Mozilla announces Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 for download
Mozilla has announced the arrival of Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 for download, introducing several new features to the web browser.
Although the majority of the tweaks are minor, Mozilla has made improvements which will make web developers, add-on developers and users happy.
While Mozilla wants you all to have a play with the Beta, it does note that "this release is considered to be stable [but] it's not a fully completed product so there may be some rough edges visually and with the user experience."
Changes
The list of changes is as follows:
- Users can now change their browser's appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas
- Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out-of-date plug-ins to keep them safe
- Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames
- Support for the WOFF font format
- Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and start-up time
- Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies
For more details, point your (presumably Firefox) browser to the Mozilla Blog.
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Facebook wins آ£430m anti-spamming case
Facebook has announced that it has won a major payout from internet marketer Sanford Wallace, after the site sued him for accessing people's accounts without their permission and subsequently spamming them.
The payout of آ£430 million ($711 million) is said to be the second biggest ever of its kind and eclipses the آ£143 million ($234 million) damages Wallace had to pay to MySpace in 2008 for junk messages sent by his company.
Facebook was awarded the biggest-ever 'spam' payout last year, when Canadian spammer Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital were ordered to pay $873 million (آ£533 million) to the site.
Sanford Wallace has a chequered history when it comes to the web, garnering the 'Spam King' moniker during his prolific spamming exploits in the Nineties which saw his company send around 30 million daily junk mail emails.
Possible jail time
The result is definitely a victory for Facebook in its fight against spam, but the site has admitted on its blog that it may not see all of the money, stating that: "While we don't expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals."
Wallace it seems may also be jailed for his spamming exploits. On its blog Facebook also notes that: "The judge referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney's Office with a request that Wallace be prosecuted for criminal contempt, which means that in addition to the judgment, he now faces possible jail time."
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BT Tower plays host to Europe's biggest LED display
The BT Tower has been given a large-scale makeover, with the London landmark playing host to a massive 360 degree LED array.
The display is said to be the largest seen in Europe and Asia – measuring over 280 square metres, with a circumference of 59 metres – and has been erected to celebrate the fact that there's just 1,000 days to go before the capital plays host to the 2012 Olympics.
For stat fans, the display is being lit up by 529,750 LEDs over 177 panels which equates to a whopping 177,000 pixels.
Speaking about the installation, Sir Michael Rake, BT Chairman, said: "As one of the most iconic and well-known landmarks in London, it's only fitting that the BT Tower is used to generate pride and excitement among Londoners today – 1,000 days to the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
"We're extremely proud that the Tower will be playing such an essential role in informing and engaging people across the capital."
In keeping with the Olympics theme, it was a 'marathon' effort installing the display, which weighs around 3.6 tonnes.
According to BT it took 2,700 separate trips in the lift to transport materials to the top of the tower, over seven miles of scaffolding and 2.5 miles of power, lighting and electrical cables to power the thing.
And there were a total of 114 construction workers and engineers who worked on the project – food for thought the next time you look up at the display, which will reside between the BT Tower's 36 and 37th floors until the Olympics take place.
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Review: Electrocompaniet PC-1
In this review we have the new Electrocompaniet PC-1 CD player. Actually, it's not really new, in the sense that big consumer electronics manufacturers use the term, having been around for a couple of years.
But for one thing, it was new to us (partly because Electrocompaniet's UK distribution, which had had a slight hiatus, was newly established only last year) and for another this particular manufacturer likes to keep models around a for while rather than change them at whim.
Given the status it has long enjoyed as aspirational audio devices (thanks, not least, to some of our own reviews down the years) this seems eminently sensible. In fact, the whole Prelude range is a fairly recent addition to Electrocompaniet's portfolio.
It stands as the nearest thing the company makes to budget kit – a concession, if you like, to the way the entry price to 'proper' Hi-Fi has dropped, even though classy kit like most of electrocompaniet's still commands respect.
In terms of features, the PC-1 offers balanced outputs, while the controls echo a classic Electrocompaniet visual style in their arrangement on the front panel and the display is a simple and functional blue dot-matrix affair. A digital output is available for connection to a DAC or digital recorder.
This is a strikingly lightweight player, despite the decently made case (trimmed with solid brushed aluminium for the front panel) and internal inspection soon shows why. There's not much in there!
No surprise really, with component miniaturisation and integration having long ago done away with any requirement for vast and complex circuit boards.
The most conspicuous absentee, however, is the large mains transformer. In this model, power is derived from the mains by a small switched-mode supply, which is more compact and considerably lighter than a regular linear supply.
The disc transport is a DVD-capable one (the PC-1 will, in fact, play DVD-ROM discs loaded with MP3 or WMA files), which means that, like most of its breed, it reads CDs at high speed, multiple times.
