Caroline Kennedy

Three hackers have been indicted for redirecting the Comcast.net Web site to a page of their own making in 2008. When Comcast customers visited the Comcast.net site during the attack on May 28, 2008, they were redirected to a Web site that displayed a message attributing the attack to members of the Kryogeniks hacker gang. At that time, about 5 million people connected to the Web site each day, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. Because the site redirected to that page, customers were unable to access their Comcast e-mail accounts through the Comcast.net site.

Instead of the Comcast page, customers saw the message: "KRYOGENIKS Defiant and EBB RoXed COMCAST sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven." Immediately after Comcast was able to address the hack, the ISP (Internet service provider) and Network Solutions, the registrar, said they didn't know how the hackers managed to get the passwords necessary to switch the DNS servers and redirect the site. The suit said that one of the defendants, Christopher Allen Lewis, made two phone calls through which he got the information that he and his friends used to access Comcast's DNS information. The indictment sheds only a bit of light on how they did it. Another of the defendants, Michael Paul Nebel, allegedly logged onto a specific Comcast e-mail account that allowed him to communicate with Comcast's DNS registrar. During the attack, one of the defendants, Lewis, called a Comcast employee at his home and asked if the company's domains were working properly, the indictment alleges. Lewis was then able to sign onto Comcast's account at the registrar and point the Comcast.net Web site to the page he and the others made, according to the filing.

Comcast claims that it lost US$128,578 due to the attacks. The men are charged with one count each of conspiracy to intentionally damage a protected computer system. James Robert Black Jr. is the third defendant named in the indictment. The charges were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Thursday. If convicted they each face a five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

AT&T on Friday accused Google of violating the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules by blocking Google Voice calls to some rural areas. By doing this, Google can reduce its access expenses, according to AT&T. The FCC in 2007 prohibited traditional carriers from blocking calls because it said the practice might degrade the reliability of telecommunications networks, Quinn wrote. In a letter to the FCC, the carrier said Google is claiming an advantage over other telecommunications providers by blocking calls, a cost-saving measure that traditional carriers are prohibited from using. "We urge the Commission to level the playing field and order Google to play by the same rules as its competitors," wrote Robert Quinn, a senior vice president for AT&T's federal regulatory issues, in a letter to the FCC. Google systematically blocks calls to certain areas from consumers using Google Voice, AT&T said, citing press reports. AT&T charges that Google's call blocking violates the fourth principle of the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, which says consumers should be able to reap the benefits of competition among network, application, service and content providers.

And even if it's an application and not a phone service, Google Voice is still governed by that principle because it covers application providers, the letter said. Though Google has claimed that Google Voice is not a traditional phone service, it effectively is, AT&T says. The carrier also accused Google of violating the fifth principle of the Internet Policy Statement, on nondiscrimination, which says one provider can't block fair access to another. Google itself is discriminating when it blocks calls to certain local exchange carriers, AT&T said.

With enterprises and carriers moving beyond 1G and 10G Ethernet to 40G and 100G Ethernet, we thought it might be handy to bundle up our most recent coverage of high-speed Ethernet in one tidy package.   ARTICLES 100G Ethernet: Bridge to Terabit Ethernet  IT managers who are getting started with – or even pushing the limits of - 10 Gigabit Ethernet in their LANs and data centers won't have to wait long for higher speed connectivity. 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet products are slated to ship by year-end; terabit speeds are anticipated by 2015 10G Ethernet shakes net design to the core  Convergence, virtualization and more necessitates a new breed of high-performance, low-latency, non-blocking 10G Ethernet switches now hitting the market. Alcatel to push 100G to carrier edge  Alcatel-Lucent plans to ship a router module next year that supports the emerging 100G Ethernet standard at the edge of carrier networks, where services are delivered to subscribers. And it won't be long before these 10G switches are upgraded to 40G and 100G Ethernet switches when those IEEE standards are ratified in mid-2010. Juniper claims first with 100G Ethernet  Juniper in June introduced a 100G Ethernet interface for its T1600 core router, which it says is needed due to rapidly increasing network traffic and growth in video communications, advanced wireless services and virtualized cloud computing.

