Comcast will offer use of its Wi-Fi network free of charge to those hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy, the cable and Internet provider said on Wednesday. The network, which is typically free for unlimited use by those with an Xfinity Internet account, is now open to the public through November 7.
Hotspots in Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. are part of the offer. A list of these hotspots can be found using Xfinity’s Wi-Fi coverage map available from the Comcast website.
Comcast’s hotspots can be found both indoors and outdoors in parks, public places, public transportation, and shopping malls. The cable provider operates some 50,000 of these hotspots across the country, mostly across the Northeast and in California.
To use the free Wi-Fi, look for the “xfinitywifi” network at a participating hotspot. On the page that pops up after connecting, look for the link that says “Not a Comcast Subscriber?” toward the bottom of the page. Click it, then select “Complementary Trial Session.” Comcast will allow you to renew your connection every two hours.
Obviously, the availability of these hotspots is dependent on both power and cable service being available at that location. In the hardest hit areas, that may be a bit tough: Current estimates put some 7 million people without power, and as much a a quarter of residents in the ten states affected by Sandy without broadband service.
Another caveat is that Comcast’s offer of free Wi-Fi only extends to hotspots operated by Comcast directly. Those operated by partners such as Cablevision and Time Warner Cable are not part of the promotion. That includes some of the hardest hit areas—including New York City, Long Island and Connecticut.
Neither company had announced similar plans for free Wi-Fi to those affected by Sandy as of Wednesday afternoon.
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Windows 8 is the biggest change to Windows since the original Windows 95. Whether you've been playing with the consumer preview, intrigued by the direction Microsoft is taking, or worried that you may have to relearn Windows all over again, PCWorld can help you get started with the Windows 8.
The Windows 8 Starter Guide covers some key things you need to know before you get started, during the installation process, and with your first few hours with the Microsoft's new OS. We'll help you check for potential compatibility pitfalls, walk you through a typical upgrade process, and suggest when a clean install might be better than an in-place upgrade.
PCWorld's Windows 8 Starter Guide also contains information on the different versions of Windows 8, and Microsoft's introductory pricing, so you can get the best bang for your Windows 8 buck.
Once Windows 8 is up and running, PCWorld editors help walk you through many of the new features of Windows 8. We'll explain just how the new Start screen works and how to best navigate your way through the new interface. We'll also introduce you to the Windows 8 desktop, and the best way to navigate the new, Start menu-free desktop. You'll learn how to navigate Windows 8 using touch and gestures, or using the good old mouse and keyboard (including important keyboard shortcuts.)
When you're familiar with navigation and the basics, we'll lead you through the process of creating and managing accounts, backing up your system, and other basic chores. You'll be up and running with Windows 8 in no time.
Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy knocked out mobile, phone and cable service in many parts of the eastern U.S. on Monday, with about one in four cell sites affected in the hardest-hit band of the country between Virginia and Massachusetts, according to an FCC estimate.
About 25 percent of the cell sites in the 10-state area were out of service at 10 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission estimated. Due to the floods, high winds and snow brought by the storm, there were reports of outages as far west as Michigan, the agency said. The situation could become worse in some areas as backup power supplies for affected cell sites run out, it warned.
A small number of 911 call centers went out of service, and calls to them were redirected to other 911 facilities, an FCC representative said on Tuesday. Some of those redirected calls came across without location information, and the FCC is investigating that problem, the representative said.
Service-provider report card
Service providers were still evaluating the effects of the wide-ranging storm late Tuesday.
Verizon Communications said more than 200 of its wireline facilities were running on backup power. "Although we will be working with all available resources to restore service for our customers, some pockets of damage are extensive and could take up to a week or more to fully restore," Bob Mudge, president of Verizon's Consumer and Mass Business division, said in a press release.
Verizon Wireless said 94 percent of its cell sites in the Northeast were up and running and all its switching and data centers were functioning normally. But extensive flooding in the hardest-hit areas, including Lower Manhattan and parts of New Jersey, caused problems for both wireline and wireless carriers. Power outages also affected service, and in some cases carriers were waiting for electric utility crews to finish their work.
"The storm surge from Hurricane Sandy has resulted in flooding at several Verizon Central Offices in Lower Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island causing power failures and rendering back-up power systems at these sites inoperable," Verizon Communications said in the release. "While these sites are currently on battery power, the inevitable loss of power requires that all equipment at these sites be powered down to prevent damage." Customers served by those central offices lost all FiOS, DSL (digital subscriber line) and wireline voice service, Verizon said.
"We're still largely in assessment mode," Verizon Communications spokesman Alberto Canal said. In Lower Manhattan, "We can't get in there to do work until the power companies do their work. ... It's still very early," he said.
Sandy affected Sprint Nextel service mostly in the New York tri-state area (New York, Connecticut and New Jersey) and in Pennsylvania and parts of New England, spokeswoman Crystal Davis said. Flooding, debris, and failure of commercial power and the wired links to cell sites were major causes of outages, she said.
"Some of our strike-team crews are out, and they are working to restore service where they can get access," Davis said. "Right now, it's basically a safety and an access issue."
Sandy affected most of the East Coast, all the way from North Carolina north to Maine and Canada. Service in some areas may be restored more quickly than those in the band hit hardest by the storm.
"Every area has different impacts and different damage, so it's too early for us to tell when we're going to have everything up and running for every part of the country that's been affected," Sprint's Davis said.
AT&T also said its network had problems in areas hit heavily by the storm.
"We are in the initial stages of performing an on-the-ground assessment of our network for damage, and crews will be working around the clock to restore service. We are deploying personnel and equipment as soon as it is safe to do so," the carrier said in a statement. T-Mobile USA also said some of its customers might experience service disruptions in some areas and its engineers were assessing the situation as quickly as possible.
Cable service was also hit. "At this time it appears most issues are directly related to commercial power outages, and for the majority of people, their Comcast service should be restored as power comes back on to their homes," Comcast said in a statement.
