Windows 7's Deadly Sins

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) last week launched a campaign against Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, calling it "treacherous computing" that stealthily takes away rights from users.

At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven "sins" that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users.

They include: Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), leveraging monopolistic behavior, threatening user security, enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy, and invading your privacy.

"Windows, for some time now, has really been a DRM platform, restricting you from making copies of digital files," said executive director Peter Brown. And if Microsoft's Trusted Computing technology were fully implemented the way the company would like, the vendor would have "malicious and really complete control over your computer."

The result is that Microsoft could do things like Amazon.com, which last month went into customers' Kindle e-readers and deleted illegally-sold copies of novels such as George Orwell's 1984 , he said.

"This is treacherous computing," Brown said.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The group, best-known for overseeing the General Public License (GPL) used by most open-source software, including Linux , will hold a rally at noon in Boston Common, where it will unveil a 12-foot-tall art installation depicting Windows 7 "being trashed," Brown said.

The group is also sending a letter (available at the group's Web site) to top executives at Fortune 500 companies that argues their companies would benefit ethically, technically and, in the long-term, financially, from switching away from Windows and Microsoft Office to free alternatives such as Linux and OpenOffice.org.

Founded in the mid-1980s by hacker-activist Richard Stallman , the FSF argues that free software and source code is a moral right. It takes pains to distinguish itself from the open-source movement, which advocates sharing of source code but tolerates charging for software.

Both groups, however, view proprietary software vendors such as Microsoft, Adobe Systems Inc., and Apple Inc. as the enemy, Brown said.

Even with DRM, users running Windows PCs still maintain more freedom and privacy than those who foolishly use cloud computing services such as Google Docs and store their data there.

"That is the ultimate giving-away of your freedom," he said. "That's not a software freedom issue, it's a stupidity issue."

While Brown acknowledges that many Fortune 500 companies base their businesses around proprietary business models similar to Microsoft, he also points out that most of them, at least regarding software, are more consumer than vendor.

"Large corporations spend an awful lot of money on software. They face numerous software audits and more vendor lock-in than you or me," Brown said. "Do you think they would rather be driving on a freeway, or always be paying on toll roads?"

"I'm not expecting an instant wave of companies switching off XP to Linux," he said. "But we would like get that debate going. Hopefully, some will re-evaluate and say no to Windows 7."

Installing Snow Leopard: What You Need to Know

With Snow Leopard, Apple has streamlined and simplified the process of installing Mac OS X. While older versions of OS X made you decide what kind of installation you wanted to perform before you even specified what to install, Snow Leopard's installer gives you a single installation path. It's considerably easier.

Gone, for example, is the old Clean Install option--which moved your existing OS and system add-ons to a Previous Systems folder and installed a fresh copy of the OS, requiring a good amount of tweaking and transferring of files afterward. Instead, Snow Leopard provides a more intelligent installation process that makes such tweaking largely unnecessary. The Erase and Install option is now gone, too (at least as a discrete Installer alternative; see "Simple steps, easy decisions," below).

What you need

According to Apple, your Mac must meet the following minimum requirements to install Snow Leopard:

Intel processor

DVD drive (or Leopard's Remote Disc feature)

1GB RAM

A built-in display or a display connected to your Mac's stock video card

5GB free hard-drive space (7GB if you plan to install the Snow Leopard developer tools)

While these are the official requirements, I recommend 2GB RAM and at least 10GB of free hard-drive space for a much better experience (both during installation and afterward). Before you begin installing, it's also worth checking to see if your Mac requires any firmware updates; Apple offers a support article with more details. Similarly, if you've installed an aftermarket video card in your Mac, be sure to check with the card's vendor to see if there are new Snow Leopard-compatible drivers you need to download and install.

Let me also suggest that a major OS upgrade is the perfect chance to check your drives for problems, clean house, and check for updates for your frequently used software. (Don't forget to check for new versions of preference panes and other add-ons that run in the background.) Finally, as with any major software update or upgrade, you should be sure to back up before installing Snow Leopard.