Verizon trials 100G Ethernet with UK research net Verizon Business took its next step toward deploying 100Gbps by trialing its 100G optical service with the United Kingdom's national research and education network, JANET. Verizon says it finished the trial in April after it sent 100G signals simultaneously with 10G and 40G optical signals over a 103-kilometer section of its global network located between London and Reading in the United Kingdom. Here's a timeline showing key milestones in the growth of Ethernet.   PODCASTSPushing Beyond 100G Ethernet Professor Harvey Newman from the California Institute of Technology joins us to talk about his recent experiment that delivered the first true 100 Gigabit payload transmission over a single wavelength, and where Ethernet is headed in the future - to Terabit and beyond! Qwest upgrading backbone to 100G  Qwest has started upgrading its Ethernet backbone to 100Gbps, a project that the company says it will work on all throughout 2010. Ixia demos 100G Ethernet at Interop  Ixia transmitted and received Ethernet traffic at 100Gbps through a CFP Multi-Source Agreement optical module.   BLOGS/OPINION 100G Ethernet races to market  Emergence of testing gear from JDSU raises question of whether the market is ready for 100G Ethernet, not just 40G. Alcatel-Lucent follows Juniper with 100G Ethernet; where's Cisco?  Cisco says it is waiting for the standard to be ratified, and for a customer to deploy the technology before announcing. (Comcast tested the interface on the CRS-1.)   SLIDESHOWS Evolution of Ethernet  From 3Mbps over shared coax to 40/100Gbps over fiber…and beyond.

High school and college students could be big beneficiaries of mobile technology by using e-readers and smartphones to access electronic textbooks and other course materials. Currently, nursing students use HP Ipaq handhelds, but those older devices are being retired. At Francis Tuttle Technology Center in Oklahoma City, pilot projects using iPhones and Kindle e-readers are in their early stages, as administrators weigh technical and financial considerations, said Chief Technology Officer Russ Hester. "Computer mobility is key and critical to our future," Hester said in an interview. "We spend time here looking at ways to get people [access] to learning content, no matter where they are...." For example, iPhones and iPod Touches are being evaluated for use by nursing students to carry medical reference books electronically "instead of requiring them to lug 10-pound books about the clinics," he said.

The Kindles could be used by a broad range of students, and might be available at the school bookstore pre-loaded with all the textbooks needed for a specific curriculum, Hester said. As an example, he said a complete set of textbooks for several courses in a single curriculum and a Kindle device, sold at perhaps half its retail price, might cost $1,600. That's compared to $2,000 for the traditional textbooks alone. He estimated that students might even save up to 50% on the cost of textbooks by buying them electronically. Students might even be able to use financial aid to make the purchases, since many are returning adults, some who have been laid off. Hester also said he wants the Kindle's browser to be improved so that students could use it to access the center's learning application from Blackboard Inc. One major issue will be getting textbook publishers to use the Kindle's proprietary publishing format, he said.

Access to the Blackboard application server could allow access to online videos and other materials, he said. Amazon.com is already conducting Kindle DX pilots at seven major universities, including Princeton University, a spokeswoman said. Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said the Tuttle Center's Kindle evaluation is one of several under way in the U.S. where IT shops are considering a "myriad" of concerns, including how to sell e-textbooks and not cut revenues for school bookstores accustomed to offering traditional paper texts. In addition to the iPhone and Kindle pilot programs, Hester said the center is may buy a group of sub-$500 mini-laptops that would be lent to students who agree to pay for the machine if they lose it. Let them learn with their technology." The Tuttle Center serves 3,200 high school students and adults each year, offering career certifications and college credits in many fields, including nursing, IT and culinary arts. Hester said he is so committed to mobile technology that, so far, he hasn't turned down any staff member pushing a pilot project. "I'm envisioning in three years everybody here having a mobile computing device, and we will support any flavor of device so they can get access to learning," Hester said. "Why do I have to buy desktops to install here?