This may or may not improve data accuracy, but it does mean that a slight ticking escapes from the unit and also some whirring from the spinning disc, which you may just find audible if the player is near your listening position.
From the disc control logic, digital audio data are passed to the audio board, a small unit assembled almost exclusively with surfacemount components. It features a sampling-rate converter chip which performs the first, crucial stage of digital filtering and outputs a 24-bit/192khz data stream for the cirrus (crystal) DAC chip.
The balanced audio output is handled by a pair of specialised audio op-amps, designed to function in balanced mode at input and output and claiming an eyebrow-raising technical performance.
Electrocompaniet's claimed performance for the whole player is slightly more modest, but still very good and our brief experience with it in the lab confirmed the figures.
Distortion is excellent: jitter is just measurable, but unlikely to be a significant hindrance.
We do have a slight quibble regarding ergonomics. Lack of any search ability from the front panel is common enough, but from there or the remote it seems impossible to select any track other than number one before starting to play. Sure, it's easy enough to skip the instant the player is in play mode, but this seems quite a significant omission.
Direct track access is not available, either, despite the presence of numeric keys on the remote.
Sound quality
As one would certainly hope and expect at this price – indeed at a good deal less – this player basically makes all the right noises from the outset.
The bass is obviously well extended, treble likewise though not shrill and the midrange seems generally neutral. This all seems to apply via balanced or unbalanced outputs: indeed, one of the first things we did was to compare the two (using various amplifiers) and as far as we could tell there's precious little difference between them, hardly surprising when the phono sockets are hardwired to the XLR ones.
But, of course, with any fine audio component it's the minutiae of performance that serves to distinguish it from its peers. In this case, we felt that, perhaps, the most characteristic feature is the way the PC-1 handles the bass, particularly the upper bass.
It is very clear and well-defined, but just a shade on the dry side. Really dry bass is certainly an unlovely thing, but we're only talking about a very subtle degree of it here and it's not by any means all bad.
In fact, in some music it's welcome for the high degree of precision it brings in its wake. Precision is a good thing, and so is extension in the very deep bass, which this player also seems to have in abundance and because both of those areas are well covered the dryness is certainly never objectionable and sometimes not even noticeable.
But the point really is that it removes just a little 'bloom' from a variety of sounds, from plucked upright bass to percussion. If one listens to quick-fire comparisons between this player and another devoid of that particular effect, it's clear enough what is happening.
Heard in isolation, though, the precision is likely to be the dominant impression, the more so because far too many loudspeaker/room combinations are, at least, a touch on the over-generous side in the upper bass and a little throttling-back may be no bad thing.
So we shouldn't harp on about it, especially when, as mentioned above, the deepest bass is rather fine, well controlled and extended.
Up in the treble there's plenty of reach too, not quite on a par with the best high-end players around, but highly commendable nonetheless. If you listen really carefully to subtle treble, for instance; the decay into ambience of consonants in naturally recorded vocals, you may find the smallest degree of truncation, but that's about all there is to it.
Midrange is very nearly faultlessly neutral. Once again, comparitive listening may identify a slight preference for female voices over male and for violins over violas – there's a little subjective lift to the upper mid. But you would have to make direct comparisons to spot it and only with the most 'present' of loudspeakers could we imagine it becoming irksome.
We've often remarked on the good correlation between detail and imaging performance and that's largely true here, but if anything the imaging is even more impressive than the detail. Both are good, but imaging has unusual consistency in the depth direction, making the most of those precious few recordings that can make a similar claim.
Which brings us to the suitability of this player for both good and indifferent recordings. on the whole, it's at its best with the former. It is quite good, but not amazing, at making the best of poorly recorded music.
How you regard the importance of that observation will depend as much on your tastes as on anything directly related to the equipment!
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Review: Zu Essence
In a hi-fi world largely populated by loudspeakers that stick pretty close to the marketplace stereotype, it's always interesting and challenging to come across something that is very different and which quite deliberately flouts normal loudspeaker design conventions, such as these Zu Essence loudspeaker.
Founded in Utah around the beginning of the century, Zu Audio is a young company with a radical – one could even say iconoclastic – attitude to hi-fi sound reproduction.
Its main activity is concerned with loudspeakers, but it also has a comprehensive collection of cables and a handful of other bits and pieces, including modified versions.
Zu's principals reckon things have gone wrong with hi-fi today; that it has become "clinical and dead" and "unmoored from its pioneering past and the music and physics that had set it off".
Zu is by no means alone in questioning whether hi-fi has lost its way as components have become more complex with the passage of time and in proselytising a return to simplicity.
