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US government lays down the law in messy online ticketing fiascos

Publié: mars 1, 2010, 9:53pm CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Four men from a San Francisco company called Wiseguy Tickets Inc. have been indicted in a $25 million online ticket fraud scheme, the US Department of Justice announced today.
The four men -- Kenneth Lowson, 40, Kristofer Kirsch, 37, Faisal Nahdi, 36, and Joel Stevenson, 37 -- have been indicted on conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to gain unauthorized access and exceed authorized access to computer systems, and 42 additional counts of wire fraud; gaining unauthorized access and exceeding authorized access to computer systems; or causing damage to computers in interstate commerce.
Wiseguy Tickets would allegedly bypass online ticketing limitations so they could purchase huge blocks of the best seats for the most sought after concerts, live theater, and sporting events.
Vendors such as Ticketmaster, Tickets.com, MLB.com, and MusicToday do not let ticket resellers and brokers buy bulk tickets online. Instead, access is restricted to individuals who must register their sessions through authentication software such as CAPTCHA, an method where the user must type in the letters he sees in a scrambled onscreen image to enter a site. Mechanisms like this are meant to deter automated ticket purchases.
In 2008, Ticketmaster won a suit against Pittsburgh-based RMG Technologies for selling software that let brokers bypass Ticketmaster's authentication systems and online sales limits.
According to the indictment, Wiseguys Tickets developed a network of so-called "CAPTCHA Bots" with a Bulgarian software developer which gave Wiseguys the ability to buy tons of tickets the moment they went on sale. The company amassed its own database of hundreds of thousands of potential CAPTCHA test answers which the bots could then identify and complete faster than a person could. The group disguised their activities by setting up fake companies, fake domains, and fake email addresses.
With these methods in place, Wiseguys managed to buy 1.5 million tickets, including some of the most notoriously expensive shows around. Wiseguys reportedly bought nearly half of the general admission floor seats for a Bruce Springsteen concert in 2008.
Tickets to Bruce Springsteen shows have been so scarce, and sold at such inflated prices, that the Federal Trade Commission has had to get involved.
In what the FTC called a "bait and switch" maneuver, Ticketmaster was reportedly routing customers to an affiliate site called TicketsNow where it would sell tickets to 2009 Springsteen shows at triple or even quadruple their face value. Still other customers reportedly bought tickets directly from Ticketmaster.com but never got them.
Live Nation and Ticketmaster recently settled with the FTC and agreed to provide full refunds to consumers who bought tickets to 14 Springsteen concerts at dramatically inflated prices.
The "Wiseguys," however, won't get off so easily. Each defendant faces up to five years in prison on the conspiracy charges, and up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud; plus a further $250,000 fine per count of hacking (a.k.a., "gaining unauthorized access and exceeding authorized access to computers").
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
The porn-free iPhone? Not exactly