Simple steps, easy decisions

When you insert the Snow Leopard DVD in your Mac and double-click the Install Mac OS X icon, you aren't immediately prompted to restart as you have been with previous installers. Instead, you get to choose your install options immediately: just click Continue, accept the license agreement, and you're taken to the options screen.

(The exception to the steps just mentioned is if you want to check, repair, or erase your hard drive, or use other utilities, while booted from the Install DVD. If so, click the Utilities button and follow the instructions to boot off of the Install DVD. For example, to erase the hard drive before installing, choose Utilities -> Disk Utility from the first Installer screen after rebooting, and then manually erase the drive; you can then exit Disk Utility and proceed with installation. For more on why you might want to choose this route, see "Why Erase and Install?" below.)

On the Installer's second screen, choose the disk on which to install Snow Leopard; if you have only one disk, it's selected by default. Next, click Customize to access a slew of available installation options:

Printer Support Snow Leopard makes choosing which printer software to install much easier than previous installers did. For starters, the installer automatically figures out what printer models you've previously used and installs drivers for them. By default, it also installs drivers for printers it detects on your local network, as well as for printers Apple deems "popular"--commonly owned printers from major manufacturers.

With this collection of drivers installed, chances are you'll be able to use any printer you come across. If you move around a lot and regularly use many "new" printers, you can check the box for All Available Printers, which installs every printer driver on the OS X DVD (see this Apple support article for details). But that may not be necessary, as Snow Leopard can download and install printer drivers on the fly (more on this feature in moment).

Additional Fonts This option installs fonts for Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tibetan, Armenian, Cherokee, and Inuktitut. While you can't choose a subset of these fonts, the whole package is small enough--somewhere between 40MB and 120MB, depending on which fonts you already have on your drive--that there's little downside to installing them all. In fact, by doing so, you gain a number of specialty fonts that could be useful even if you don't speak any of these languages.

Language Translations This option installs support files that let you use Mac OS X--in other words, view menus, dialog boxes, and other OS-related text--in other languages. Though enabled by default, you can disable it to save a few hundred megabytes. You can also opt out of specific language translations; click the disclosure triangle to reveal the individual languages, and then check only the languages you think you'll actually use.

X11 X11 is a windowing system used by some Unix software to provide a graphical user interface under Mac OS X. If you use X11, chances are you'll know it. On the other hand, at approximately 64MB, it's worth installing just in case you ever come across an app that needs it.

Rosetta Disabled by default, Rosetta is the behind-the-scenes program that lets you run many PowerPC applications on Intel Macs. If there's a chance you have older Mac software that never made the jump to Intel code, you should install Rosetta--although, as with printer drivers, Snow Leopard is forgiving here (see below).

QuickTime 7 Snow Leopard includes a new version of QuickTime that claims to offer many improvements over QuickTime 7. However, the new version may not support some older media formats that QuickTime 7 handled with aplomb (see this Apple support document for details). Check this option to install QuickTime 7 for backward compatibility. If your Mac has an active license for QuickTime Pro 7, this option will be enabled by default.

Even though you have all these options to consider, don't spend too much time worrying about what to install: unlike Leopard and earlier OS versions, Snow Leopard can automatically download and install some software on demand. For example, if you didn't chose the All Available Printers option and you later try to use a printer that's not supported by your original installation of drivers, OS X will connect to the Internet and download drivers as needed. Similarly, if you didn't install Rosetta or QuickTime 7, and you later try to open a program or media file that requires that software, OS X will offer to download and install it on the fly (assuming you have an Internet connection, of course).

In addition, if you forget to install something the first time, or if you're having problems with an application and you want to get a fresh copy, you can easily install it from the Snow Leopard DVD by double-clicking on the Optional Installs.mpkg package inside the Optional Installs folder. After the installer launches and checks your drive for Snow Leopard, you can choose to install Rosetta, QuickTime 7, additional fonts, printer drivers, language support, iPod support files, X11, or any of the stock OS X apps (Address Book, iCal, iChat, iTunes, Mail, Dictionary, or Safari).