A whole subculture is devoted to revived and restored historic hi-fi, including idler-wheel drive turntables, single-ended and push-pull valve amplifiers and speakers with solitary 'full-range' drive units.
Zu's آ£3,750 Essence doesn't quite fit into the latter category, but it gets pretty close and the combination of an easy load with high(ish) sensitivity means it's well suited to driving valve amplifiers with limited power outputs.
The main driver in this case is that rare beast, a dual-cone 10-incher – 250mm in modern parlance, though few have been around since our masters instructed us to go decimal.
The need to position such a large driver so that its centre is roughly at seated-ear height means that the essence is both taller and wider than is currently fashionable. indeed, some might describe this speaker as a bit of a throwback stylistically speaking and the situation wasn't helped by the rather anonymous dull brown veneer that dressed our samples.
Happily, there are many much prettier options available, including (at a آ£500 premium) high gloss any-colour-you-like and even (to special order) any custom finish you care to specify.
The essence is effectively the successor to Zu's Druid IV, but although the two models look somewhat similar, the measured differences between them are, in fact, surprisingly large.
The two enclosures look much the same from the front, though the essence has a much deeper – roughly square in plan – enclosure and a different (and much more satisfactory) plinth treatment. The essence also has a ribbon, rather than a horn tweeter and its 250mm main driver now has a large cylindrical central polepiece extension.
This is actually a 'one-and-a-half-way' design, as no attempt is made to roll off the upper end of the main driver. Its large 195mm paper cone, terminated in a double-S doped fabric surround, will naturally have restricted and very directional high frequencies, but the smaller 95mm 'wizzer' cone should help extend things a little.
Ultimately, however, the relatively large diameter (50mm) voice coil will have a relatively high inductance and this will introduce its own natural first-order rolloff (while also conferring generous power handling).
It's logical, therefore, to add a tweeter to extend the top end and Zu has gone for a powerful ribbon device, roughly 60x 5mm, transformer-coupled to its crossover and mounted little below seatedear level.
The bass is loaded by a 'slot' port created by spacers between two identical plinths, providing what the measurements suggest is some species of reflex-loading. however, Zu attributes the actual loading system to the motorcycle exhaust tuning technique of one Ron Griewe, based on 'alternating velocity theories'.
That's as may be, but the plinth does marginally (and very necessarily) extend the stability footprint and ensure secure accommodation for the US-type spikes. Electrical input is provided by a solitary flexible cardas terminal clamp, which is good for spades and bare wires, but less than ideal (though still useable) with 4mm plugs.
Unlike its Druid IV predecessor, the larger essence is best positioned well clear of walls. And in order to get the most presence output, the speakers should be directed towards the most favoured listening seat.
Sound quality
The essence delivers an exceptionally well focused soundstage with unusual lateral image precision, which is probably due to a combination of factors. On the one hand its unusual phase accuracy helps remind one that the Greek root 'stereo' actually means 'solid'.
At the same time focus will be enhanced because other elements of the design tend to favour the direct sound over the room-reflected sound – partly because its upper-mid off-axis output is likely to be somewhat restricted, but also because the tweeter is set low and essentially operates as a line source with limited vertical radiation.
The counterpoint is that the impression of air and space is rather restricted here. The essence defines the soundstage rather impressively and precisely, but it doesn't involve the listening room as much as some other wide-dispersion designs.
This isn't any sort of criticism; rather it's an observation of where the essence sits on a spectrum between directional (eg panel dipoles) and omnidirectional.
The most obvious source of criticism here concerns the balance anomalies. These are not severe enough to undermine the essence's very real strengths, but they do tend to define the overall character of the speaker and introduce a degree of associated coloration.
The most serious is probably some lack of energy alongside significant unevenness in the presence and lower treble. This has the advantage of helping avoid the speaker sounding aggressive when the volume is turned up high, but it also tends to reduce the impression of openness, somewhat softens the impact of transients such as hard-edged consonants, yet at the same time a touch of 'edginess' occasionally asserts itself.
The bass could have been smoother, too under our room conditions, at least. There's no lack thereof, which is itself creditable in such a high-efficiency design, but it does have a tendency to thump a bit and seems a little lacking in warmth and texture.
The essence might fall somewhat short of perfection in balance terms, but the ace up its sleeve is that it simply sounds more 'real' than the overwhelming majority of alternatives. It has a solidity and believability, a vividness of expression and, above all, a splendid coherence and freedom from timesmear that some listeners will find quite irresistible.
Some will certainly fall under its spell, though one suspects that others may find its limitations a little too obvious. In a very real sense it has some (admittedly rather tenuous) links to the unique sort of sound character that Rehdeko speakers demonstrate.