Artist Marc Brownlow won first place in the food category of our Halloween contest last year for his gorgeously gourmet Skull Truffles. His how-to is a clear and well-photographed 19 steps, and the end result provides some delicious motivation: dark chocolate center, white chocolate skull, with candied walnut braaaaaains!
But the part that folks found challenging was making the skull molds. Marc is a product designer, graphic designer, and illustrator, which explains why his skull molds look so darn good. I can guarantee my version would look more like snowman heads than skulls. Here’s Marc’s version:
Several folks had asked if Marc would make and sell the molds. I touched base with him to get his thoughts and he wrote:
I’m delighted that people still like that project. I would be willing to sell the molds, but the price of just the food-grade silicone alone is so high ($25/lb) that I don’t know if people would want to pay for it. By the time I added shipping and paid myself anything for labor it would be in the $30-$35 range. My instinct is that if it was around $10 per finished mold, people might go for it, but I don’t know where I could get super cheap food-grade silicone.
I made a big batch of skull truffles for a party on Saturday and they were a big hit. I treated myself to a chocolate tempering machine last year and it makes the process so much quicker. I also made candied walnut brains instead of using candy melts, since the candy melt had too many artificial ingredients for my tastes.
I would be willing to look into what was required to sell the skull truffles themselves. I suspect I’d need to get a food safety license and learn how to safely ship chocolate so it doesn’t arrive in a melted puddle.
Anyone know of a source for super cheap food-grade silicone? Alternately, anyone got tips on shaping skulls? Post up in the comments below!
There's been a considerable bit of feather-ruffling caused lately by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux.
Most recently, of course, was Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth's controversial announcement about the development strategy for the upcoming Ubuntu 13.04 “Raring Ringtail."
Electronic Frontier FoundationThere are many reasons why users might want to keep their searches private, the EFF notes (Click image to enlarge.)
Not long before that, it was the news that starting with Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal,” the popular Linux distribution would integrate Amazon shopping results into searches performed through the Unity dash.
Plenty of customer “feedback” greeted both developments, but the Amazon partnership was recently brought back into the limelight by a statement of disapproval from none other than the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
'It's no longer their problem'
“It's a major privacy problem if you can't find things on your own computer without broadcasting what you're looking for to the world,” wrote EFF Web developer Micah Lee in a blog post on Monday. “There are many reasons why you wouldn't want any of these search queries to leave your computer.”
It's also not just Amazon that gets to see your data, Lee charges, but rather a number of third parties.
“Ubuntu's Third Party Privacy Policies page lists all of the third parties that they may send your search term and IP address to, and states: 'For information on how our selected third parties may use your information, please see their privacy policies',” he explains. “In other words, once they give your data away, it's no longer their problem.”
'Amazon has the ability to correlate'
Acknowledging Canonical's response to concerns so far, Lee writes, “these changes are great, but it doesn't change the fact that users' search queries automatically get sent to third party companies without giving users a chance to opt-in.”
For example, even when Amazon product images are loaded over HTTPS instead of HTTP, “the fact that they are loaded directly from Amazon's servers instead of from Canonical's means that Amazon has the ability to correlate search queries with IP addresses,” he explained.
One possible solution would be for Canonical to proxy all third-party images and other content for Ubuntu users, Lee suggested.
'Consider displaying a dialog'
In any case, the EFF wants a few things from Ubuntu regarding this situation, Lee said.
First, "include online search results" should be disabled by default, he said.
“Users should be able to install Ubuntu and immediately start using it without having to worry about leaking search queries or sending potentially private information to third party companies,” Lee explained. “Since many users might find this feature useful, consider displaying a dialog the first time a user logs in that asks if they would like to opt-in.”
Canonical should also provide a detailed explanation of what it does with search queries and IP addresses--including how long it stores them and when it gives them to third parties--as well as making it possible for users to toggle on and off specific online search results via the Search Results tab in Privacy settings, he added.
'Make sure Ubuntu remains an exception'
Already in the works at the EFF is a sequel to Lee's Monday post praising new Ubuntu privacy features “that we really like,” Lee concluded.
Meanwhile, Windows and Mac users are already accustomed to having their data sent to third parties without their express consent, he noted; “let's make sure Ubuntu, like the GNU/Linux operating system at its heart, remains an exception to this.”
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Computerworld - Yahoo plans to ignore "Do Not Track" privacy requests sent by Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE10) browser, calling its ally's unilateral decision "signal abuse" and pointing to a possible rift between the search partners.
One Do Not Track (DNT) expert, however, didn't think Yahoo's decision, announced last week, would affect its deal with Microsoft.
"I don't think this is especially significant," said Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Yahoo! is just the biggest individual company to draw this line in the sand. I doubt this will affect their search relationship." Brookman has been heavily involved in the DNT standard-setting effort.
Dan Olds, an analyst with the Gabriel Consulting Group, agreed. "This won't rise to the level where it will affect the Yahoo-Microsoft relationship. Companies this large are able to compartmentalize."
IE10, which launched Oct. 26 alongside Windows 8 and will be released as a preview for Windows 7 by mid-November, is the only browser that has switched on Do Not Track (DNT) by default.
In reality, some argue, IE10 does not actually switch DNT on: In August, Microsoft backed away a step, and promised that during Windows 8 setup, customers will be notified of the impending setting and given a chance to turn it off.
Do Not Track (DNT) signals whether a user wants online advertisers and websites to track his or her movements. Four of the five major browsers -- Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari -- can now send a DNT signal, while Chrome will include the option by the end of this year. All but IE, however, initially leave it in the "off" position and require users to manually turn on the signal.
Like others -- primarily advertisers, but also some browser makers such as Firefox's Mozilla -- Yahoo criticized the on-by-default setting in IE10.
"In principle, we support DNT," Yahoo said in an unattributed entry on its policy blog Friday. "[But] Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users' direction. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn't express user intent. We will not recognize IE10's default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time."
Online advertisers have balked at the idea that browsers can turn on DNT without asking users, essentially hoping that the under-consideration standard will not be widely adopted if the signal must be manually switched on.