Publié: mars 1, 2010, 9:35pm CET par Carmi Levy

By Carmi Levy, Betanews

At first blush, Apple's decision to cull a few thousand sexually suggestive titles from its iTunes App Store may seem like a puritanical attempt to cleanse its consumer-friendly image of any taint of smuttiness. But like everything related to Apple, the reality distortion field that surrounds the company makes even this assessment a questionable one.
Don't think for a second that wannabe-porn (what Apple called "overtly sexual content" in its removal notices to affected developers) won't be returning soon to any platform with an Apple logo on it. And don't think for a second that Apple will be upset about welcoming more skin to its ecosystem.
But first, let's look at last month's apparent purge of pseudo-porn. Apple's got a lot of good reasons to clean things up. Namely, as it gets ready to ship iPads later this month, it recognizes that the demographic spread of its iPhone/iPod touch universe will shift once the larger-screened devices hit the market. As iPads pop up in the home and at school, the last thing Apple wants or needs is for a less-than-optimally-supervised child to accidentally stumble into the kind of content that was once delivered surreptitiously to one's doorstep in a paper bag (no, not my own doorstep, but gee, thanks for asking).
It's all about control
Don't get me wrong, though: Apple doesn't necessarily need or want a totally skin-free App Store. It simply wants to be able to control the not-suitable-for-prime-time content that does ultimately get approved. There's money to be made from all forms of porn, and publicly traded Apple never met a profit-driving opportunity it didn't like. That it may or may not be wearing a bikini in the process is immaterial to Apple.
So while slicing 5,000 or so somewhat blue offerings from its App Store could be seen as correcting an earlier mistake to approve them in the first place, it's really little more than Apple's attempt to control how those apps appear and how they're purchased. Those 5,000 apps will be back before long, and they'll be displayed on the online equivalent of fresh new shelving.
To keep things simple, let's call anything up to and including February 2010 the "pre-porn era." While Apple happily approved titles from well-known publishers like Playboy and Sports Illustrated, as well as lesser lights like On The Go Girls and Iugo Mobile Entertainment, it didn't categorize them as uniquely as, say, the neighborhood video store would typically treat its adult material. We're all familiar with the stereotype of the cordoned off section at the back of the store, the one kids aren't supposed to enter. The App Store wasn't quite as segregated during this era, so apps with "overtly sexual content" were finding their way into other, more mainstream areas of the online resource.
It was the Web-based equivalent of putting soft-core next to Pixar's latest release. Until it had a way of keeping the iffy stuff permanently under wraps, Apple's only real solution was to remove it entirely while it programs a workable, long-term solution.
Another wall in the garden
That solution will likely take the form of an "Explicit" section in the App Store. Developers are already atwitter over reported sightings of this new category, and Apple's non-confirmation notwithstanding, it would result in a virtual kind of back-of-the-store section -- one that would keep the kids from accidentally encountering things they shouldn't...and developers from complaining that their more mainstream, seriously-themed titles were appearing cheek by jowl (I know, ew, but humor me here) with the titillating ones. Walling off the garden solves the conflict neatly just as it sets the stage for ongoing profits from this growing market space.
In Apple's post-porn era, which essentially begins now, segregation of content is crucial as the iPhone OS universe continues to expand beyond the original phone-based device. The iPod touch has become the de facto choice of today's kids and teens. For parents not ready to go the full-on cell phone route with their kids, the iPod touch is the ideal compromise as it isn't a simple game machine like the Nintendo DS/DSi and Sony PSP, and it doesn't come with the monthly hit from a wireless carrier. The iPad will extend this even further, as schools are actively exploring the tablet device's educational potential. You can't very well have questionable titles creeping into the mix when the principal is doing her research.
How do you define it?
If you're a parent, of course, this entire discussion doubtless makes you feel a little dirty. Porn, after all, is the scourge of the Internet. We can debate all day how we choose to define the various grades of porn, but ultimately there will be no agreement. Apple's "overtly sexual content" is someone else's soft-core porn. And to my prudish, spinster aunt who never smiled for as long as I knew her, the swimsuit catalog that appeared in her mailbox like clockwork every spring was the pornographer's equivalent of a ticket to a very hot, eternal place.
In any form, pornography's pervasiveness defies the imagination just as it opens up business opportunities for those with the cojones to set the morality of it all aside for a bit. As a profit-seeking, publicly traded company, Apple is simply pursuing a market opportunity that presented itself when developers first decided to push the boundaries of skin -- and taste -- and got the first of those now-disputed 5,000 apps approved.
The fact that Apple has decided it doesn't want porn ruling its platform doesn't mean it doesn't want porn at all. It simply means that Apple wants to rule everything that goes on in its software universe. That some of the titles may be considered by some pornographic, or overtly sexual, or whatever, is irrelevant to the company. In the coming months, Apple will put the proper controls and processes in place to effectively manage the content and the revenue it's expected to generate.
Anyone who thinks the same thing isn't about to happen on every other mobile platform in existence is at risk of misunderstanding just how critical this skin-flecked revenue stream is to everyone's future business. Android and BlackBerry users? You're next.
Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Do not even turn on your PS3 today, Sony warns

Publié: mars 1, 2010, 7:50pm CET par Tim Conneally
By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Since yesterday evening, PlayStation 3 users have been reporting difficulties in connecting their consoles to the PlayStation Network for online gameplay and system updates. While it was first thought to be a network-related issue, Sony has warned that there is a much more widespread issue currently affecting older PlayStation 3's.
Sony's offical statement lists the following errors as a part of this internal clock bug:
- The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000. When the user tries to sign in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; "An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)."
- When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; "Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game."
- When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; "The current date and time could not be obtained (8001050F)."
- Users are not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.
"If you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data," Sony warned this afternoon.
The company hopes to have the issue resolved by tomorrow.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Let the Internet Explorer 6 death watch begin