The essence's combination of a decent size diaphragm, good sensitivity and the freedom from timesmear brings considerable dynamic expressiveness to the proceedings. Unlike the Rehdekos, however, the essence does make some concessions to considerations of balance and bandwidth.
The sound is not all that smooth – indeed the overall impression of the sound is that it is a little coarse and uneven – but it does, at least, cover the full audio band, and the tweeter sounds well-integrated.
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Nintendo Wii 2 to pack Blu-ray?
Nintendo's second-generation Wii console will come equipped with Blu-ray, with new reports suggesting the updated console will hit shelves in 2010.
Gaming website Maxconsole.net believes it has got hold of some leaked information which details just what hi-def goodness the new Wii will house.
The info was allegedly leaked by a Nintendo of France marketing employee, who suggests the new console will have a Blu-ray drive and will support 1080p games and movies.
If this is the case, then it means that Microsoft's Xbox 360 will be the only console on the market not to pack in a Blu-ray drive. But, rumours also suggest that a Blu-ray add-on for the Xbox 360 may be on its way.
Leaked details
Translated from French the supposedly leaked details are as follows:
- The Wii2 system will feature a Blu-Ray drive with a secondary aim of stopping piracy
- 1080P and lower resolutions will be supported, for Blu-ray movies and games
- The release date is scheduled for third quarter of 2010
- The release will be worldwide and on the same day for all countries
- A scheme will be available in which it is possible to trade in the original Wii for a cheaper price on the new Wii 2
Maxconsole.net is also reporting that Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata noted is a recent press briefing that Nintendo would likely make use of HD in its next Wii console update.
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Moto Droid heading to Europe as Milestone
The Moto Droid has been shown off in a video in a European-friendly flavour, and will now be coming to these shores as the Milestone.
O2 pricing guides and catalogues in Germany have shown off the Milestone in full glory, meaning it's likely to be announced shortly in this territory.
However, if it does come to the UK, it's unlikely to be from O2, with the network telling TechRadar: "We have no plans to range the Droid (or Milestone) in the UK".
But in better news, there Droid/Milestone has been demoed on video, and it's packing pinch and zoom as well.
Lifting the ban
This means that the previous blocks Google has placed on pinch and zoom functionality in other Android handsets (the ability to do so has always been there, just never exploited for some reason) may have now been lifted.
Motorola is remaining steadfastly tight-lipped on whether the new Droid/Milestone will be coming to the UK, but we can only assume it will be, as it's a flagship model with improved functionality over the Dext.
It might not look the most aesthetically pleasing, but the new handset could be another step on Motorola's road to recovery - and the sooner we get Android 2.0 over here, the better.
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Stephen Fry ends 'boring' Twitter clash
Stephen Fry has ended his feud with a fellow Twitterer, after the actor took offence to his Tweets being called 'boring'.
Fry is one of the UK's most famous users of the micro-blogging service, so when he announced at the weekend that he may quit the site there was much furore, with even the BBC commenting on the situation.
The original clash came when someone under the Twitter name @brumplum posted to @stephenfry, saying he "admired and adored" him but his Tweets were "a bit… boring".
Fry replied to this seemingly throwaway comment with: "You've convinced me. I'm obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone."
Spat ended
After a deluge of support for Fry on the site, it seems that the spat has been sorted out with Fry apologising to @brumplum for the abuse the Twitter user was getting on the site.
This isn't the first time that dirty laundry has been publicly aired on the site. Courtney Love used the site to air a dispute with Activision over the use of Kurt Cobain's likeness in Guitar Hero. Since then, her Twitter account has been seemingly deleted.
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In Depth: Why hasn't spam been stamped out yet?
Your inbox is full of mail that casts aspersions on your man/ladyhood, wants you to buy prescription drugs online or promises to show you how to make money fast.
Latest figures from McAfee suggest that a massive 92 per cent of all email is spam. That's a lot of luncheon meat.
What's more, 67 per cent of American email users say that junk mail actively puts them off going online at all. Those aren't good statistics for 'email marketers'. So, who's doing it? There's no easy answer.
Spam is delivered by many dubious characters, from email harvesters to black-hat marketers. We've delved into the murky world of the spammers to find out more.
Taking names
Spam begins and ends with lists. First, there are the mailing lists that spammers use, which are culled from a variety of sources. These can be compiled in one of three basic ways.
When you're prompted to enter your email address into a form, the company behind it will be using that data to build a mailing list. Less-reputable outfits may sell that information on.
Then there are automated search spiders that crawl the web, harvesting email addresses from a variety of sources. They slurp up names from personal websites, forums and social networks – anywhere that email addresses are on display.