Yahoo alluded to that on its blog, saying, "In our view, [IE10's on-by-default] degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them."
"Value proposition" clearly refers to the trade-offs -- users must accept the targeted ads as the price for receiving free software, services and content -- that advertisers say make the Internet what it is. As far as advertisers are concerned, tracking is required to provide targeted ads.
A group composed of advertisers, browser makers, privacy advocates and others have not finalized a DNT standard, even after months of intensive work. The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) standards-setting group has, however, preliminarily ruled that browser makers cannot set the DNT signal for users, essentially letting each website decide whether it will acknowledge or ignore IE10's.
Advertisers recently turned up the rhetoric about DNT. Earlier this month, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), an industry lobbying group, said Microsoft's decision would "harm consumers, hurt competition, and undermine American innovation," and called the on-by-default setting "unacceptable."
Privacy advocates countered, saying that the ANA's demands were "bizarre."
Yahoo's decision to ignore IE10's DNT signal is notable because the California company is allied with Microsoft in search. In 2010, the two firms signed a 10-year agreement whereby Yahoo's search results are fueled by Microsoft's Bing search engine.
As is its custom whenever a new mobile product hits the market, repair site iFixit has delved into the guts of the Surface RT, taking a look at the parts and repairability of Microsoft's tablet. The basic gist of iFixit's findings? Surface RT is difficult to enter, but once inside, you'll find a number of approachable repair opportunities.
Do not cross
As with Apple's iPad, the Surface RT takes some time and skills to break into, making it painfully obvious that getting into the device is not encouraged. The tough-to-remove camera cover hides seven crucial Torx screws on top of another ten placed throughout the device.
After removing the screws you'll have the break the "Surface" tamper-evident seal to get inside. Bye, bye warranty!
ifixit.comRemoving the camera cover
Modular love
Luckily the 7.4 V, 31.5 Wh battery is much easier to remove than the one powering the iPad. It's lightly glued down but with the help of the trusty spudgerand a couple minutes of patience, it's out.
If your speakers die out, you'll be happy to know those are modular, too. Just a little more prying and they come right out, leaving the Surface soundless.
Other odds and ends are easy to remove, such as the Surface's headphone jack and volume buttons that share the same ribbon cable. The front- and rear-facing cameras are easy to remove, but only after the motherboard is taken out to reveal the plastic bezel that pins them down.
ifixit.comRemoving the cameras
Screen fusion
When a tablet needs repairs, chances are it's the screen. In the Surface's case, iFixit notes that the LCD and the glass plane are fused together, making separate repairs of the parts impossible. That drives up the cost.
Even if you do want to go ahead with the screen replacement, it will require a heat gun and a saint's patience to get to it. Long story short: don't break the screen.
ifixit.comUsing guitar picks to separate the screen from the VaporMG frame
The takeaway
The Microsoft Surface RT may take after Fort Knox by being a pain to break into it. But once inside, iFixit found plenty of removable and replaceable modular parts. However, that stops as soon as you reach the LCD and glass pane screen. The fused components will need to be replaced for a hefty price if you aren't careful with your tablet.
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Several security vulnerabilities in Firefox 16 are being addressed in an update of the browser software released by the Mozilla Foundation. This is the second time in the last two weeks that the browser has had to be updated to address security problems.
All the security issues are related to the "Location" object in the software. One of the flaws, when combined with some plug-ins, could be exploited to perform cross-site scripting attacks on users. Those attacks typically are used to infect Web applications at trusted websites and push malicious code to unsuspecting visitors of those sites.
Another vulnerability involves the CheckURL function in the browser's code, which could be forced to return a wrong value. Mozilla said this could be exploited in a cross-site scripting attack, or be used to execute arbitrary code to a browser add-on that interacts with the content on a page.
A third defect addressed by the update allowed the security wrapper on the Location object to be bypassed by a hacker.
Mozilla also pushed out an update of its Thunderbird email client to address to fix similar flaws in that program. It explained in a blog on the update that the Location vulnerabilities addressed by the new release would have less impact on Thunderbird because it uses those functions only through RSS feeds and extensions that load Web content.
When Firefox 16 was released on October 9, it addressed vulnerabilities outlined in 14 security advisories, 11 of them "critical." Within 24 hours of that release, Mozilla halted downloads of the software because of security concerns. To address those concerns, Mozilla released version 16.0.1 of its browser. That release plugged the hole that allowed malicious websites to read the browsing history of visitors to those sites.
Be the first to hear everything RadioBDC. Receive weekly updates packed with giveaways, exclusive access to station events, concerts and acoustic performances.
Analysts have predicted a trend towards moving IT from on-premise to off-premise, new cloud applications and an increase in spending on cloud services next year.
IDC head of research Matthew Oostveen said with cloud computing maturing this year, more organisations will start to move their IT infrastructure from on-premise to off-premise.
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Another unattributed, “pantomime project” spotted on Facebook. A white mini pumpkin, a quick carve, some glow in the dark teeth, red push-pins and you’re done.
Another unattributed, “pantomime project” spotted on Facebook. A white mini pumpkin, a quick carve, some glow in the dark teeth, red push-pins and you’re done.
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For all the media attention that goes to Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, and the other leading Linux distributions, casual observers would have to be forgiven if they have no idea that hundreds of other distributions are out there as well, each with a particular purpose and target audience in mind.
New ones pop up regularly, too, offering yet another fresh twist on the desktop Linux theme.
Case in point: On the same day Microsoft's widely trumpeted Windows 8 made its debut, so, too, did Linux Lite 1.0.0, a brand-new Ubuntu-based distribution targeted at Linux newcomers.
'Created for three reasons'
“This distro was created for three reasons,” wrote Jerry Bezencon in the official announcement on Friday. “One, to show people just how easy it can be to use a Linux-based operating system--to dispel myths about how scary Linux operating systems are; two, to help create awareness about Linux-based operating systems; and three, to help promote this community.”