After choosing your options, click OK and then click Install, verify that you want to install, and enter an admin-level username and password. The installation will begin immediately--the computer doesn't need to restart first. If you're using a Bluetooth mouse or keyboard, you may have to re-pair it at some point, but otherwise, the next interaction you have with your Mac should be when it reboots with Snow Leopard successfully installed.

If you've set up your Mac to be able to boot into Windows via Boot Camp, you'll need to update the Windows drivers using the Snow Leopard DVD. Be sure to boot into Windows, insert the Snow Leopard DVD, and follow the instructions to update those drivers.

Faster and smaller

Apple claims that the Snow Leopard installation process is "up to 1.45x faster" than Leopard's. Indeed, installing Snow Leopard on a 2009 Mac mini took just under 29 minutes from the time I provided my username and password to the post-install restart--noticeably faster than installing Leopard on the same machine. (Restarting was faster, as well: the initial restart after installation, which is usually the slowest type of restart, took just over one minute.)

Apple also claims that installing Snow Leopard on a Mac running Leopard will free up "about 6GB" of hard-drive space, but you'll see this gain only if you installed a full version of Leopard, including all printer drivers. My testing on a 2009 MacBook Air that had only a subset of Leopard's printer drivers installed showed more modest gains: just under 2GB of "new" free space.

Smarter installs

One of the other big changes the Snow Leopard installer brings is that it's much smarter about ferreting out possible software conflicts than previous OS X installers. For example, the installer disables most input managers, kernel extensions, mail plug-ins, and system hacks that are incompatible with Snow Leopard or are known to cause problems.

Some of these items, such as input managers and contextual-menu plug-ins, remain in place but aren't loaded, because Snow Leopard no longer supports the mechanism by which they function. (For the most part; we'll have more on this soon.) However, others--incompatible kernel extensions, for example--are actively relocated. If you have any such items installed, you'll see a dialog box, near the end of the Snow Leopard installation and setup process, alerting you to that fact. The dialog box will also tell you that these files have been moved to a new folder called Incompatible Software at the root of your hard drive. (See Apple's Knowledge Base article about software that's incompatible with Snow Leopard.) You'll obviously lose the functionality provided by these add-ons until their developers update them for Snow Leopard, but you should see fewer problems due to outdated and incompatible code.

How does the installer know what files to move? According to Macworld senior contributor Joe Kissell, author of Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard, the installer has a built-in list of incompatible software, and if you have an active Internet connection, the installer even checks Apple's servers for updates to the list at the time of installation.

The Snow Leopard installer is also smarter about interruptions. If your Mac loses power or if an installation is otherwise interrupted, you can simply start over without having to worry that your drive or the OS has been been left in a nonfunctional state; installation will pick up where it left off.

Remote Disk

Snow Leopard is the first only-on-disc upgrade to Mac OS X since the MacBook Air debuted. For many MacBook Air owners, this means Snow Leopard marks their first use of Remote Disc, Apple's technology for installing software on one Mac using the optical drive of another. Remote Disc isn't limited to the MacBook Air, however; you can use the feature to install Snow Leopard on any Mac currently running Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later. Here's how:

First, make sure both Macs are on, awake, and connected to your local network. On the computer sharing the Snow Leopard disc (this computer must be running OS X 10.4.10 or later, as well), open the Sharing pane of System Preferences and enable DVD Or CD Sharing. (If the hosting computer is running OS X 10.4.10 through 10.5.2, you'll first need to install DVD Sharing on it.)

Next, on the computer on which you're installing Leopard, open a new Finder window and select Remote Disk in the sidebar; the computer sharing the disc should appear to the right. Double-click the computer sharing the disc; you'll see a Connected message, and the Mac OS X Install DVD will appear. (If the computer sharing the disc has the Ask Me Before Allowing Others To Use My DVD Drive option enabled, you'll see an Ask To Use button; click it and, once the request is approved, you'll see the Connected message.) Double-click the Install DVD icon, and then double-click the Install Mac OS X icon that appears.

From this point, the installation should proceed as described above, albeit more slowly: installing Snow Leopard onto a 2009 MacBook Air from a 2009 Mac Mini over an 802.11n network--with the Nearby And Popular Printers, Additional Fonts, X11, Rosetta, and QuickTime 7 options enabled, and Language Translations disabled--took just over 56 minutes.