The third tactic is a more brute-force technique that's akin to the tactics hackers use to crack passwords. Lists are automatically generated for popular domains using word and number combinations. In any of the above examples, the populated lists may then be used by the spammer or sold on for profit.
There are companies that claim to sell 'opt-in' mailing lists – email addresses for folks who apparently enjoy a bit of spam with their eggs in the morning. Email marketing expert Mark Brownlow disputes the legitimacy of such outfits.
"With very, very few exceptions, purchasing a bulk list like this is a shortcut to email marketing hell," says Brownlow, webmaster at www.email-marketing-reports.com. "If somebody offers to sell and send you a bulk list of email addresses, 99 times out of 100 you're getting a spam list."
Spammers even have tactics to refine the targeting and accuracy of these lists. For example, a marketer will buy a list of email addresses from the kind of dodgy source we've already discussed.
WATCHING THE SPAMMERS: The Spamhaus Project tracks spam activity and provides a blacklist for the internet community
At the bottom of the spam advertising message there'll be a paragraph of legal-sounding jargon saying that the sender is acting within the law because you opted to receive their advertising – even if you didn't. Below that will be a link enabling you to 'opt out' of receiving messages in future.
However, when you reply using that link, you're simply confirming to the spammer that your email address is live. If your mail client previews HTML messages, you may not even need to click a link to confirm your existence. A 'web bug' – an embedded bit of code in the email – can do that automatically.
An even sneakier technique used to confirm that an address is active is when the spammer sends a blank or nonsense message. How do the spammers use these to confirm that addresses are live? Non-functioning email addresses generate bounce messages.
In this case, the same automated program used to send out messages also collates bounced replies and strikes unsuccessful attempts off the list. The result is a more valuable commodity: a list of guaranteed live addresses.
The fight against spam is similarly replete with lists: lists of the countries that generate the most spam, lists of websites that spam directs its victims to, lists of banned IP addresses from which junk mail originates, lists of those responsible. These lists – the black lists banning senders and the white lists that allow them – are all that really stands between us and them.
The kings of spam
That's one place spam comes from. When you join mailing lists, enter your address into forms and post to online forums, you're fuelling the spam economy.
More practically, though, we can track the origin of spam down to several regions of the world.
Ahead of the pack, with double the spam 'incidents' of any other country, is the USA, with one in every six spam emails originating there. After that, every company has its own batting order – Sophos puts Brazil and Turkey in second and third place, while Trace Labs has China and Russia as runners up.
These statistics are supported by the fact that many of the biggest names in spam have come from America. At the top of The Spamhaus Project's Worst Spammers list is Canadian Pharmacy, which despite its name spams the world from the US.
In a month, a standard mail account will receive around 2,500 junk emails, four per cent of which are attributable to this outfit.
Increasingly, following the introduction of stronger American antispam legislation in 2003 (the CANSPAM Act), a set of identifiable names and faces can be associated with the darker side of digital marketing.
Sanford Wallace is one of those names. Rising to notoriety in the late '90s, Wallace has a history of exploiting marketing loopholes in new technologies. Before the net went mainstream, he sent junk mail by fax.
Recently he attracted the attention of MySpace, who took Wallace to court over his use of automated software to create thousands of fake profiles promoting gambling and porn services on the social networking site.
The company won a $234million judgement against Wallace and his business partner in May 2008. In February 2009, Facebook filed a similar complaint against Wallace for sending unsolicited marketing to its database of users.
Then there's Alan Ralsky, who received 87 months in prison and a $1million fine after pleading guilty to contravening the CAN-SPAM act in June 2009.
Ralsky is also the star of our favourite 'spammer gets his comeuppance' story when, back in 2002, an article posted on Slashdot containing his home address came to the attention of the general public. Enthusiastic web users turned the tables, signing Ralsky's address up for mailshots, catalogues and coupons.
"They've signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is," he told the Detroit Free Press at the time. So incensed was the convicted spammer by the flood of real junk mail coming through his letter box that he claimed he was looking for ways to sue – but no action ever reached court, nor apparent irony his brain.
Not all spammer stories have a funny ending, though. Eddie Davidson's spam business Power Promoters was among the most prolific online. This all came to an end in June 2007, when he was prosecuted under the same CAN-SPAM Act that tripped up Wallace and Ralsky.
EDDIE DAVIDSON: Eddie Davidson's Power Promoters company used botnets to send out unsolicited mail selling penny stocks
Sentenced to 21 months in a minimum-security prison by the federal grand jury, Davidson escaped on 20 July 2008 and was found dead in his car four days later, alongside the bodies of his wife and three-year-old daughter.