Publié: mars 1, 2010, 7:36pm CET par Joe Wilcox

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

All praise the great gods of the InterWeb for their divine intervention. March 1, 2010 is Internet Explorer 6's judgment day, when mighty Google and Microsoft looked down from the heavens -- or Mt. Olympus, if you prefer - and cast IE6 into the abyss. Starting today, Google is beginning to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, while Microsoft presents European Union Windows users with a ballot screen for choosing even the most obscure browser, but not IE6. Microsoft's once mighty browser has fallen -- and not a second soon enough.
IE6's heart turned evil long ago. Microsoft released the browser in 2001 only to later let development languish. Only after Mozilla released Firefox in late 2004 and, around the same time, Google showed that bundled search could make browsers profitable did Microsoft start seriously working on IE7. But by the then, IE6's cold-hearted proprietary standards had polluted the InterWeb with wicked metatags.
During IE6's reign of terror -- before there were real alternative browsers other than Opera -- Website designers paid tribute by using a DOCTYPE (or Document Type Declaration) tag to open browser-specific pages or stylesheets. DOCTYPE was created with other page-rendering purposes, but because of IE6's wicked dictatorship -- ah, proprietary standards -- it came to be mainly used for setting the browser's layout mode, mainly "quirks" or "standards."
Meanwhile, IE6 amassed a great group of worshipers -- malware writers looking to exploit security vulnerabilities for profit. In the early "noughties," IE6 brandished ActiveX as a great sword and shield, unleashing lightning that promised to spread a great horde of plug-ins across the InterWeb. IE6 blinded enterprise IT managers with great ActiveX promises. By adopting ActiveX, IT managers could automate processes, thus saving time and money. Their promised reward: Heavenly respite from their labors -- the chance to leave the office at 5 p.m. and enjoy a real life, rather than be chained to Web servers demanding manual servitude.
But IE6 betrayed enterprise ActiveX followers by allowing malware worshipers to spread malicious code across the InterWeb and Intranets. The promise of early work days became long hours of work nights trying to repair the damage done by ActiveX and other IE6 security exploits.
Like Zeus, who often couldn't keep his god children in check, Microsoft did little to reign in Internet Explorer 6 for far too long. After all, IE6 was Microsoft's child, as wicked as it had become. Parents love even the wickedest child. Now, with the birth of Internet Explorer 8 and growing InterWeb population demands to oust IE6, Microsoft has finally taken action. But only after the great god Google acted first. Google pledged to smite IE6 before Microsoft, even though their first strikes come the same day.
IE6 will be missed by malware worshipers and enterprise IT managers too dependent on ActiveX controls to easily switch browsers. ActiveX remains in IE7 and IE8, but Microsoft caged the plug-in architecture by changing the default settings. ActiveX is "Prometheus Bound," unless freed by IT managers or end users changing the default settings.
Google and Microsoft may have struck down IE6, but the browser won't easily or suddenly go into the abyss. Too many worshipers remain. According to Net Applications, 19.76 percent of Internet users used IE6 in February -- that's more than IE7 (13.57 percent) but not IE8 (22.52 percent). IE6 usage share was more than Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Opera combined (12.41 percent). Even for the great gods Google and Microsoft -- and the massive powers of monopoly -- IE6 won't easily be vanquished. But at least they're finally trying.
The IE6 death watch is finally underway. The question: How long before the browser is cast down into oblivion? I ask Betanews readers for predictions. How long do you think it will take before IE6 usage reaches zero? When will you and all the InterWeb population be free from IE6's lordship? Please answer in comments.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
The mad rush to release Opera 10.5: Two months' work in one weekend?