Why Erase and Install?

If the new installer is so good, why would you want to erase your drive first--a process equivalent to the old Erase and Install option?

The most obvious reason is if the standard installation procedure produced problems; an Erase and Install, followed by a restoration of your data from backup, could solve those problems. You might also want to consider this approach if your Mac has been acting buggy under Leopard and you suspect you may have some hard-drive or directory corruption; erasing the drive before installing Snow Leopard could fix such problems.

After installing Snow Leopard this way, you'll be asked if you want to transfer applications and data from your backup. If you choose to restore everything, you'll end up essentially where you would have been if you'd used the standard install procedure. (Under Leopard and earlier installers, using Erase and Install and then restoring your data using Migration Assistant would often fail to transfer over all your data; specifically, some settings and add-ons would be left behind.)

Two versions

The $29 retail Snow Leopard upgrade disc--as well as the $10 upgrade disc available to people who purchased a Mac on or after June 8, 2009--is for users who already have a license for Leopard (OS X 10.5). Apple says those with Intel Macs running Tiger (OS X 10.4) must buy the $169 Mac Box Set, which includes a full version of Snow Leopard bundled with the latest versions of iLife and iWork.

However, the Snow Leopard upgrade DVD does not require that you have Leopard installed; it's a full install disc that works on any Intel Mac. Similarly, as with every version of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard does not require activation or a registration code; Apple continues to rely on the honor system. This is great for Leopard users, as it makes it much easier to install Snow Leopard on your Mac without having to jump through hoops; for example, if you decide to erase your hard drive before installing Snow Leopard, you don't have to first install Leopard.

Install away?

Snow Leopard appears to be the easiest, and smartest, Mac OS X install yet. Just be sure to perform a full backup beforehand; as long as you have that, you should be set.

Ten Ways to Upgrade Your Netbook

Netbooks are universally regarded for their portability, but no two netbook models are exactly alike, and each seems to come with different trade-offs. A netbook with a superior battery might have a horrible keyboard arrangement; a netbook with a solid-state drive might slip out of your price range; a netbook with a killer list of specs might be missing 802.11n connectivity. These are all common problems--and you won't find common solutions.

Due to their diversity, netbooks don't share common upgrade paths as typical desktop PCs do. Each model is unique in what you can do to it, and the exact procedures for modifying your device are as varied as the netbooks themselves. If you want to upgrade your machine, we recommend that you hunt down the instruction manual or, in the case of trickier upgrades, a community of users who can walk you through the process of modifying and hacking new functionality into your extremely portable PC.

That said, you can make a wealth of netbook customizations, and they range in difficulty from 5-minute routines to soldering-gun-based surgeries. We'll take you through some customizations for a Dell Mini 9, as it's one of the more tweakable netbooks we've come across. While your mileage (and procedures) will vary with your own netbook model, this guide will give you a good idea of the kinds of upgrades that could be possible for your machine and skill level.

Easy Upgrades

Insert a Better Battery

In our testing the Dell Mini 9's battery lasted around 3 hours, 34 minutes. That's not too shabby for a four-cell battery, but you can do better. Though you may find a few guides online that teach you how to create a laptop battery using a number of aftermarket batteries all wired together, that's a recipe for disaster. Instead, look to eBay: There you can pick up a 77-watt-hour, eight-cell battery that's entirely compatible with the existing connections (and size) of your Dell Mini 9. You'll double the longevity of your netbook--provided you aren't bothered by the unruly mass sticking out from underneath your system. To replace the battery, flip your netbook upside-down and move the two switches from the locked icon to the unlocked icon, and push up on the battery tray.

Upgrade the Operating System

If you want to install a new operating system onto your netbook, you certainly can: Just pop the CD in any external USB optical drive and install away.