In addition, as many as 40,000 students enroll in short training sessions that last a few days each year, with up to 3,000 students enrolled in three-month e-learning programs from 49 states and 46 countries. Distance learning has increased interest in some courses at the center, such as IT courses like one on Oracle Database. "It was struggling in terms of enrollment, but when it went to an e-learning format, it was suddenly wait-listed," he said. Most of the center's distance learners are probably using desktops or laptops to access information, but mobile devices are sure to grow more powerful and more plentiful, putting demands on the center's courses.

I used FileDen's file-hosting and online-storage service for about a year. So I transferred my files to the new site and changed my links. Then I realized that I could save money by getting my own Website to host files.

However, I forgot to cancel the FileDen service. I can't find a telephone number or e-mail address on FileDen's site. After PayPal notified me that my annual $49.95 subscription had been renewed, I canceled it, but three weeks later I still haven't received a refund. I've sent several messages through their "Contact Us" page and written to the addresses I found within PayPal, but haven't received any response. Joan Fischer, Reinholds, Pennsylvania OYS responds: Fischer filed a claim with PayPal, but the online payment service denied it, stating that "PayPal's Buyer Complaint Policy applies to the shipment of goods but not to disputes about merchandise quality." After we contacted FileDen about Fischer's problem, the company's CEO told us that when customers cancel their subscriptions, FileDen doesn't offer a refund for the remaining time unless the customer complains of a valid service problem (excessive downtime, for example), or the customer requests a refund within 30 days of signing up. Can you help?

However, as a goodwill gesture he refunded Fischer's subscription fee. We recommend keeping track of renewal dates. It's easy to forget about subscriptions that renew automatically. A month before each date, consider whether to continue the subscription or to cancel it. If you don't get a response, be persistent.

If you decide to cancel, you'll have plenty of time to notify the company. You may need to say-politely but firmly-that you'll involve a third party such as the Better Business Bureau if the company doesn't reply in a timely manner, and that you'll dispute the charge if your subscription is renewed despite your request to cancel. A Cooler Master power supply he'd bought online broke after about six weeks, so he returned it. Missing Modular Cables Daniel M. Golding of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, contacted us when he couldn't get some cables back. Cooler Master sent him a refurbished unit, which he says works fine, but the company failed to return most of the modular cables that it had asked him to send in with the dead unit. She wanted to know the names of the reps he had spoken to before, but he didn't have that information.

Golding contacted Cooler Master several times and was told, twice by chat and twice by phone, that his cables would be returned-but they weren't. After we contacted Cooler Master, a representative had the cables shipped to Golding right away. We recommend that you write down the names of any company representatives you speak to, chat with, or get e-mails from. If you need to contact the company again, try to follow up with the same person; if that isn't possible, at least you can identify who gave you the instructions or promises. Also ask if they have a direct line. Do you have a problem with a hardware or software vendor involving customer service, a warranty, a rebate, or the like? We can't address every issue, but we will try to handle those of greatest interest.

E-mail onyourside@pcworld.com.