Linux Lite is particularly suitable for people who are new to Linux, Bezencon added.
Intrigued? Here's a quick rundown of what you'll find.
1. Five years of support
Ubuntu Linux 12.04 “Precise Pangolin” is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, making it a popular choice among business users, in particular. Same now goes for Linux Lite 1.0.0, code-named “Amethyst,” which is based on that Ubuntu release.
2. The Xfce 4.8 desktop
Xfce is a very popular and lightweight Linux desktop environment, as I've noted before, and Linux Lite 1.0.0 includes Xfce 4.8, which includes a raft of powerful features.
3. A battery of apps
Among the many apps bundled in Linux Lite are GParted, LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Calc, Firefox, Thunderbird for email, GIMP, the XFBurn CD/DVD burner, the VLC Media Player, OpenJDK Java v6, Mumble Voice Chat, the XChat IRC Client, the Leafpad Text Editor, and Xarchiver. Many more packages can be installed in one click by going to Menu, System, and Install Additional Software.
4. Easy Updates
Aiming to make system updates something that can be accomplished in a single click, Linux Lite lets users simply choose Menu and then Install Updates.
5. Help with Drivers
Because installing drivers can be an issue particularly for those coming from the Windows environment, Linux Lite offers a simple solution: Menu, Settings, and then Install Drivers.
Linux Lite is now available as a free download in a 32-bit version with PAE support; a 64-bit version may come in the future, the project says. If you decide to give this new distro a try, please leave your reactions in the comments.
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Another unattributed, “pantomime project” spotted on Facebook. A white mini pumpkin, a quick carve, some glow in the dark teeth, red push-pins and you’re done.
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The African Robotics Network threw a $10 Robot Design Challenge and Shanghai hackerspace XinCheJian picked up the gauntlet. Their SwarmRobot project took down second place in the “traditional” category, even beating out MIT’s team! Harvard’s Kilobot won the category. That’s good company, XinCheJian, congrats!
About a decade ago, I had no costume the day of a costume party. I hate not being a Halloween team player. I almost always have a costume, but that year, I’d given up; I was out of time. I was online, reading the news, when I read a piece about… I can’t even remember his name now — some corporate criminal du jour that was all over the news. Impulsively, I decided to go as him. I printed out a headshot I found online onto card stock, quickly climbed into a suit, and made a panhandling sign that read: “Will Swindle for Food.” Surprisingly, the costume was a hit. Lots of people wanted to pose for pictures with me, and in the pictures, the mask looked convincingly real. I was amazed at the compliments and attention I got, on a costume I basically threw together on my way out the door.
To do this yourself: let’s say you want to go as Christopher Walken. All you need to do us find a suitable image of him, and size it to the width of your head. Print onto thin card stock. Cut out the eyes holes and attach with elastic string. Find suitable clothing for your subject. If I were going as Walken, I’d probably wear a smoking jacket, carry a bottle of champagne, and go as his “The Continental” character from SNL. (You could also just skip the mask, wear the jacket, carry the champagne, slick back your hair, and pencil on a mustache.)
So much of a good costume is more about the cleverness of its idea, its humor, than its craft. Sure we all adore an elaborate, well-built costume, but how many times have you seen a very simple, funny costume get as much attention as one that took ages to fabricate? Here are ten costumes that you can put together in an evening (or less) that should generate a splash at your party this weekend or on Halloween night.
If you put together a last minute costume you’re happy with, we’d love to hear about it. Post up in the comments below.
Sprint Nextel's deployment of its ambitious Network Vision infrastructure, which includes the gradual rollout of 4G LTE technology, is about three months behind schedule due to several factors, the company said during its financial results call on Thursday.
Network Vision is an infrastructure that allows Sprint to run multiple network technologies and host multiple spectrum bands at the same set of sites. As it's deployed, Sprint is installing LTE as well as upgrading its 3G CDMA system, while phasing out the narrowband iDEN network originally used by Nextel. Sprint had said it expected the Network Vision deployment to reach 12,000 cell sites this year.
"While we're encouraged by the momentum of the project, we have been seeing some delays from our vendors, largely related to logistics execution and material shortages as well as some delays related to the hurricanes in the third quarter. And now, we believe, we're approximately one quarter behind in hitting the 12,000 target," said Steven Elfman, president of network operations and wholesale, on a conference call with financial analysts.
However, he said the delay "has not meaningfully delayed" Sprint's forecast for the overall project's timing or cost. Sprint expects Network Vision to be largely complete by the end of next year.
Where Sprint stands
Sprint lags behind the two largest U.S. operators, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, in LTE deployment. It offers LTE in 32 cities, while Verizon has it in more than 400 cities and AT&T expects to reach 100 cities by the end of this year.
On the call, CEO Dan Hesse acknowledged a disadvantage on LTE availability versus bigger rivals but said: "Our network position, we believe, is temporary and we plan to catch up." Sprint said recently it would roll out LTE in 115 more markets in the coming months, without being more specific.
The planned majority investment in Sprint by Japan's Softbank, announced earlier this month and still awaiting shareholder and regulatory approval, should help the carrier gain the scale to better compete, Hesse said. He said Sprint's smaller scale caused it to be late to LTE and to offering Apple's iPhone and iPad.
"We've constantly been playing catch-up. We are good at playing catch-up, we close the gap very quickly, but we believe with additional financial resources that we can do that much more effectively," he said. Hesse declined to comment on Sprint's partnership with Clearwire, which supplies its current WiMax service and is intended to be part of its LTE offering, other than to cite the companies' current arrangements and say they continue to work together.
Sprint lost $767 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, wider than its $301 million loss in last year's third quarter. But total revenue was up 5 percent to $8.76 billion. The company said wireless services revenue grew 14 percent to almost $7.3 billion.
The carrier posted a net gain of about 900,000 subscribers on its Sprint platform, reaching nearly 53 million prepaid and postpaid customers. The Nextel platform, which Sprint expects to phase out by the middle of next year, lost about 866,000 subscribers. But Sprint said it has been successful at drawing the former Nextel customers to its platform. In the third quarter, 59 percent of the postpaid subscribers leaving Nextel became Sprint customers, the company said.