Want to dual-boot your netbook? Grab the GParted utility, by downloading the .iso file for its LiveCD and burning the file onto a disc. Insert that disc into the external optical drive, restart your netbook, and jump into the BIOS to change the boot settings for your machine. Boot off of the optical drive first, and GParted will load. Right-click on the primary partition and select Resize/Move. Microsoft recommends at least 16GB of space for Windows 7; if you were hoping to use that OS but your netbook doesn't have that much room, your experiment ends here. For any OS, if your netbook does have space for it, enter a new partition size of your choosing. Click Resize, and you'll see the newly unallocated space sitting to the right of your primary partition in GParted's graphic. Right-click on this area and select New. Enter zeros for the 'Free Space Proceeding' and 'Following' selections, select Primary Partition under 'Create as', and click the add button.

If you prefer not to use an external optical drive, you can follow these steps for using GParted and installing the new OS with a simple USB thumb drive.

Rearrange the Keyboard

Is the default layout of your netbook's keyboard conflicting with the muscle memory you've built for desktop keyboard layouts? Pop an offending key off of your netbook by wedging a tiny screwdriver under the key and gently applying upward pressure. As long as the keys you're swapping around are of the same size, you'll be able to interchange them as you please. Once you've made the physical transformations, use the Sharp Keys utility to reassign how your operating system interprets the keystrokes. If you don't mind a bit of visual confusion, you could leave the physical keys exactly where they are and simply redefine their purpose with this helpful application.

Upgrade the Hard Drive

What's worse: the underwhelming capacity of the typical solid-state drive that comes with a brand-new netbook, or the price difference you'd have to pay just to get a larger drive in your preconfigured netbook build? Here's a way around both of those nightmares. First, pick the lowest-capacity drive you can purchase when you're building your netbook on the manufacturer's Web site (or, if you have no configuration options, just buy the netbook as it is). Next, consult the appropriate user forums to get a sense of which aftermarket solid-state or magnetic hard drives are compatible with your machine. Finally, grab your screwdriver.

On the Dell Mini 9, flip the netbook over and remove the two screws that secure the larger back panel into place (since it's in the center of the netbook, it's hard to miss). Pry off the panel with your finger or with the tip of a screwdriver. With the Dell Mini 9's battery facing north, you'll see a set of four large electronic pieces inside the machine; those are the hard drive, the memory, the network card, and a blank space for a nonexistent 3G card. You'll see two screws securing the tiny flash-memory circuit board into place in the upper-left quadrant. Unscrew them, and the SSD should lift up a little. Pull it out, insert its replacement, tighten the screws, and your upgrade is done!

Upgrade the RAM

Did you know that memory is one of the main areas of a netbook where system manufacturers can jack up the price? It's true. Don't let a netbook maker empty your wallet by selling you RAM that you can find on the aftermarket for a lot less. In the case of the Dell Mini 9, we purchased the bare minimum of RAM necessary to complete the configuration: 512MB. To upgrade your machine's RAM, first open the back of the netbook and look for the memory. On the Mini 9, it's in the upper-right quadrant (with the battery facing north). On the RAM you should see its specifications. Either you can purchase the same type of RAM in a larger size (in our case, that came out to a 2GB stick of DDR-2 SODIMM running at 533MHz), or you can check the manufacturer specifications for your netbook to discover the maximum supported speed. You'd barely notice the speed difference between DDR2-4200 memory and DDR2-5300 memory, but there's no sense in maxing out with DDR2-6400 if your machine can't support its full speed.

To replace the memory, simply push outward on the two clips holding the memory in place near the notched groove on each side. The RAM will pop upward toward you for easy removal. Insert your newly purchased memory, push it into place, and you're set. When you start up the machine, quickly press the appropriate key to pull up the system BIOS (for the Dell Mini 9, it's the 2 key). Head to the main tab and confirm that the system recognizes the new memory. If it does, your upgrade is a success.

Upgrade the Wi-Fi

Upgrading the internal Wi-Fi capabilities of a netbook from 802.11g to 802.11n sounds like an easy task at first. In theory, it should be. In theory, you should be able to purchase any old miniature wireless card, pop off the back of the netbook, do a quick shuffle of components, and enjoy the increased functionality and speed of the new card.

Alas, in reality it isn't that easy.

