6 Alpha 1 builds. In Betanews initial performance tests of some of Mozilla's very latest code, there's a lot of room for encouragement: The latest code-name "Minefield" build posted 11.7% better performance overall than the last code-frozen nightly build of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, and 232% the overall performance of the latest Firefox 3.0.9, released just yesterday.
Our tests pit the latest Windows-based Web browsers in a virtual Vista system, and combine the Acid3 standards test with three trusted performance tests for CSS rendering and JavaScript speed. Nearly all the early news for the 3.6 alpha was good, including posting Mozilla's best-ever score on the Acid3 test -- a 94% -- and posting a Betanews cumulative index score for the first time above 10.0, which means this alpha performs over ten times better than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (not the current version, IE8, but the previous one).
This news comes as we also noted that Google's latest bug-fix update build 172.8 for its Chrome 2 series browser (Chrome 1 is the release version, Chrome 2 is the beta) slowed down over version 172.6. Still quite fast, but now at an index score of 13.07, Chrome may see something coming up in its rearview mirror, as the latest Minefield score of 10.14 pulls Mozilla's browser to within the 25% range of Google's speed. With Google's release build not yet scoring a 12, it's conceivable that the final Firefox 3.6 could pull even with Chrome 1 while Google keeps working on tuning Chrome 2.
It's not so good news for users of the release builds of Firefox 3, as the latest 3.0.9 actually slowed down a bit overall. While 3.0.8 had scored a 4.7, 3.0.9 only scores a 4.37.
Once we stop tinkering with the accelerator pedals for a minute or two, we might get a chance to play with some of 3.6's new features. We did stumble across one of them right away: When clearing your history and the contents of the browser cache, you can now specify generally how much time you want to wipe clean -- the last hour, two hours, four hours, today, or everything in the cache. Now, at the moment, this comes at the expense of specifying what you want to wipe clean -- history, cache, cookies, passwords -- but perhaps the team is looking for a way to integrate those choices into the new setup.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Full Disk Encryption for notebooks launches in beta

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 4:45pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews
Security company Check Point Software has begun accepting testers for its ZoneAlarm Full Disk Encryption for Laptops beta program, a program designed to make sensitive data saved on notebooks more difficult to extract if the computer is stolen.
While Full Disk Encryption is turned on, the user must enter an additional password before Windows starts up. Once in Windows, the software encrypts unused files, including even deleted and temporary ones, and decrypts only the files currently in use.
Users of ZoneAlarm Extreme Security beta available in Fileforum will have to uninstall their prior version to be able to participate in this beta, and as usual, users are advised to only install this beta on test systems, because certain common practices (such as creating new partitions) can result in data loss.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Presto, and your PC is on

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 3:21pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews
Instant-on capability isn't entirely unknown on Windows machines, but those who spend too much time around Mac or Linux folk may find that its availability -- mostly laptops and tablets, mostly higher-end gear -- is too limited to countenance. To the rescue comes Xandros' Presto Instant-On -- as long as you're willing to apply yourself to a bit of setup effort. (Think of it as making time to save time.)
Xandros has been making a name for itself on various fronts, most interestingly as part of the software that made the first Eee netbooks such a kick in the pants for the PC market. They're good at interoperability across Windows and Linux, and the Presto software takes good advantage of Linux's speed and light system load while behaving -- we found -- as politely as one might hope for a Windows app.
We tried it on a fairly bad-tempered XP machine; the software-only Presto works on Vista as well. The download's a whopping 463 MB, and setup's no joke either. You'll want all your favorite usernames and passwords handy, since you're going to need to configure the stuff you use -- Skype, IM, Wi-Fi access and so on, depending on what you like to do with your machine. The download also includes a multimedia player (specifically, RealPlayer for Netbooks), a document editor, and a browser. More apps are available through the Presto Applications Store.
Once installed, you'll see a new start screen when you switch on your machine, asking you to choose between the Presto environment and the usual Windows. (If you don't choose, it'll kick over to normal Windows startup in 30 seconds.) We found that after the initial bout of configuration, Presto did indeed boot rapidly; in under 10 seconds, we had a funky toolbar loaded along the left side of the screen, and our files and applications were ready to go. Shutdown was even quicker -- a few seconds at most.
And that's it. The utility is an .exe and, as such, behaves as Windows executable files do. We found it perfectly simple to remove from our system using the usual Add/Remove Programs tool in XP (in Vista, Programs and Features). Meanwhile, the company tells us that Presto is not subject to fragmentation, so speed should remain constant over a long period of use.
It's not right for every machine -- an attempt to load it on a beloved tablet was a failure, since the screen drivers weren't available. (Your reporter suggests taking a spin through the support forums to see if your specific machine has any known difficulties running the Presto utility.) But if yours does, frankly, it's hard to imagine what you'd need to run under most circumstances that couldn't be run through Presto. (The company estimates that it can fulfill 95% of user needs.) I was able to edit Word docs, play my music and video clips, and hop onto Skype.
There's a free seven-day trial version available; the full version goes for $19.95. The lucky system will need 4 GB of free disk space.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009