Sprint is focusing most of its marketing efforts on recapturing Nextel subscribers and doesn't foresee any upcoming changes in its rate plans, Hesse said.
Open and misconfigured DNS (Domain Name System) resolvers are increasingly used to amplify distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, according to a report released Wednesday by HostExploit, an organization that tracks Internet hosts involved in cybercriminal activities.
In the latest edition of its World Hosts Report, which covers the third quarter of 2012, the organization included data about open DNS resolvers and the Autonomous Systems—large blocks of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses controlled by network operators—where they are located.
That’s because, according to HostExploit, incorrectly configured open DNS resolvers—servers that can be used by anyone to resolve domain names to IP addresses—are increasingly abused to launch powerful DDoS attacks.
DNS amplification attacks date back more than 10 years and are based on the fact that small DNS queries can result in significantly larger DNS responses.
An attacker can send rogue DNS requests to a large number of open DNS resolvers and use spoofing to make it appear as if those requests originated from the target’s IP address. As a result, the resolvers will send their large responses back to the victim’s IP address instead of the sender’s address.
In addition to having an amplification effect, this technique makes it very hard for the victim to determine the original source of the attack and also makes it impossible for name servers higher up on the DNS chain that are queried by the abused open DNS resolvers to see the IP address of the victim.
“The fact that so many of these unmanaged open recursors exist allow the attackers to obfuscate the destination IPs of the actual DDoS targets from the operators of the authoritative servers whose large records they’re abusing,” said Roland Dobbins, solutions architect in the Security & Engineering Response Team at DDoS protection vendor Arbor Networks, Thursday via email.
“It’s also important to note that the deployment of DNSSEC has made DNS reflection/amplification attacks quite a bit easier, as the smallest response the attacker will stimulate for any query he chooses is at least 1300 bytes,” Dobbins said.
Even though this attack method has been known for years, “DDoS amplification is used far more frequently now and to devastating effect,” Bryn Thompson of HostExploit wrote Wednesday in a blog post.
“We have seen this recently and we see it increasing,” Neal Quinn, the chief operating officer of DDoS mitigation vendor Prolexic, said Thursday via email.
“This technique allows relatively small botnets to create large floods toward their target,” Quinn said. “The problem is serious because it creates large volumes of traffic, which can be difficult to manage for many networks without use of a cloud mitigation provider.”
Dobbins couldn’t immediately share any data about the recent frequency of DNS-based DDoS amplification attacks, but noted that SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and NTP (Network Time Protocol) reflection/amplification attacks “can also generate very large, overwhelming attack sizes.”
In its report, HostExploit ranked the Autonomous Systems with the largest number of open DNS resolvers in their IP address spaces. The top one, controlled by Terra Networks Chile, contains more than 3,200 open resolvers in a pool of around 1.3 million IPs. The second one, controlled by Telecomunicacoes de Santa Catarina (TELESC)—now part of Oi, Brazil’s largest telecom operator—contains nearly 3,000 resolvers in a space of 6.3 million IP addresses.
“It should be stressed open recursive nameservers are not a problem in themselves; it is the mis-configuration of a nameserver where the potential problem lays,” HostExploit said in its report.
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Reviewing an operating system is an odd endeavor, because people don’t really use operating systems; they use applications. The OS should be as transparent as possible, acting as a platform for applications. In today’s cloud-driven world, however, the notion that your application will run in a single OS is tenuous at best. Toss in the increasing use of smart devices, whether phones or tablets, and the idea of a single-platform operating system is less relevant now than it was just a few years ago. These days we have “ecosystems”—Microsoft, Apple, or Google, take your pick.
That said, PC users still expect their Windows applications to run as before, and they want to have the same control over their laptop and desktop computers as they’ve always had. New software features should enable users to do more. And as the reaction to the late, unlamented Windows Vista illustrated, all the shiny new bells and whistles should not harm performance or require new hardware.
Can Windows 8 meet its goal of being one aspect of a new Microsoft ecosystem while maintaining its roots in the PC? Can existing computers run Windows 8 without the need for expensive new touch displays? Will the revamped Windows 8 user interface turn off existing Windows users or pull them into the ecosystem? I’ll try to answer those questions and others as I dive deeply into Windows 8.
This review is based on the Windows 8 final release—what Microsoft calls the “release to manufacturing,” or RTM, version. The final release is available to Microsoft TechNet and MSDN subscribers. Desktop PCs, laptops, and tablets ship with Windows 8 preinstalled on the official launch day, October 26.
We ran Windows 8 on a moderately high-end desktop system along with a standard (nontouch) monitor, mouse, and keyboard. We also used a Samsung Series 9 laptop with an Elan touchpad supporting full multitouch gestures.
The Windows 8 user interface
Windows 8 tries to get you to tie your Windows login to your Microsoft account; it’s optional, but if you do link the two, the Windows login and password serve as your Microsoft account login and password. Enabling this link allows tighter integration with the remote and cloud-based features of the new OS.
As mentioned previously, Windows 8 is designed to be part of an ecosystem, alongside Windows Phone and Windows RT. Microsoft believes in this idea so strongly that it has made the Windows 8 user interface (formerly called Metro) the primary interface for Windows users. PCs with the new OS installed will boot into the Windows 8 interface; the OS offers no built-in way to set it to boot to the traditional Windows desktop.
The Windows 8 interface acts as the Start menu now. Instead of appearing as columns of small icons that pop up when you click the Start button, all your applications show up as tiles on the Windows 8 Start screen. You can also search for an application by typing its name when you’re in the Start screen; the results list autosorts as you type more characters.
All applications show up as tiles on the Windows 8 Start screen.
It’s important to realize that the Start screen is no more Windows 8 than the Start menu was Windows 7 or Windows XP. The screen exists as a launchpad for applications, not as a desktop replacement. That concept is easy to forget, since the Start screen occupies the entire display. Even so, Windows 8 apps consume the entire screen, whereas desktop applications can still run in a window on the desktop.