Publié: mars 1, 2010, 7:24pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Opera 10.5 Release Candidate 4 for Windows from Fileforum now.
Just a handful of weeks ago, the developers of Opera 10.5 were calling their "pre-alpha" build dangerous if used to run a nuclear reactor facility. Over the weekend, in what appears to have been a round-the-clock effort to compress a few months' work into a few days' time, Opera Software ticked through four release candidates of its latest Windows-based Web browser.
The reason, of course, is Microsoft's rollout of its browser choice screen for European users of older versions of Internet Explorer. Some users reported seeing the screen for the first time over the weekend, though the full-scale rollout began in earnest today.
Judging from the fury of messages posted to Opera's developers' site over the past 72 hours, the team has been able to address some of the major bugs reported by testers in the field. Some. But others are complaining that problems continue even with the latest RC4 build posted this morning, including drag-and-drop problems discovered by Betanews last week and verified by others in the field. That somewhat "wonky" behavior persisted for us this morning -- for example, with the problematic Bookmarks tab (where bookmarks are managed in 10.5), we tried dragging a bookmark to the Trash can only to find the entire folder in which that bookmark appeared, was sent there instead.
Betanews isn't alone here; at least one other tester in the field is reporting similar problems as of just this morning. "Is it not a waste of time to post a new build for every two fixed bugs," reported one tester today. "It is getting to be ridiculous."
One tester with handle mrd disagreed: "Ideally (but in the real world almost never) you want less bug fixes per release, because then it's easier to nut out any regressions caused," he wrote.
For others, it's getting to be quite exciting. Many are expecting an RTM edition to go live sometime today. Some have suggested that it may be more important for Opera to go ahead and call it finished now, and just post hotfixes over the coming days for remaining issues.
Writes Idan Adar, "People need to understand that 10.5 is already a huge step forward from 10.10. People need to understand that at some point a software must get released, despite all issues -- new and old. If any of you guys actually follow these snapshots in this blog, then you also know that a short while after 10.5 is out there will be new snapshots of whatever comes next."
But there appear to be a truckload of those issues, and testers are providing evidence through screenshots.
In our own continued tests, with RC4, we noted a few tweaks had been made to the new translucent skin since Beta 2. We also discovered that one of the peculiarities we discovered last week in the layout of the Tab bar when wrapping (multi-row) is turned on -- the creation of an excess gap along the right side -- only occurs on accounts where Windows font magnification is set higher than 100%. At 100% magnification, the trash can icon rests nicely along the right side of the window; but with higher magnification, it gets situated more toward the middle, off by its lonesome.
Other testers are reporting the following issues: smooth scrolling that isn't smooth anymore; improper rendering of Chinese characters, with spaces between each one; some HTML5 videos not playing in the browser while others will; the drop-down list from the address bar occasionally showing up with a transparent backdrop (rendering the opaque contents illegible); and CSS objects that don't line up properly, such as in the test you're seeing here. Pictured above is how Facebook reported the results of Sunday afternoon's classic Canada vs. US men's Olympic hockey game, as rendered in Mozilla Firefox 3.6 (stable version).
And here is how Opera 10.5 RC4 renders the same page. Note the contents of the table in the middle overlap their boundaries, that the Facebook logo in the table at right is completely obscured, and also that the Medal Count box in the upper right corner appears completely empty. If you look very closely, the contents that should be in that box appear below it instead, peeking out from in-between the borders of the sporting event category buttons.
For some, sites with streaming content fail to load entirely, such as Last.fm. Early Betanews tests this morning revealed that with the recent bug fixes, Opera 10.5's performance took a hit. We also found evidence that Opera wasn't the only company with developers working overtime: Google has turned the burners on high for Chrome 5. As a result, what was a three-point gap on our Windows 7 performance index has now been cut to less than one point: a 20.70 overall score for Opera versus 19.88 for Chrome 5 dev build 335.1. Chrome leads over Opera, either slightly or substantially, in all the computational tests; it's in graphics and rendering where Opera holds a little bit of an edge. It lost its edge in table rendering to Chrome 5 this morning.
Long-time Opera users are excited to see their favorite product back in the hunt for browser supremacy, and there's no doubt that this hunt has improved the product significantly. But the rough edges will be the first edges that newcomers to Opera see this week -- folks who haven't even heard of Opera Software, will be trying it for the first time. Those hotfixes, if they're in the works, had better come quickly.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Greener Gadgets 2010: The race to make things out of better things

Publié: mars 1, 2010, 4:59pm CET par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