For starters, just because a Wi-Fi card looks like it will fit in your netbook, that doesn't mean the card is compatible with the operating system/motherboard combination. But before we even get to that, there's the issue of sizing. When purchasing a replacement Wi-Fi card, you need to know whether your netbook can support a full-height or half-height card. To verify this, remove the back of the netbook and look for the existing Wi-Fi card. A full-height card is long and rectangular, almost like the shape of an SD Card for a camera. In contrast, a half-height card is stubbier--it resembles the shape of a CompactFlash card (or, for that matter, a full-height Wi-Fi card cut in half vertically).

Once you've figured out the available space for a new card, you'll know what kind of card to get. As for the specific brand of Wi-Fi card, there is no hard-and-fast rule to determine what will be compatible with your particular netbook model. What looks perfect on paper might not work at all with your system's configuration. Instead of using trial and error, take the time to run an Internet search for other people's successful Wi-Fi upgrades of the same netbook model. It's the only way you'll be able to know, with 100 percent certainty, that the card you pick up will actually work.

Once you've cleared that hurdle, installing the card is an easy task. On the Dell Mini 9, for example, first remove the netbook's rear covering. The Wi-Fi card is located in the center-right of the system; it's the card with white and black wires (the antenna) running into it. Gently disconnect those wires, undo the screws holding the card in place, and remove the card from the slot. Insert the new card, reinsert the screws to tighten it into position, and reconnect the two antenna wires--note, however, that the specific card you buy will dictate whether you should reverse the wires as compared with their positions on the original card. Depending on the size of the card and the configuration of your netbook's motherboard, you might have to remove a motherboard standoff to make for a solid fit.

If the operating system can't find the new card on the next system boot, be sure to install the drivers for the particular Wi-Fi adapter you purchased. You should be able to find the drivers on the company's Web site; if not, you might have to install drivers from a third-party netbook manufacturer whose product happens to use the same network card.

Overclock the Processor

Overclocking represents the pinnacle of system upgrades that an average user can perform without physically deconstructing the netbook. It's also one of the more dangerous upgrades for netbooks, given that these miniature systems don't come with the best cooling. In the case of the Dell Mini 9, the passive cooler protecting the CPU from thermal overload is no match for frequency tweaking, and it's probably for the best that we were unable to find a way to overclock this tiny PC.

Other netbooks are a bit more flexible in this regard. Owners of Dell Mini 10 netbooks can rev up their CPU through the SetFSB utility. Users of earlier Asus Eee PC models can pick up the Eeectl utility, which permits them to alter the frontside bus within Windows and, consequently, up the speed of the processor. If you have an MSI Wind netbook and you want to update the BIOS, you'll find that that company officially supports your overclocking habit. Still, these are waters best navigated carefully--or not at all, lest you turn your netbook into a doorstop.

Extreme Upgrades

Some of the crazier upgrades you can perform on netbooks, including the Dell Mini 9, are detailed enough to warrant their own multipage articles. While we can't list every step along the way, we can at least show you the possibilities that await should you choose to pick up a soldering iron and venture into the world of electronic mischief.

Add a Touchscreen

First up is the process of replacing your netbook's ordinary screen with a touchscreen. Prior to the invention of handy, all-in-one, no-soldering-required kits, this process used to require extreme care, patience, and the cash to repurchase a machine should your connections not be as precise as they needed to be. Thankfully, online you can now find a variety of kits for a wide range of netbooks that give you the parts--and, more important, the step-by-step walkthroughs--for this complicated procedure. While it still isn't an upgrade for novices, adding a touchscreen to a netbook has come a long way from the solder-filled days of yore.

Add a GPS Receiver

Inserting a brand-new GPS receiver into a Mini 9 sounds like an easy task, given the size of the device in question. Since it's no larger than a tiny flash drive, you would think that sticking this device into a netbook and finding a place to connect it would be as simple as plugging in a USB thumb drive. And you'd be right--but only about the first half of that process. The Dell Mini 9 certainly has plenty of room inside for an integrated GPS receiver, but unlike an average motherboard, the Mini 9's doesn't have any open USB connectors to simplify the powering of the receiver. Super Moderator Acabtp of the MyDellMini forum ran wires all around his Dell Mini 9 in search of power for the device, eventually finding success in connecting the GPS unit to the unused mini-PCI Express connector of the Mini 9's WWAN port. This is a tricky upgrade that requires some additional hardware hacking in order for you to turn the device on and off at a whim, but it's a small price to pay to have a hybrid netbook/GPS device.