If Bill Gates is hoping for a quiet retirement he may find it interrupted by technology. Ballmer predicted the technology is just a "few years" away, although development seldom brings about such advances in a short time. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer envisages being able to call out the Microsoft co-founder's name and have an advanced IT system spring into action and track Gates down anywhere on the planet within the next ten years - and he wants to give us the same power too. "In the next few years I know I'll be watching my favorite golfer, Tiger Woods, play in a tournament and I'll see him hit a particularly brilliant shot," Ballmer said at a Tokyo news conference on Thursday. "I'll shout at my television set, 'Hey Bill, did you see Tiger make that putt?' and Microsoft software will wake up in the TV, it will recognize my voice, it will know when I say 'Bill' I mean Bill Gates, it'll find him wherever he is, it will see whether he's willing to be interrupted for the call." "He'll say 'Of course, for Steve I'm always able to be interrupted'," said Ballmer. "'Hey Bill, did you see Tiger make that putt?' Maybe Bill will say, 'Yes Steve, but what golf ball is he using?' I'll literally take my finger and I'll point at the golf ball, a search will go on across the Internet to figure out what ball it is, and I'll say 'Hey Bill, that's the new Nike ball, shall I order some for you too?'" Interacting with contacts via a television set ties in to Microsoft's recently announced "Three screens, one cloud" vision that sees customers using PCs, TVs and cellular phones to access data and applications stored on servers, both real and virtual, residing on the Internet or "the cloud" as it is becoming known.

While many of the necessary building blocks in voice recognition, user interface and artificial intelligence already exist, tying them together and getting them to work reliably could be a significant task. "The next five or ten years will be amazing," he said. "Ten years from now when we sit together we'll look back and we'll say, 'Wasn't technology primitive in 2009? Computers didn't recognize our speech, our voice, our intention. We've gotten rid of paper as a means of note taking and communication.'" Earlier in the week Microsoft announced plans to launch a project to forge closer ties with Japanese universities. We didn't have instantaneous access to the world's information. Its Microsoft Research unit will start a number of initiatives intended to put Microsoft money to work on projects being studied in Japan, bring Japanese scientists into its own research labs and promote information exchange within the research community. "The world has so much to invent in this industry and I'm very excited about what Microsoft is doing to drive that innovation," he said.

A lot of open source advocates like to rage against the machine at Microsoft, but when a former Microsoft Research employee says that Windows 7 won't stop Linux from market domination, that's an opinion to note. But he goes further. Keith Curtis, author of the book After the Software Wars, says just that. He thinks Microsoft and its customers would be better off if the company ditched Windows and instead built its own version of the Linux operating system.

It was an interesting conversation with someone who has crossed over worlds, from Microsoft employee to free software advocate. Microsoft to 'open source' its Outlook PST filesFive fantastic open source tools for Windows admins These topics came up Tuesday during my interview with Curtis for Network World's Panorama Podcast series. But it raised as many questions in my mind as it answered. His answer was surprising: Microsoft Linux. For instance (at 13:10 in the interview), I asked Curtis how he thinks Microsoft can meet its obligations to employees, shareholders and customers while also morphing itself from a proprietary software maker to an open source company.

He noted that Ubunto was started with about $10 million - an amount that Microsoft could lose unnoticed in the cushions of a couch. I sent an e-mail to Steve Ballmer about this and he said he wasn't interested," he quips, but is only partially joking. "Microsoft could very easily dominate the Linux market if they wanted to. Listen:   "I think we could all be running Microsoft Linux. I don't think they should release all their source code ... nobody would use it." Given the likelihood of Microsoft Linux (zippo), I asked him if he thought the IT industry, with its giant Microsoft ecosystem, would somehow be better off if Microsoft vanished rather than having the folks in Redmond figure out how to become more open. "There is an ecosystem around Microsoft but if you look at the ISV ecosystem, that's mostly disappeared. But that's almost gone. When I joined Microsoft in '93, there would be boxes of software that people would install.

Microsoft's partners are service providers and hardware vendors. ... whether Microsoft should whither away is a difficult question. From the day I started using Linux, I no longer used one line of Microsoft code - it's been four years now." I am not a programmer, but as a user and a journalist who has spent over 20 years covering the IT industry, I can see how the open source model, where source code is visible to all, makes a lot of sense. I just look at their code bases and the world doesn't need any of their code bases. Along with that, the various open source licenses that allow anyone to change code, as long as they keep the code visible, also make sense. If someone wants to give it away, that's up to the individual. But I also worry about this idea that "open" software must also somehow be "free" software.

