12
quick start THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
GOOGLE AIDS AND ABETS
Two criminals may have overestimated their
abilities when they plotted an after-hours heist
of a Colorado Springs amusement center, but
at least they under-
stood the power of
the Google when
their plan went
awry. After spending
more than an hour
trying to crack the
center’s safes, the
burglars queried
“how to crack a
safe” on Google. The
search was apparently successful; $12,
was stolen and the burglars remain at large.NOBEL LAUREATE PUBLISHES
ONLINE
Elfriede Jelinek, author of The Piano Teacher
and the 2004 recipient of the Nobel Prize in
Literature is making her latest novel available
for free online. The Austrian writer is agora-
phobic and thus relies on the web for most of
her social contact. Her affinity for the medium
is behind her decision to publish her new
work—“a mixture of blog and prose”—on the
web as she writes it.RIAA MUST PAY
After a three-year-long legal battle over copy-
right infringement (Capitol v. Foster), the RIAA is
being forced to pay Debbie Foster $68,685.
in attorneys’ fees.
In November
2004, the orga-
nization alleged
that Foster’s ISP
account was
used for music
sharing and offered her a $5,000 settlement.
Proclaiming her innocence, Foster refused; the
case went to court but was later withdrawn by
the RIAA. Now the org must pony up for Foster’s
legal expenses.WINDOWS 7 ON THE WAY
With Vista barely yet a household name,
Microsoft is already heralding the coming
of Windows 7—the working title for the
company’s next major OS—with a target
release date of 2010. According to company
officials, Microsoft is now all about frequent
OS releases: a significantly overhauled OS
every four years, with minor updates falling
in the interim years. The ultimate goal is to
move users to an OS subscription model,
thus “annualizing” software revenue.FUNSIZENEWS
Miro for the Masses
The free open-source video platform formerly known as Democracy Player
gets a new name and some new and improved featuresSpin Precession and You
Researchers uncover the real culprit behind
hard-drive data lossHow a hard drive works is no big secret. When the
drive’s magnetic head passes over the platter, it
fl ips the polarity of an area on the disk to either
a positive or a negative charge. But new research
from the University of California, Santa Cruz and
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies suggests that
the jump isn’t like fl icking a light switch.
Physicists from the two institutions have shown
that atoms on a hard drive’s disk actually wobble as
their direction of spin changes. This “spin preces-
sion” can affect the phase of neighboring atoms,
similar to the ripple from a drop of water hitting
a puddle. A chain-
reaction of unintend-
ed phase changing
leads to data loss.
D a t a l o s s b e -
comes more common
as a drive’s capacity
(and areal density)
increases, but better
magnetic dampening
material can alleviate
avalanche-like phase
changing.Data-nappers
Demand Ransom
“If you want to see your music
collection again, do not contact
the police. Meet us on the Internet
at midnight with $11.” OK, that’s a
dramatic re-creation, but it’s not
far from the truth.
The latest trend in viruses has
individuals trying to extort cash
from unwitting computer users.
The Trojan works by supposedly
encrypting document fi les on an
infected computer and deleting
the originals. A “ransom” dialog
box then asks for $10.99 to be
sent via Western Union to have
the fi les decrypted. Once every
30 minutes a random fi le will be
deleted until the ransom is paid.
Fortunately, according to
antivirus fi rm Kaspersky Lab, the
new code, dubbed Ransom.A, is
a bluff. Kaspersky Lab says while
real ransomware has existed for
some time, malware writers are
now exploiting media exposure
on the topic and trying to scare
people into coughing up cash.
No matter what, Kaspersky Lab
advises, don’t pay up.With Miro (www.getmiro.com), you can partake of more than 1,800 program
channels, create your own video channel, or search and save from any
other online video site, such as YouTube, Google Video, and blip.tv.MAXIMUMPC OCTOBER 2007