The UK is number four in Trace Labs' current league table of spam transgressors. We're covered by an EU antispam directive in the 2003 Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and have a regulatory body devoted to digital data protection and spam control, the Information Commissioner's Office.
Despite this, there have been few successful prosecutions in the UK, and the ICO complains that they're left toothless in the face of hundreds of complaints a year. We were only able to find one successful prosecution under these rules– and that was brought by an individual rather than a state body.
How spam is sent
We've talked about the list makers and the spammers. The final link in the chain is the middlemen – the hosting companies who allow spam to travel through their networks.
Spammers use two broad methods to launch their electronic assault. The first is the use of 'bulletproof' or 'bulk-friendly' hosts. These outfits turn a blind eye to the activities of spammers and, in return, command a premium price.
There's even a phrase describing the amended terms and conditions extended to spammers by such outfits: they're called 'pink contracts' in reference to the fleshy colour of spam. Though many bulletproof hosts are found in China or Russia, where the laws governing junk mail are less stringent, the most famous bulk-friendly host of recent times was McColo – a Californian company.
When it was finally shut down by its own service providers in November 2008, the company was estimated to account for up to 75 per cent of the internet's spam traffic. There was an immediate and sustained dip in global junk mail for several months after McColo was taken offline, but Symantec reports that the levels are now back to their previous peak.
Some of that resurgence is due to the widespread use of botnets for distributing spam. A botnet is a collection of computers controlled remotely by a host. The most insidious aspect of many spam botnets is that they use machines hijacked by malware: a trojan client that can be installed on any PC via an infected website.
THE WHITELIST: ISPs sometimes blacklist IP addresses by mistake. If that happens to you, you'll need to put in a 'white list' request
In this way, the Srizbi botnet created in March 2007 is able to distribute up to 60 billion spam emails a day. The more recently discovered Rustock botnet accounts for an impressive 28.3 per cent of all spam traffic monitored by Trace Labs at the moment.
Why do they do it?
This might seem an awful lot of labour and subterfuge for what is – as we're sure you'll agree – one of the net's most reviled practices. Why don't spammers just use advertising instead?
The answer is that spamming is cheap. Sending email to lots of addresses doesn't cost any more than sending mail to one address does. With 80 per cent of spam generated by botnets, there's very little overhead to account for anyway.
The majority of spam may end up in junk folders and electronic trash cans, but the truly gobsmacking fact is that – in pure marketing terms – it actually works. As the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group recently revealed, 12 per cent of email users have bought stuff that was being touted via unsolicited email.
Considering the negligible cost of distribution to the spammers, that's not a bad conversion rate at all. Perhaps more worrying is the fact that about half of the respondents to the MAAWG's survey had clicked on links in spam messages or had responded to them just as they would to solicited messages.
BLOCK IT: Free Outlook plug-in Spamihilator (www.spamihilator.com) compares keyword combinations to filter out most junk mail
In other words, many people treat spam as though it is legitimate email marketing. Despite all the efforts made on our behalf by the law enforcement agencies, it's here that the real problem lies.
As long as the population of the net make it pay, spammers have an incentive to continue their dodgy trade. Perhaps the real solution lies in simply making people more aware of the dangers of spam.
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Review: Sennheiser HD380
In its continuing quest for world dominance, at least as regards headphones, Sennheiser still has the odd gap in its range, which it proceeds to fill bit by bit.
Another piece fell into place with the recent announcement of the HD380, a folding, closed-back model aimed at professionals but equally applicable, as far as we can see, to the travelling audiophile.
The basic idea is evidently that professionals – recording engineers and so on – need something that they can easily carry around and rely on for critical monitoring.
This could be in noisy circumstances (such as in the same room as the music one is recording), which makes it particularly hard to hear what's coming from the microphones.
But does the same criteria apply if one wants to enjoy music in private, perhaps in noisy surroundings. In-ear monitors can offer better exclusion of outside sound but plenty of listeners can't get on with them at all and noise-cancelling phones have their own problems.
The HD380 should be just the thing for such folks. It's a near-full-size over-the-ear headphone which folds up either flat (for which a neat zipped case is supplied) or sort-of coiled, in which case it will fit into a large pocket.
It comes with a full length curly cable and is well padded on both earpieces and headband, making for a comfortable fit despite the quite strong spring.
Sennheiser makes no particularly unusual claims for this model as regards specification: it has a fairly low impedance of 54 ohms which makes it compatible with portable devices, and uses neodymium iron magnets which also help boost sensitivity.
Isolation from outside sound is quoted as 'up to 32dB', which may be optimistic as a broadband figure, but there is a very clear reduction of outside sound-level and also gratifyingly little leakage from the cans to the outside.
