Google profit rises in Q4

NEW YORK -- Web search leader Google Inc. said today that its quarterly profit rose as its ability to capitalize on Web advertising gained momentum against rivals such as Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
Google shares fell more than 3% to $484.83 after the company reported total revenue growth that was largely in line with Wall Street expectations, despite some investor hopes of an upside surprise.
Net income for the fourth quarter grew to $1.03 billion, or $3.29 per share, compared with $372.2 million, or $1.22 per share in the year-earlier quarter.
Gross revenue rose 67% to $3.21 billion. The figure includes $976 million in traffic acquisition costs (TAC), the financial cut that affiliated Web sites receive for featuring Google advertising.
Analysts on average had been looking for a net profit of $2.64 per share, according to Reuters Estimates. Excluding stock-based compensation and other items, the consensus forecast was for a profit of $2.91 per share.
Wall Street analysts had also projected revenue of $3.14 billion, representing a year-over-year-growth rate of 64%. Forecasts ranged from $2.99 billion to $3.27 billion.
Google has posted steady market share gains for most of the past year in Web search and is expanding into a variety of new markets, aiming to sustain its rapid growth. For 2007, the consensus revenue forecast estimates about 45% growth, according to Reuters Estimates.
The company is also pushing into a variety of new advertising formats beyond its classic pay-per-click text ad business, including radio, video, newspaper and corporate brand ads.
Heartened by these gains, investors helped Google's stock jump above $500. Before the results, the stock was up 9% in the first month of 2007 compared with a 1% rise for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index in the same period.

Vista sales could boost PC recycling

As customers line up to buy new PCs that can run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system, vendors like Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are preparing to process a surge of discarded outmoded computers. Dell advises its customers running Vista Premium to use a PC loaded with a dual-core processor and 2GB of memory. As customers upgrade to meet the new standard, they face a question of how to dispose of their outmoded machines without dumping toxic lead, mercury, cadmium and chromium into local landfills. "As enterprises deploy Vista, they may increase their rate of replacing, refreshing or updating PCs, and we're certainly happy to work with our customers on the disposition of machines they take out of service," said Michael Cuno, a spokesman for HP. Vendors such as Apple Inc. and Dell offer free recycling for anyone returning those companies' old PCs. Dell also runs a network that donates working computers to local nonprofit groups. HP directs consumers to drop-off points at retail stores and advises its business customers to lease their hardware instead of owning it. Dell said it was too early to tell whether Vista adoptions would be fast enough to drive a surge in consumer recycling, but the company did say it had recorded an increase from 22.7 million pounds of equipment collected from customers in 2004 to 39 million in 2005. The challenge in predicting future rates is that individuals don't always dispose of their old hardware immediately, said Dell spokesman Bryant Hilton. "We often see, at least anecdotally, consumers who purchase a new computer 'pass down' the old system within the household," Hilton said. "If you have the latest and greatest running your home entertainment center, maybe the system that still works just fine but is no longer cutting edge is good for other household uses. What we of course do not want is the old computer to end up in a closet or storage for the next several years, and that's where the challenge of consumer education comes in." Corporate IT managers who discard outmoded PCs face more complex challenges than consumers, since they must also worry about protecting valuable trade secrets and employees' personal data saved on hard drives, and because environmental safety regulations vary widely between states or countries, said Jim O'Grady, managing director of technology value solutions for HP Financial Services Americas. O'Grady's division treats that stream of discarded computers as a business opportunity. New users buy 94% of the 600,000 used computers and parts delivered annually to HP's plant in Andover, Mass. The factory sends only 6% of the used PCs and parts to its recycling facilities in Roseville, Calif. and Nashville, Tenn. Worldwide, HP handles more than 1 million PCs returned at the end of their leases each year. That number could sharply increase in 2007, since customers scramble to upgrade their hardware after each jump in technology -- such as the launch of multicore processors, the advent of flat-panel monitors over CRT monitors, or the sale of Windows Vista. "That's what we saw with dual-core [processors]; it made a big difference. The adjustment had been fairly steady before then," O'Grady said. HP accepts hardware from all vendors, often receiving servers built by competitors two decades ago. In the Andover warehouse, workers peel shrink-wrap off pallets loaded with CRT monitors, stacks of Toshiba Satellite and T3100 notebooks, EMC Symmetrix and Clariion storage arrays, and servers like the Appro, Digital VAX and Compaq Alpha. Dell Latitude notebooks and Compaq Deskpro desktops are piled on shelves, with their peripherals sorted into nearby crates. The technicians clean dust and rust off the frames and decide whether they can resell the entire machine or just its most valuable parts, like the processor or optical drive. They prepare hard drives for resale by wiping them clean of personal data by using powerful magnets, with software overwrites or by physically destroying the old drives. Most PCs never reach recycling stations. HP says that owners turned in only 7 million of the 70 million computers that became obsolete in 2003, delivering the rest to municipal solid-waste handlers, many in developing nations overseas that lack the environmental regulations or technology to process such toxic "e-waste."