However, not all desktop applications appear on the Start screen by default. Some accessory apps, such as Paint, live in the Apps screen. You can force these programs to appear in the Start screen by right-clicking them to select them and then clicking Pin to Start at the bottom of the screen. Nevertheless, getting to the Apps screen is simple: Right-click a blank area in the Start screen and then click the All apps icon at the lower right.
This is where you’ll run into a fundamental change in how you interact with Windows. Previously, right-clicking an object on the desktop always brought up a context menu, giving you a choice of actions to take. In the Windows 8 interface (but not the desktop), right-clicking now produces a bar at the bottom of the screen containing assorted context-sensitive items. It’s a jarring change, but the arrangement makes sense within the context (no pun intended) of a touch-based display such as a tablet’s. (Context-clicking still works the same way when you’re in the Windows desktop.)
Live tiles are among the key features of the Windows 8 Start screen. While normal (non-live) tiles measure 150 by 150 pixels, most live tiles are double-wide (310 by 150 pixels) and display dynamic information. The People tile, for instance, shows you tweets and Facebook posts from your feeds, assuming that you’ve set them up. As you install apps from the Microsoft Store, more dynamic tiles may appear. Live tiles first appeared in a broad fashion in Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360 updates, but will exist across all Microsoft platforms going forward.
Navigating the Start screen is easy. If you’re using a mouse with a wheel, moving the wheel scrolls left and right. If you’re using a touchpad, swiping left and right (with one finger) scrolls the tile list. You can drag individual tiles to any location.
Navigating the desktop
Microsoft now partitions applications into “Windows 8” apps (formerly known as “Metro” apps) and desktop applications. The latter are those programs we all know and love from previous versions of Windows, including Microsoft Office.
You cannot boot directly into the desktop, since Microsoft wants the Start screen to be users’ initial experience with Windows 8. For most people, this restriction may not be an issue, but certain vertical applications (specialized programs, such as those for point-of-sale PCs) need to boot directly into a desktop environment. Until Windows 8 versions of such programs become available, users requiring vertical applications should stick with earlier versions of Windows.
If all you need to do is launch an application, you can simply click its tile in the Start screen. If you need robust file management and navigation features, you have to access the desktop. After you boot the machine, pressing the Windows key sends you to the desktop. Unfortunately, the Windows key isn’t consistent in this behavior: If you’re in an app, pressing the Windows key always returns you to the Start screen. Press it again, and you’re in the most recent Windows 8 app. Instead, to move to the desktop consistently, you need to be in the habit of pressing Windows-D. Another option is to move the pointer to the lower left of the screen and click there (though this method works only if you have used no other app recently).
The desktop offers familiar shortcuts and pinned icons.
Except for the omission of a Start menu, the desktop mostly behaves the same in Windows 8 as it did in Windows 7. So how do you reach commonly used features such as the Control Panel, the file explorer, and the Run command? Move your pointer to the lower-left corner and right-click, ignoring the Start-screen peek that pops up. This is the simplified Start menu; you can also bring it up by pressing Windows-X. Or you might prefer to use the search function, entering “Control Panel” or “Run” as the search terms.
Microsoft has chosen to leave the Windows 8 desktop bare, as it did with Windows 7. Given the absence of the old-style Start menu, you may wish to add the system and user-file icons by right-clicking the desktop and selecting the Personalize menu. After you have added those two icons, you can pin them to the Windows 8 Start screen.
Connecting to networks is easier than ever, once you have installed the right drivers. Windows 8 enumerates and displays all of your networked devices—including DLNA devices, network folders you’ve set up, and other computers residing on the network—in any file manager window.
The appearance of individual windows has changed. Gone are the faux transparency and the fake beveled edges, replaced by a completely flat appearance. If you click one of the menu items (such as ‘File’), each window will show a Ribbon similar to the Office 2010 Ribbon. (The Ribbon isn’t sticky, though; it shows up only when you click one of the top-menu items.) The Ribbon contains, in one location, all the information that previous versions displayed in a series of menus and submenus.
Ultimately, navigating the new desktop is similar to getting around the old version, but the absence of a full Start menu may throw you off at first. Using hotkeys, and customizing the desktop and Start screen, might help you become more comfortable in the short run. Once you get used to navigating the system, it’s as transparent as the old one—just different.
The touch experience
The PC you own today almost certainly lacks a touchscreen. You may have a laptop with a touchpad, but most existing touchpads can't take full advantage of the touch capabilities inherent in Windows 8, since they lack the edge detection that is built into recent touchpad hardware.
On the other hand, your next PC may very well have full ten-point multitouch support, even if it's a stock desktop PC. Manufacturers are starting to ship desktop displays with touch capability; the first touch-enabled displays have built-in capacitive touch sensors, which work via a USB connection to the PC. Future touch displays might communicate through some flavor of wireless, including Bluetooth.
More likely candidates for built-in touch are mobile PCs, including traditional clamshell laptops and convertible units that you can transform into tablets, either by concealing the keyboard or by detaching the display, which can act independently as a tablet.
Windows 8 is a different experience with a touch-enabled display, even if you're using such a display with a stock desktop system. At first, you don't think you'll use the touch capabilities. But then your kids come up and start touching the screen—after all, these days young users are growing up expecting displays to be touch-enabled. I've been running Windows 8 on a desktop PC equipped with an Acer T232HL touchscreen display, and although I use the mouse some of the time, I find myself reaching out to use gestures on the screen at other times.
As for other desktop-PC options, look to the emerging generation of all-in-one PCs, such as Sony's 20-inch Tap 20 and the updated version of Lenovo's A720, which are shipping with Windows 8. The Tap 20 is unusual in that it has a built-in battery, which allows you to move it around the home easily and use it as an oversize tablet.