Sound quality
Closed-back headphones practically never, in our experience, quite match open types for naturalness of timbre and there is indeed some coloration inherent in this model. However, as its breed goes it is very good in that regard.
Principally, there is a little boosting of the upper midrange but it isn't offensive and one soon gets used to it. We would certainly counsel any prospective buyer to listen for longer than initial impressions, though, as this coloration can sound like effects in lesser transducers due more to distortion than to frequency response aberrations as such.
The difference is not semantic. You get used to a slightly wavy response quickly, but distortion just gets more annoying the longer one listens.
On the contrary, in this case the sound is very clean and free of distortion and the result is that one can hear a great deal of detail in recordings of all kinds.
As with a few other closed headphones we've tried there seems to be an optimum loudness for detail – too quiet and one can't hear, too loud and things get a little hard-sounding – and that optimum is gauged about right at a realistic level compared with live music.
Bass is excellent, another typical closed headphone result, with fantastic weight and at the same time no sense of vagueness or lack of control.
High treble is clear and apart from the coloration mentioned above most of the midrange is pretty natural.
On balance, we'd say the sound is better with musical styles like rock, upbeat jazz and lively pop than with classical, which shows up the frequency response irregularities rather more, but this is a revealing and enjoyable transducer with pretty much any music.
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Orange confirms own iPhone for 10 Nov launch
Orange has confirmed it will be offering the iPhone 3G and 3GS for sale from 10 November, with stores opening at 7am to cope with demand.
The phone will be sold in Orange retail stores, online through the Orange portal, and through Phones4U, The Carphone Warehouse and Orange concession stands in HMV outlets.
The iPhone will also be offered on pay as you go deals, with the 3G version costing آ£343, the 16GB 3GS coming in at آ£440 and the 32GB effort will cost you آ£539.
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that these prices - give or take a few VAT-altered pence - are identical to O2's, showing that Apple still very much has a stranglehold on the pricing structure for its phone.
Slight difference
The only slight difference is Orange has included a آ£30 per month deal for the iPhone on a two-year contract, although paying آ£225 for a phone and getting 150 minutes a month isn't going to attract a huge amount of interest.
The move will mark the end of O2's exclusive deal with Apple to stock the iPhone in the UK, although the network will continue to carry the device on its network.
If you're desperate to get an iPhone on Orange, you can pre-register at a dedicated mini-site, where you can see all the possible deals on offer (or you can just go on O2's website and work it out from there).
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Review: EMM Labs XDS1
Canadian brand EMM Labs is best known for its high-end SACD players and professional D/A converters, such as the EMM Labs XDS1 we have for review here.
The company's owner, Ed Meitner, pioneered the use of DSD conversion, which was subsequently developed by Philips and Sony into a world standard.
He famously identified a key mechanism for sound quality degradation in digital systems, which he describes as phase jitter, for which he developed test instrumentation and which he documented in a key paper for the Journal of the Audio engineering Society. He also holds a number of patents in this area.
The first and only previous occasion we looked at an EMM Labs CD/SACD player, it was the one-box CDSA, clearly one of the finest available players of its kind. In fact, it was only bettered in the EMM Labs range by the two-box TSD1 SACD transport and the DAC2 D/A converter.
Anecdotally, this new model, also a single-box player, is a better performer than even the DAC2/TSD1, making it the range flagship.
The XDS1 is a two-channel only CD/SACD player which looks much like its predecessor, but there are important changes under the skin. The most prominent is a switch from the Philips-derived mechanism to one sourced from the esoteric division of Teac.
The original player was controlled by a native state machine, which is, in effect, a lowest common denominator control system, rather than a dedicated control micro processor. This was done for sound quality reasons in accordance with Meitner's thinking that the best way to design a player is to 'simplify and minimise'.
The state machine has been retained in the new player, which means that the control, system lacks certain niceties – there's only a rudimentary track time elapsed clock when playing, for example.
The older player was also rather slow to read the disc TOC and to find tracks, but the functional superiority of the esoteric mechanism, combined with state machine code means that start-up and track search times for the XDS1 are comparable to other more conventional players.
A great deal of attention has been paid to the analogue circuitry. for example, instead of the usual two or three stages of gain in the output section, the XDS1 has just one discrete class A gain stage from the DACC through to the output.
The new power supply has three levels of active filtering for each polarity of each channel and each stage of the dual-differential audio path. The XDS1 also employs hand-matched capacitors in its audio path.
Most digital players perform D/A conversion using a reconstruction filter with interpolation (oversampling) to smooth the analogue waveform, which works well in the analogue domain, but less so in the time domain where the tradeoff is pre and/or post ringing, depending on the filter design.