Microsoft: No shutdown switch for Office 2007

Microsoft Corp. has no plans to add a controversial Windows Vista antipiracy feature directly to its Office 2007 suite. But it will consider offering the feature as an add-on system, the company said today.
In an e-mail through its public relations firm, Microsoft said although it has not built its Software Protection Platform (SPP) into Office 2007, it is considering adding it to its Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) Program, a validation system that checks whether a user has a legitimate copy of the software.
Windows Vista's SPP feature requires users to activate the software with a valid activation key within 30 days of purchasing the operating system. If that does not happen, the operating system goes into reduced functionality mode, which lets users browse the Web for an hour before the system logs them out. To browse more, users must log in again, but they will only have another hour before the process repeats itself.
Office 2007 does have a product-activation feature that acts similar to SPP, but it is not based on validating the legitimacy of the software and is not new to the application, Microsoft said. Office has had a product-activation feature since Microsoft Office 2000 SR1. Product activation requires the system to be activated with a product key after being started 25 times. If it is not, the application will go into reduced functionality mode.
Microsoft is going to make validation checks for Office 2007 mandatory for users of Office Update through its OGA program. Starting in January, users of Office Update will have to validate that their Office software is legitimate before they can use the service.
OGA is a sister program to Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), launched in July 2005 as a program that automatically checks a user's version of Windows to ensure it is not counterfeit or pirated. WGA evolved into SPP as an inherent part of Vista.
Microsoft's antipiracy checking systems have been unpopular from the start, meeting with some resistance from users. WGA was especially unpopular at first when early bugs in its checks were tagging legitimate software as counterfeit or pirated. Microsoft also was forced to turn off a notification feature in the WGA that sent information to Microsoft from users' PCs when some complained that the feature was acting like spyware.

Microsoft's step into Wikipedia prompts debate

The debate over the revelation that Microsoft Corp. offered to pay a developer to make changes to Wikipedia pages points to problems that can arise when a major Web site is managed by a community of people.On Monday, Australian software engineer and author Rick Jelliffe wrote in a blog posting that Microsoft had offered to pay him as an independent source to make changes to certain Wikipedia entries. The offer, which Jelliffe doesn't appear to have accepted yet, set off a heated discussion about the ethics of such a move.Responses from Wikipedia volunteers, which include conflicting opinions and indicate possible miscommunication, show the types of challenges a community-run online organization can face.Microsoft said that before approaching Jelliffe, it tried to contact Wikipedia with concerns about some entries. "But Microsoft couldn't get a reply -- hence why they decided it was important to enlist someone's help to actually address the inaccuracies in the posting so it would be fixed," said Catherine Brooker, a spokeswoman at Microsoft's public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide Inc., in an e-mail.Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The site is maintained almost exclusively by volunteers. Around 1,000 administrators work on the English language site. Together, they set the policies that govern the site.With so many people in charge, there are bound to be some differences of opinion and difficulties in communications.David Gerard, a volunteer spokesman for Wikipedia, called the potential arrangement between Microsoft and Jelliffe disappointing, but another Wikipedia worker didn't seem bothered by it. Mathias Schindler, a board member of Wikimedia Germany, sent e-mail to Jelliffe praising his efforts to fix the relevant postings. In the e-mail, which Microsoft shared, Schindler said he hoped to discuss with Microsoft the Wikipedia articles related to the software maker.Schindler didn't directly comment on the issue of Microsoft paying Jelliffe for the work.For his part, Jelliffe hasn't said much since his initial blog posting. He didn't seem to mind the tone of the comments left after the posting, some of which were quite critical of Microsoft's offer."Yes, they are harsh, but open source and open standards are ideas that capture the minds and hearts of people. They are the new socialism, and the devotees are passionate," he wrote in an e-mail. The Wikipedia entries in question include articles about the OpenDocument Format, an electronic document soft Office Open XML, a competing format.Ultimately, the discussion around Microsoft's relationship with Jelliffe should draw more people to contribute to the relevant Wikipedia pages, resulting in a more informative article, Gerard said. Microsoft spokeswoman Brooker echoed a similar sentiment. As of format backed by open-source proponents, and Micro2 p.m. GMT, 21 changes to the OpenDocument Wikipedia entry had been made on Wednesday.