SonySony Tap 20 All-in-One
With any touch display, you tap app tiles to launch software, swipe the display to access other features, and use multitouch gestures, such as pinch-to-zoom to enlarge or shrink what's on the screen. Touch support makes the Start screen more usable, though the user interface still has some rough spots. For example, if you swipe your finger in from the left just a little, you get thumbnails of currently running or suspended applications. But slide it a bit too far, and one of those apps takes over the screen. You need to develop a delicate touch (no pun intended) to take full advantage of the interface.
Despite Windows 8's new features, performance tweaks, and improvements over Windows 7, its touch support will likely be the defining factor. And despite some imperfections, the touch interface works smoothly. After you use it for a few days, the old way of using Windows will start to seem slightly cumbersome.
Windows 8 on tablets
One of the big reasons for the creation of Windows 8’s new Start screen is the emergence of tablets. Microsoft has tried and failed on several occasions to create a market for tablet PCs, but the models released during those attempts have always been clunky and difficult to use. The gargantuan success of Apple’s iPad—with its streamlined interface and its relentless focus on encouraging content consumption instead of serving as a general-purpose tool—seems to have clarified Microsoft’s goals.
Microsoft's Surface comes in Pro and RT models.
Even so, Microsoft is planning to support two types of tablets. The first type, which resembles the company’s original Tablet PC concept, consists of convertible laptops running Windows 8. Even Microsoft’s Surface Pro is just a thinly disguised laptop that emphasizes touch interaction over keyboard input.
The second type will carry a slightly different flavor of Windows 8, dubbed Windows RT. This version runs only on tablets using ARM processors, rather than Intel or AMD processors. ARM doesn’t make its own hardware, but licenses its processor technology to other companies such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. These companies design system-on-chip (SoC) products, which typically consume very little power relative to their performance. (The iPad, for example, uses an ARM-based SoC that Apple designs and builds.)
Windows RT tablets will have a restricted version of Windows 8. Although such tablets will include the traditional desktop, you will have access to the desktop only on a limited basis, to run preinstalled applications such as Office. You will not be able to install desktop programs; instead, RT tablets will focus on the Windows 8 apps you buy through Microsoft’s Store.
In contrast, tablets with Intel-compatible processors can run the full PC version of Windows 8, and offer complete access to the desktop. They’ll probably cost more than RT tablets, too, as they’ll need broader expansion options, bigger batteries, and more memory. Intel-based tablets will almost certainly be heavier and bulkier, as well: For example, Surface Pro, which has an Intel Core i5 CPU, weighs about a half-pound more than Surface RT does.
The existence of two types of tablets on the market may end up confusing consumers, though the differences in price will likely drive shoppers in one direction or the other.
The Microsoft Store
Late to the game, Microsoft is adding a store to Windows, much like the marketplaces for Mac OS X, iOS, and Android. If you want to buy apps from the Microsoft Store, you need to create a Microsoft account.
Perhaps I should say stores, since you’ll find more than one store within Windows 8. You buy Windows 8 apps by clicking the Store tile—but you purchase music by launching the Music app, and you buy videos by launching the Video app.
In addition to playing tunes, the Xbox Music app sells songs.
Even more confusing, the app store is called just the “Store” while the music and video stores are named Xbox Music and Xbox Video. (Of course, both the Music app and the Video app are media playback tools as well, though they are less robust compared with Windows Media Player or the likes of iTunes. The new operating system’s lack of a unified Windows 8–style media player is a pretty significant hole.)
Navigating the Microsoft Store is similar to navigating the Start screen. Featured apps come in individual tiles, and are sorted by groups; each group also has a ‘Top Free’ tile and a ‘New releases’ tile. As of this writing, however, the Store listed only about 1000 apps, so Microsoft has a little catching up to do. The number of apps available at the official Windows 8 launch on October 26 will be more telling.
Personalizing Windows
If you don’t like Windows 8 out of the box, you can customize it, with some exceptions. Perhaps the most controversial exception (as mentioned earlier) is the fact that you can’t set Windows to boot directly to the desktop, though third-party utilities promise to enable this.
Since the Start screen consists of groups of tiles, moving your favorite or most commonly used tiles to the left side of the screen is pretty easy. You can also specify the tile size (normal or double-wide) and turn off live-tile updates if you find them distracting. In addition, you can group tiles by program type, such as business applications, games, and so on.
One configuration option that Microsoft has buried in the past is the startup configuration. In older versions of Windows, customizing which applications launched on startup required entering the Msconfig system-configuration utility. In Windows 8, you can select which applications launch at boot-up with the new Startup tab in Task Manager, which you can easily launch in the simplified Start menu.
The tile-based app store offers both free and paid items.
Some customization configurations are less obvious. One example concerns the games you might buy from Valve Software’s Steam download service. When you install a game from Steam, the procedure asks you whether to create a desktop shortcut. But that shortcut isn’t an application shortcut; it’s actually a URL, which points to the local Steamapps folder where the game is installed. If you right-click a URL shortcut, you’ll find no option to pin it to the Start screen. Instead, you have to copy the shortcut to the Start Menu folder (yes, it’s still called the ‘Start Menu’ folder), typically in C:\Users\user folder\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu.
Desktop customization is also available, except for the obvious lack of Start-menu tweaks. The taskbar is present, as it was in Windows 7, and you can pin applications to it as before.
Graphics improvements
Nearly all of the desktop and Start-screen functionality now relies on acceleration from your machine’s graphics processing unit. Many of Windows 8’s windows subsystems use the DirectX API. HTML5 and SVG (scalable vector graphics) also depend on GPU acceleration, in the form of enhanced 2D geometry rendering. Applications tell Direct2D what to draw in the form of 2D objects, such as circles and rectangles, plus additional features such as color and style. The API converts the instructions into a format suitable for Direct3D, which passes the instructions to the GPU. As a result, normal desktop windows will likely see substantial performance increases.
On top of that, Microsoft has added a new programming interface, DirectText, which offloads text rendering to the GPU. Text-rendering performance in desktop programs and in Windows 8 apps is double that of Windows 7—often better than double.