In the case of the XDS1, the proprietary MDAT processing is said to preserve phase, frequency and dynamic integrity, with no pre or post ringing.
Another proprietary technology replaces the usual phase lock loop with MFAST – Meitner Frequency Acquisition System Technology – which is said to lock onto any digital data.
Rather than attenuating jitter, EMM Labs claim is that MFAST completely strips jitter from the datastream.
Included in this player is a digital input which reclocks the incoming data locally to mitigate jitter imported from an external source. Digital inputs are available in Toslink and AES/EBU (balanced) form.
Outputs are also available in single-ended and balanced flavours. Other socketry includes an external remote sensor input, a proprietary EMM optilink digital output, an RS-232 control connector and a USB for updates. A quality remote control is also included.
Sound quality
The player is physically well presented. You can dim the large clear display or turn it off and the control system is more responsive than the CDSA.
The player is solidly built and heavy too, with a thick, anti-resonance internal base and a massive power supply section. This said, the main control matrix is slightly muddled with controls that probably shouldn't be where they are. We found ourselves making silly errors, such as selecting absolute phase instead of play at times.
Despite its obvious functionality, the players presentation is not as sophisticated as some other high-end players, from Marantz or Esoteric, for example. Make no mistake, the XDS1 was never intended to be the most polished player on the planet, but the engineering effort has gone into the bits that influence sound quality, and it does sound the part.
Iin fact, it never put a foot wrong. This is by any standards a great CD player, one of the very best in our experience, but if you compare like with like, preferably (but not necessarily) using DSD recorded hybrid discs, SACD is simply better. It is smoother, sweeter and less mechanical, with superb instrumental separation and unusually explicit imagery.
In fact, the XDS1 has an astonishingly clean, agile upper midband and treble, with no hint of the softness or the slight loss of focus you hear with many lesser players. It delivers musical weight and impact in a way that puts it in a very select class.
There is no obvious artificiality at issue here, it is a supremely naturalistic sounding player in the live recording on the RCO label (haitink/concertgebouw) of Mahler's 4th Symphony and likewise the Telarc SACD sampler, as well as the wholly remarkable one from the crystal cables stable on the MAA label, which sounds nothing less than astonishingly life-like.
But it is invidious to pick out individual recordings as the XDS1 is consistent in its abilities. It delivers every time. CD replay quality is worse, but it still outperforms most others. Redbook CD replay doesn't have the resolving power of SACD, but can still be remarkably good.
An old favourite, a recording of the Haydn Piano Concertos with Leif Ove Andsnes and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra (EMI), is a case in point. We were equally impressed by Scott Walker's remarkable Tilt album.
Before investing in a player like this (we use the word invest advisedly) you need to be sure that SACD is for you. There is no longer an option to go DVD-Audio, which has essentially disappeared, but SACD is not exactly in the rudest of health.
The nature of the format makes it difficult to record natively in DSD, which is not particularly friendly to engineers who may want to mix complex multiple microphone feeds and apply special effects as easily as with the PCM based Pro Tools, and who often end up recording on PCM, prior to upconversion to DSD at the production stage.
SACD remains a force to be reckoned with: EMM labs and a tiny handful of others demonstrate that it still has the qualitative answers, but the format is at its best with simple recordings of acoustic material straight to DSD, where not much signal manipulation is required.
This tends to favour classical, jazz and simply accompanied vocal material, which is not everyone's poison.
With these provisions we observe that this is one of the finest sounding SACD players we've ever used, perhaps the finest. And although we weren't able to fully explore the ability of the digital input, on paper at least, it should be something very special.
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Sony: 'PlayStation Home still a top priority'
Sony has refuted claims that its PlayStation Home service is not a priority, by issuing a statement on the company's official website.
There were reports last week that Sony was distancing itself from its virtual world, PlayStation Home, with director Pete Edwards quoted as saying that the service is no longer a "priority" to Edge magazine.
Monetising not a priority
However, on the official US PlayStation website forum, an official Sony representative (calling themselves CydoniaX) refutes the claims, saying that: "Edwards was saying that monetising Home was not as big a priority as building a great platform, with a compelling environment and a strong community.
"Home is still a top priority for Sony and will continue to release quality content and provide a positive experience to our users."
Home has been available for free on the PlayStation Network since November 2008, and is meant to be a virtual online space for PSN users to meet up. The service has been criticised for its long load times, however, and the amount of hard-disk space it can nab – up to 12GB.
Luckily for users, Sony also mentioned it is still committed to making the service a better experience, explaining: "We will continue working on fixing bugs, login problems, and other user issues."
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