Vista Search: A 'Star Feature' Of The New OS

This article is excerpted from Windows Vista: The Missing Manual, by David Pogue, with permission of O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Every computer offers a way to find files. And every system offers several different ways to open them. But Search, a star feature of Vista, combines these two functions in a way that's so fast, so efficient, and so spectacular, it reduces much of what you've read in the previous chapters to irrelevance. It works like Google Desktop (or Spotlight on the Macintosh), in that it finds files as you type what you're looking for — not like Windows XP, which doesn't start searching until you're finished typing, and takes a very long time to find things at that.
It's important to note, though, that you can search for files on your PC using the superfast Search box in two different places:
The Start menu. The Start Search box at the bottom of the Start menu searches everywhere on your computer.Explorer windows. The Search box at the top of every desktop window searches only that window (including folders within it). You can expand it, too, into something called the Search pane — a way to limit the scope of your search to certain file types or date ranges, for example.
Search boxes also appear in the Control Panel window, Internet Explorer, Windows Mail, Windows Media Player, and other spots where it's useful to perform small-time, limited searches. The following pages, however, cover the two main Search boxes, the ones that hunt down files and folders. Search from the Start Menu
All Versions
Start by opening the Start menu, either by using the mouse or by pressing the Window .
The Start Search text box appears at the bottom of the Start menu; you can immediately begin typing to identify what you want to find and open. For example, if you're trying to find a file called "Pokémon Fantasy League.doc," typing just pok or leag will probably work.
As you type, the familiar Start menu items disappear, and are soon replaced by search results. This is a live, interactive search; that is, Vista modifies the menu of search results as you type — you do not have to press Enter after entering your search phrase.
The results menu lists every file, folder, program, email message, address book entry, calendar appointment, picture, movie, PDF document, music file, Web bookmark, and Microsoft Office document (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) that contains what you typed, regardless of its name or folder location.

FAQ: Sheltering your systems from the Storm Worm

January 23, 2007 -- What is the Storm Worm?Not really a worm (it's actually a Trojan-bearing e-mail), but it's certainly a storm. Spotted in the wild on Jan. 17, the executable file reportedly infected more than 300,000 PCs within a week. That rate of infection would make this the worst outbreak since Sober.O back in spring 2005.
What are other companies calling it?F-Secure first identified the worm and called it the Storm Worm, based on its original subject line. Several aliases for the Trojan have been identified and grouped as Small.DAM. Other nomenclatures:
FrSIRT -- Downloader-BAI!M711 (via McAfee)McAfee -- Downloader-BAISophos -- Troj/Dorf-FamSymantec -- Trojan.PeacommTrend Micro -- TROJ_SMALL.EDW or CME-711Windows Live OneCare -- Win32/Nuwar.N@MM!CME-711
Which platforms are susceptible?Windows 95 and later, including Windows NT and Windows Server 2003. No Vista infections have been reported as of Jan. 23.
How does it infect?Mainly via spam, though it has been dropped on systems by other malware -- particularly WORM.NUWAR.CQ, a.k.a. W32/Nuwar@MM. That downloader has been used recently to drop other malware, particularly downloader-ARL.
What subject lines should I be watching for with that spam?They're changing rapidly to fit the latest headlines -- that's one of the things that makes this infection interesting.
The first subject lines concerned weather events in Europe -- hence the name. More recent subject lines mention severe U.S. weather, Chinese missiles, Russian missiles, Saddam Hussein (alive in some Elvis-like fashion), a purported terrorist attack on the Supreme Court and/or Congress, a paroled murderer in Michigan, and the always popular naked marauding teenagers.
Some quarters have reported finding the Trojan in romance-themed messages, presumably to take advantage of the Valentine's Day rush. An earlier infection dropped by the Nuwar downloader carried New Year's greetings, and the .exe claimed to be a greeting card or postcard.