Why, then, did Microsoft return to “flat” windows, eliminating the transparency and other 3D effects it used in previous editions of the OS? Direct2D and Direct3D will also work with Windows RT and Windows Phone 8, and removing the eye candy will help Windows perform equally well across diverse platforms.
Storage and file system
Windows 8 includes a new file system called ReFS (Resilient File System). It’s compatible with most NTFS file features, and, as the name suggests, it adds features to improve data integrity. Features left out include BitLocker, compression, and 8.3-format short filenames. What ReFS brings to the table is improved data verification and auto-correction: ReFS continually scans the file system, including rarely used older files, to ensure they haven’t become corrupted, repairing bad disk clusters and moving data as necessary. Note, however, that ReFS works only on secondary drives, not boot drives. Your boot drive will still be NTFS.
If you’re worried about encountering a problem that may force you to reinstall Windows, you’ll be pleased to learn that reinstalling Windows is now much easier; in fact, Windows 8 provides multiple levels of system repair.
The Reset option nukes the hard drive and reinstalls Windows from scratch. You can use this option to get the machine back to a factory-fresh Windows install, without the need for a new Windows key or the Windows setup disk.
If you prefer something less drastic, the Refresh option resets important Windows settings but maintains your personal files and installed Windows 8 apps. Note, though, that it doesn’t keep desktop applications, so you might wish to first uninstall or deregister software that will need reinstallation and activation.
Finally, you can customize the refresh process by using the “recimg” command-line tool. Using recimg makes an image of your current version of Windows—including installed desktop applications—and makes that the default image when you refresh your PC. Then, when you run Refresh, you’ll still reinstall Windows from scratch, but you’ll also retain your desktop applications. You will need to run recimg occasionally if you have desktop programs that you don’t want to reinstall all over again.
Windows 8 and SkyDrive
The new operating system ships with a Windows 8 app for the SkyDrive cloud-storage service. If you have a Microsoft account, you begin with 5GB of SkyDrive space.
Out of the box, SkyDrive shows up as a Windows 8 app, but it does not appear in the file manager on the desktop; to make that happen, you need to download and install the SkyDrive desktop application. Once you download the application, install it, and link it to your Microsoft account, both the Start screen and desktop become coupled to your SkyDrive.
Assuming that you’re logged in to your Microsoft account, SkyDrive is available as the default storage for many applications, but you can change that on a per-application basis. Of course, that default setting could cause you to consume your 5GB allotment of free storage pretty quickly. An additional 20GB costs $10 per year, while 100GB costs $50 per year.
SkyDrive can serve as the default storage for many apps.
SkyDrive has several important drawbacks that for many users may make it less viable than local hard-drive storage or competing cloud services. First, it imposes a 2GB limit on individual files, so the high-definition video you took of, say, your child’s soccer match might not copy to your SkyDrive if it’s bigger than 2GB. Second, Microsoft restricts the types of files you may upload: Illegally copied commercial content is prohibited, and so are files that contain nudity or excessive violence.
Microsoft has been vague when asked for the specifics of how it defines and detects prohibited content. Although it’s understandable that the company would ban the uploading of illegal content, Microsoft’s decision to serve as a moral authority on prohibited private material seems excessive.
Microsoft Office integration
Microsoft Office 2013, still in beta at this writing, is more tightly tied to Windows 8 than any previous version of Office was to any older OS. Like Windows 8, Office 2013 is closely coupled with SkyDrive: If you sign in with Office to your Microsoft account, you can specify SkyDrive as Office’s default storage location. This arrangement is handy if you’re constantly moving between a home system, a laptop, and a work computer.
Office 2013 is closely tied with both Windows 8 and SkyDrive.
In addition, Office 2013 seems to perform better on Windows 8 than on Windows 7, most likely because the new Office takes full advantage of the GPU acceleration built into Windows 8. The overall look of Office 2013 also matches that of the new OS, mimicking the Windows 8 look and feel.
Bottom line
Windows 8 is almost here, and system makers are readying new models. Some will be touch enabled or otherwise optimized for Windows 8, while others will be similar to existing PCs. For some time, PC sales have been down, partly because everyone has been waiting to see what Windows 8 will be like on new systems. Although we’ve delved into the RTM version, and we like what we see, the success of Windows 8 will depend on how rapidly customers adopt the new user interface and the hardware to support it.
Under the hood, Windows 8 offers performance improvements, a new file system, easier recovery from system problems, better cloud integration, and numerous minor enhancements. However, the Start screen seems to overshadow all the cool new stuff. Although admittedly the original Start menu created some controversy when it launched years ago, Windows 8’s Start screen seems much more polarizing. Toss in Microsoft’s overly aggressive stance in trying to sell apps and content, and some users will likely rebel. Of course, you can avoid much of that hard sell simply by using a local account rather than tying your Windows account to a Microsoft account. But in doing that, you’d miss a lot of what’s intriguing about Windows 8.
In some ways, Windows 8 also highlights Microsoft’s tribal nature; for example, “Xbox Music” stands alone as its own thing, rather than as part of the Microsoft Store. Internal company differences shouldn’t confuse users, as some of these moves probably will.
Love it or hate it, Windows 8 is ushering in a new era of cloud-connected Microsoft services, a unified user interface, and more-robust social media interaction. Younger users may find Windows 8 more attractive than some old-school computer users will. It’s a risk that Microsoft needed to take to try to remain relevant in today’s connected, mobile world. Only time will tell whether it’s the right risk at the right time.
Windows 8 isn’t for everyone. If you’re mostly a desktop PC user comfortable with Windows 7, upgrading to Windows 8 is probably not worthwhile. If you’re a mobile user who needs easy access to the complete Microsoft ecosystem, including SkyDrive, Windows 8 is definitely a good fit. If your needs lie somewhere between those two extremes, give Windows 8 a close look; the cost is low, but you’ll need to learn your way around the new Start screen and make sure that your existing software runs well in the new OS.
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