Shareware and freeware have been around as long as the personal computer itself. Curtis doesn't see it that way. However, I can't reconcile requiring programmers to donate their work, leaving them to figure out how to earn a living with some kind of subscription or services model. He says the programming can become similar to lawyer-ing (listen to him at the 3:25 mark). Lawyers get paid a pretty penny by clients that need their expertise, but they don't own the documents they produce - those go into the public record as part of court cases. "As long as software has bugs, as long as computers stink, there will be a market for computer programmers," he says. It was a lot to chew on. We also discussed what it will take to get Linux to become a popular choice for mainstream consumers who today buy Windows or Macs and why driverless cars are made possible by free software.

What do you think? Follow Julie Bort on Twitter and follow all the Microsoft Subnet bloggers on Twitter. Could Redmond own the open source world if it released Microsoft Linux?

Ncomputing is launching a device that can be used to add a virtual client to a host PC via a USB connection. Multiple U170 boxes can add extra users to a host machine, which can be cheaper than buying separate machines, said Carsten Puls, vice president of strategic marketing at Ncomputing. The U170 can run full multimedia applications when it is connected to a host machine's USB port. The device has a video port, audio port and two USB ports for the keyboard and mouse. "The only thing you have to connect back to the PC is a single USB connection," Puls said.

Users must still buy a monitor and peripherals to complete a workstation. The device is priced at US$99 and will be available by the end of the year, Puls said. Beyond reducing the need for a PC, the device also helps reduce energy costs, Puls said. Virtual desktop software from Ncomputing called Vspace on host machines sets up individual desktops as new U170 boxes are connected. It draws about 2 watts of power, Puls said, far less than a full clients PC. In this case, the USB cable takes the place of the Ethernet cable for a client to communicate with a host machine.

One host PC can support up to four boxes. The typical USB cable extends up to five feet, but USB extenders can lengthen that. Vspace is compatible with multiple versions of Windows, including Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 OS. The company is targeting small-and-medium businesses with the device. The company has set up configurations where the device connects to PCs from up to 50 feet. The company has other products that let users access host PCs over Ethernet.

USB has advantages as the ports are included on most PCs, but over longer distances it may be better to use Ethernet, Puls said.

Click here to watch this week's World Tech Update. Intel will pay its rival US$1.25 billion and has agreed to a set of business practice provisions. Topping this week's World Tech Update is the news that Advanced Micro Devices and Intel have settled all antitrust litigation and patent disputes. In return AMD has agreed to drop all regulatory complaints worldwide and all pending legal disputes.

CEA economomist Shawn DuBravac said, "We believe the recession has ended and that it ended in July ... but that certainly doesn't mean that we're out of the woods." He said that the consumer electronics industry will have its "ups and downs" but that consumers will gravitate toward technology with their purchases. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) held its annual CES preview in New York. Some Australian iPhone users with jailbroken phones got a surprise when they discovered their wallpaper was changed to a photograph of '80s singer Rick Astley. A new phone from Fujitsu can split in two so that the top half contains a 3.4-inch touch-screen display and all the electronics needed for the handset, including the radio module and antenna. The Ikee worm infected some users by exploiting a Unix utility called SSH running on some phones.

The bottom half has a QWERTY keyboard and a slide-out numeric keypad. Intel started selling a new e-reader on Tuesday that can snap pictures of books and newspapers and then read them back to people who have a hard time reading the printed page. In our news in brief this week we take a quick look at HP's planned acquisition of networking vendor 3Com, the European Commission's formal statement of objections over Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems and a recall notice from Nokia concerning faulty mobile-phone chargers. Our last story is about the AIDA robot under development at MIT that will act as a companion to help drivers save gas and find more efficient routes. World Tech Update is a recap of the week's technology news. Click here to watch this week's show.

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