A reader of F-Secure's "News from the Lab" blog points out that the latest list of subjects bears a resemblance to a list of cards in the romance category at 2000greetings.com, indicating that the perpetrators may be casting their nets even wider for "inspiration."
What's the payload?The message (in the case of spam) is accompanied by a compressed .exe file of about 29KB. The name of that file also varies, though not as much as the subject lines: Full Clip.exe, Full Story.exe, Video.exe, Read More.exe and other variations have been spotted.
If the user clicks on the file, a few things happen. The program installs two .ini files, peers.ini and wincom32.ini, and a system file called wincom32.sys. That's the Trojan, and it has rootkit capabilities (enabling the infection to disguise itself and its processes) to boot.
Once installed, the Trojan reaches out to a number of other machines, looking to download five files: TROJ_AGENT.JVH, TROJ_AGENT.JVI, TROJ_AGENT.JVJ, TROJ_DORF.AA, and WORM_NUWAR.CQ. (Note that, as mentioned above, Nuwar has been spotted as an infection vector for the Trojan itself.) It also opens up a slew of UDP ports, looking to make covert peer-to-peer-style connections to various IP addresses.
Interesting side note: BitDefender describes Trojan.Peed.P as containing the same three files and targeting a specific UDP port, 7871, for peer-to-peer connection purposes. That Trojan also uses a romantic-type subject line, and the payload claims to be a greeting card. However, that program's behavior appears to be significantly more aggressive -- sifting through address books, infecting genuine executables and attempting to shut down antivirus programs as well as regedit and taskmgr.
What's the best defense?If your e-mail filter is properly blocking inbound executables, you're fine -- as SANS's Mark Hofman puts it in his blog, "If you get a .exe in your inbox, something is seriously wrong with your inbound mail filter." In addition, antispam filters also appear to be stopping infected messages. If an infected file appears in your spam filter, it may be deleted with no further trouble.
If you're not filtering your e-mail or you find yourself cleaning up after someone who doesn't, user education is key: Never click on an executable file received in an e-mail, even if you think you know who sent it.
If you're infected, check with your antivirus vendor for system-specific solutions; most of them are on the case. Be advised that you'll have to dig out the rootkit, clean the registry (including the wincom32 autostart key) and delete the two .ini files. Don't forget to disable System Restore while you're scrubbing! Note that you should also check infected machines for WORM_NUWAR.CQ infection at this time

Internet Explorer 7

It's been a long time coming, but Internet Explorer 7 is here at last. If you're dying to get your hands on the new browser, you can download it right now. But otherwise, there's really no need -- IE7 will soon come knocking on your door.
In November, Microsoft plans to make IE7 an Automatic Update to Windows XP. That means that if you have Automatic Updates configured to install automatically, or to download automatically and then notify you about the download, the new browser will download behind the scenes and then ask for your permission to be installed. If you have Automatic Updates configured to notify you but not download automatically, you'll see an Automatic Updates screen offering to download and install IE7. And if you have Automatic Updates turned off, you'll get no notification at all.

