Week in review: Windows woes

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After receiving a censorship order from the telecommunications ministry directing that YouTube.com be blocked, Pakistan Telecom went even further. By accident or design, the company broadcast instructions worldwide claiming to be the legitimate destination for anyone trying to reach YouTube's range of Internet addresses.

News.com's Declan McCullagh delved into the technical details behind the outage to explain why it is both a serious Internet vulnerability and also difficult to fix. The security weakness lies in why the false instructions that took YouTube offline were believed by routers around the globe. That's because Hong Kong-based PCCW Global, which provides the Internet link to Pakistan Telecom, did not stop the misleading broadcast--which is what most large providers in the United States and Europe do.

Danny McPherson, the chief research officer at Arbor Networks, guesses that there were two ways that the ISP in question goofed and mistakenly started "announcing to the world that you provide destination reachability for the YouTube" IP address.

As McPherson noted in his blog post, because PCC Global almost certainly wasn't validating the Pakistan Telecom's prefix-code announcements, the world was getting a message that the ISP was providing access to YouTube.

After all this brouhaha, YouTube removed a video clip that offended some of Pakistan's Muslims, and the government there has lifted a nationwide ban against the video-sharing site.

War games or game wars?
In a startling bit of news, Electronic Arts announced that it has launched an uninvited bid to buy Grand Theft Auto video game franchise publisher Take-Two Interactive Software for $26 a share, or what could be a $2 billion deal. The announcement comes on the heels of what appears to be a spurned attempt at a friendly takeover of Take-Two at $25 a share.

And while EA, in its press release, did not make any reference to Vivendi's December agreement to purchase Activision, there can be no doubt that this is the response EA had to make to keep its spot as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the video games business.

What seems certain is that EA's board felt that it had to do something to counter Vivendi's Activision purchase. That move would have potentially made the combined company--known as Activision Blizzard, because Vivendi's biggest video game holding was World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard Entertainment--the world's largest video game publisher.

EA said in a conference call that it had been talking to Take-Two's management for nearly a year, though it hadn't made any formal moves until at least December. In any case, if the deal goes through, the industry will be a bit top-heavy.

But even though an EA/Take-Two merger would indicate massive consolidation, News.com's Daniel Terdiman contends that gamers probably shouldn't worry that an industry pyramid dominated by EA and Activision will mean less innovation.

After all, even with a wide gap between the top two companies and everyone else, it's important to remember that there would still be plenty of important and respected publishers: Disney, Ubisoft, THQ, Midway, and Infogrames, to name a few, not to mention Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

Meanwhile, Take-Two's board of directors approved new compensation packages for its management firm that would take effect with a merger or acquisition. However, a company spokesman said the move was not in reaction to the takeover offer.

Also of note
Apple has confirmed a security glitch that, in many situations, will let someone with physical access to a Macintosh computer gain access to the password of the active user account...Apple updated its MacBook and MacBook Pro lineups with Intel's Penryn processors, while bringing multitouch trackpads to MacBook Pros...The day after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates, LendingTree.com saw record traffic to its site for connecting borrowers and lenders, campaigns that are used to draw visitors...Google launched a revamped JotSpot--its recently acquired wiki platform for building collaborative Web sites--as Google Sites.

[Fil0403]

Week in review: Microsoft bashing

Microsoft is fined as a result of a court decision from last year and a Brother printer from a Microsoft employee didn't have drivers until Windows Vista was released (and let's face it: it's very useful to the general public to have drivers for an operating system that wasn't released yet): could only be news with Microsoft.

[Leria]

You got it exactly right

This is all just Microsoft bashing for the most part. Personally, I would like to know why everyone is bashing on Microsoft for the driver situation.... that isn't their responsibility.

The drivers are the responsibility of the device maker, and if they are not making drivers for Vista, you should take it up with them, not with Microsoft.

[Leria]

Some digs on the article

"Consumers deserve a fair go and Microsoft hasn't given consumers a fair go because an eco-system with competition gives us the best at the best price,"

Can I laugh at this.... the only thing that competition in the computer hardware industry has gotten us is crappy stuff, not the 'best at the best price'.

Look at all the dross that comes out every year that is stupid: USB cup holders and warmers, USB fans, USB this, USB that...... we are not getting the 'best at the best price', we are getting the crappy at a crappy price.

Microsoft's OS was overpriced, and I would LOVE to have Microsoft redo their licensing scheme so that a retail copy can be used on up to three or 4 computers..... same as OSX's licensing scheme.

Then, 129 dollars would be worth it for a retail version of Vista.