When you buy a PC or some other CE gadget, what kinds of substances are actually inside it...and what's being used to ship it to your house? At the Consumer Electronics Association's Greener Gadgets 2010 in New York City last week, ecologically oriented speakers touched on that question, in some cases proposing alternative materials -- such as cork or "Ecocradle" -- that they'd like to see show up in those places instead.
Yves Behar, founder of the Fuseproject product design agency, held forth on how gadgets can be "desirable" and "in demand" while at the same time friendly to the environment.
As a few examples of this combination of traits, Behar cited Herman Miller's energy-efficient LED lights, Bluetooth headphones from Jawbone, and PCs that he personally helped to design earlier in his career for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.
But what's actually inside the "typical laptop" PC? Leo Bonanni, founder of Sourcemap.org, provided his answer by pointing to a slide of one of the many "sourcemaps" created by the open source group to illustrate the supply chain origins and carbon footprints of various objects.
Bonanni's sourcemap of the typical laptop includes about 50 ingredients, including steel from the Russian Federation, copper from Chile, nickel from Australia, and glass from Kentucky, along with aluminum, cadmium, and lead. The latter two ingredients often end up being often reused in children's jewelry, he noted. "We only have something for a short time in its life," according to Bonanni, who is also a PhD. candidate at MIT Media Lab. "We're just kind of shepherding it from one point to another."
Pictured left to right: Sarah Rich, senior editor, Dwell; Julian Lwin, owner, Lwindesign; and Andrew Wagner, editor-in-chief, ReadyMade, participating in the Greener Gadgets conference in New York City last February 25. [Photo credit: Jacqueline Emigh]
Through the information in the sourcemaps about carbon footprints, "You can say, 'We are exactly this green.'"
Aside from the laptop map, other popular sourcemaps on the .org site include maps for a toothbrush, a bottle of Poland Springs water, a Tesla Roadster, a Toyota Prius, and a giant TCR '04 bicycle.
Bonanni didn't precisely say whether he believes the materials in a "typical laptop" are environmentally sound. But Adele Peters, a participant in this year's Greener Gadgets design contest, clearly thinks she's come up with a better alternative to the computer mouse that ships in the same box as so many desktop PCs.
Peters' entry in the contest, Corky, is a wireless mouse designed to be powered by the motion of your hand, thereby eliminating the need for batteries. Corky's shell is made of cork recycled from bottlecaps, whereas its other components come from recycled plastic.
"Movement back and forth on the desk is captured by elements within the mouse shell. Buttons on the left and right each engage a piezoelectric element which stores the energy generated. The scroll wheel actuates another element as it turns," according to literature posted on the Green Gadgets site.
Corky made it onto a list of ten finalists culled from visitors' votes on the Web site. But in two subsequent rounds of votes held at the event -- one of them by an "American Idol"-style panel of three judges, and one by the audience itself -- the mouse got outvoted by several other green innovations.
First Place in the awards contest went to AUG Living Goods, a mobile phone app that scans bar codes to give you information about the foods you're buying. Taking Second Place was the Empower Chair, a glider-style chair which stores and reuses energy from the motion of the glider. The third slot went to Illumi-Charger, a grid-free USB wall charger.
One of the judges, ReadyMade Editor-in-Chief Andrew Wagner, voiced doubts that motion alone would be enough to power the Corky mouse.
Eben Bayer, another presenter at Greener Gadgets, showed a green alternative to the Styrofoam packing that turns up in so many shipments of consumer electronics products.
"Our vision is to rid the earth of Styrofoam," said Bayer, COO of Ecovative Design LLC. In his talk, Bayer repeatedly referred to Styrofoam as "toxic white stuff."
Beyond its role as a packing material, Styrofoam is also used inside the walls of homes. The EPA estimates that the material consumes 25% of all landfills, according to Bayer.
"It's still going to be there a year later because this stuff doesn't break down," he added.
Bayer's alternative, Ecocradle, uses husks from feedstocks such as buckwheat -- "which would otherwise get burned or dumped into the ocean" -- bound together by glue made of mycelium, the regenerative part of the "ecologically sustainable" mushroom.
Unlike the environmentally friendly corn ethanol peanuts used recently, Ecocradle is moldable to support the shapes of various electronic components, according to Bayer. He said he hopes that if someone ever tosses Ecocradle packing by the roadside, "you'll [soon] see a plant growing there."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010