When the new browser comes knocking, should you let it in? Oh, yes.
IE7 is a considerable improvement over IE6, and with new features such as tabbed browsing, RSS support, improved security and an integrated search box, it's well worth the upgrade. IE6 was an inferior competitor to Mozilla's Firefox, but IE7 is the equal of Firefox 1.5, and in some ways better.
(Unless otherwise noted, in this review "Firefox" refers to version 1.5, the current official release. Although Mozilla is close to launching Firefox 2.0, we will wait until the final code is released before comparing it to the IE7 final version.)
The new and vastly improved IE7(Click image to see larger view)
That's not to say that everyone will be happy with this new version of IE. If you're a power user, much as you'll welcome these new features, you can be excused if you feel that Microsoft has partially abandoned you: While this is a far superior browser to IE6, it's also less customizable -- a disturbing trend for those who live to tweak.
Editor's Note: Don't miss our accompanying Visual Tour of Internet Explorer 7.
Tabbed browsing
The most obvious change in IE7 is the addition of tabbed browsing, something that, for inexplicable reasons, Microsoft has been avoiding for years. But the company has finally capitulated to user demand -- and it's done quite a credible job with the new feature. In fact, for basic tab usage, it has a leg up on Firefox.
IE7 gives you several ways to open a new tab, including clicking the small empty tab on the right, pressing the Ctrl key while clicking a link, clicking a link with the middle mouse button or pressing Alt-Enter from the address bar or from the search box to open the result in a new tab.
Click the empty tab on the right to open a new tab
You can rearrange tabs by dragging them; to close a tab, click it and then click the X, or else click a tab with the middle mouse button.

All that is standard, garden-variety stuff, of course, but the Quick Tabs feature bests anything that ships with Firefox. (Note, however, that similar and even better features can be added to Firefox via third-party add-ons, known as extensions.) Click the Quick Tabs button on the left and all your tabs will be displayed as thumbnails. Click any thumbnail to go to that tab; click the X on it to close it.
Get a thumbnail view of your open tabs(Click image to see larger view)
The Tab List button (just to the right of the Quick Tabs button) is also a useful way for navigating among tabs. It lists all of your tabs, with a check next to the tab that's currently live. Click one you want to visit, and you're off to the races.
The Tab List is another easy way to navigate among your tabs

Browser Smackdown: Firefox vs. IE vs. Opera vs. Safari

December 06, 2006 -- People may be passionate about their favorite sports team, but if you really want to get them fired up, ask what Web browser they use.
There's the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" crowd who tend to stick with the browser that's included with their operating system -- Microsoft's Internet Explorer on Windows and Apple's Safari on the Mac. There are the "I've just gotta be me" folks who prefer lesser-known browsers, such as Opera from Opera Software. And there are the "live free or die" open-source true believers who champion Mozilla's Firefox above its commercial counterparts.
Then there are those people who simply demand the best browsing experience there is. They'll defend their favorite browser to the death because they think it kicks all the other browsers' butts in terms of elegance, features, security and so on. But if a better option comes along, they'll happily switch and speak out just as loudly for their new browser of choice. At Computerworld, we fall into this camp, always looking for the Next Great Browser.

download torrents

This what you can use to download torrents...
http://www.bittorrent.com/dl/BitTorrent-4.0.1.exeWindows Clienthttp://www.bittorrent.com/dl/BitTorrent_OSX_4.0.2.dmgOS X Client 4.0.2http://www.bittorrent.com/dl/BitTorrent-4.0.1-1.noarch.rpmLinux RPMhttp://www.bittorrent.com/dl/bittorrent-4.0.1.linux_i686-2_all.debLinux debWhat is BitTorrent?BitTorrent is a free speech tool.BitTorrent gives you the same freedom to publish previously enjoyed by only a select few with special equipment and lots of money. ("Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one" -- journalist A.J. Liebling.)You have something terrific to publish -- a large music or video file, software, a game or anything else that many people would like to have. But the more popular your file becomes, the more you are punished by soaring bandwidth costs. If your file becomes phenomenally successful and a flash crowd of hundreds or thousands try to get it at once, your server simply crashes and no one gets it.There is a solution to this vicious cycle. BitTorrent, the result of over two years of intensive development, is a simple and free software product that addresses all of these problems.The key to scaleable and robust distribution is cooperation. With BitTorrent, those who get your file tap into their upload capacity to give the file to others at the same time. Those that provide the most to others get the best treatment in return. ("Give and ye shall receive!")Cooperative distribution can grow almost without limit, because each new participant brings not only demand, but also supply. Instead of a vicious cycle, popularity creates a virtuous circle. And because each new participant brings new resources to the distribution, you get limitless scalability for a nearly fixed cost.BitTorrent is not just a concept, but has an easy-to-use implementation capable of swarming downloads across unreliable networks. BitTorrent has been embraced by numerous publishers to distribute to millions of users.With BitTorrent free speech no longer has a high price.documentation[Code]http://www.bittorrent.com/documentation.htmlMore information about bit torrent