Add a Drive-Activity Light

Everyone loves hacks that add a little more aesthetics to an otherwise drab machine. In the case of the Dell Mini 9, the netbook lacks a hard-drive-activity light on its front to let you know when your magnetic (or solid-state) drive is in use. Super Moderator UnaClocker of the MyDellMini forum went through the painstaking process of detailing exactly how to add an activity light to a Dell Mini 9 that has been upgraded previously with a RunCore solid-state drive. The procedure requires you to identify the exact pin on the SSD's controller that's responsible for the activity reading, solder a wire to the resistor, and then solder the other end of the wire to a resistor that's attached to an LED. You then have to find a way to install the LED into the Dell--UnaClocker put it in the battery-notification area--in order to achieve the blinking effect.

First Look: Facebook 3.0 for iPhone

Facebook updated its popular iPhone app, delivering lots of improved features for the official iPhone Facebook 3.0 rev. But sadly, Facebook fails to deliver everything a mobile Facebook warrior could want.

Apple approved version 3.0 of the Facebook app for iPhone Thursday, and it is now available for download from the App Store. Besides the features announced previously, a few other nice touches made it into this version as well.

What's New in Facebook 3.0 for iPhone

The first thing you will notice in the 3.0 Facebook app is the redesigned home screen, which displays the main Facebook functions on a 3-by-3 grid. Unlike in the screenshots in the App store, the grid lines on the home screen are not present in the final version.

The app's main screen actually behaves like the iPhone's home screen. You can swipe left/right for another page where you can add news feeds of your friends and Facebook pages you administer. The icons in the grid can also be arranged, in the same way as with the iPhone home screen, by holding your finger on an icon until it starts shaking.

Facebook 3.0 for iPhone also adds support for events, and you can now see your upcoming events and RSVP. You can write and read notes from your friends and change your profile picture. The app also gives you complete control over your Facebook photos, so you can create/delete albums, delete photos and photo tags.

The news feed section sees many improvements in Facebook 3.0 for iPhone as well. You can now view the Facebook news feed on your iPhone just as you would on a desktop browser and "Like" statues, posts, or photos. Notifications will be displayed at the bottom of the home screen. A great feature is the addition of landscape viewing of the news feed and you can also visit links without leaving the app, via a built-in browser.

What's Lacking from Facebook 3.0 for iPhone

Although you can upload videos from an iPhone 3GS, you can't view videos your friends have uploaded to Facebook. However, if someone posts a video from YouTube, you can watch in the built-in browser.

But one of the biggest shortcomings of the new Facebook 3.0 app for iPhone is the lack of push notifications. The only way to get notifications from your news feed when the Facebook app is closed is either to set up e-mail alerts from within Facebook or the use SMS alerts.

The iPhone's e-mail client can fetch new messages only every 15 minutes and SMS alerts are not as widely available, so these two options can't really replace push notifications. However, we might see this feature arriving in a 3.1 update of the Facebook for iPhone app.

And lastly, it wou

ld be great if the next update of the Facebook for iPhone app could give the option to turn off the landscape viewing feature, as it can be quite annoying when using the app while lying down.

Overall though, the 3.0 Facebook app for iPhone is a great update and brings the desktop version of the social networking s

ite closer to mobile users. In case you haven't done it already, I recommend you download the new app.

Snow Leopard's Deep, Dark Secrets Revealed

Snow Leopard goes on sale tomorrow for $29 retail (or $25 on Amazon). If you have an Intel-based Mac and your daily software is compatible, there is little reason not to upgrade. Snow Leopard's snappiness™ alone is worth the upgrade. But that's not the only reason to consider an upgrade. Here are some lesser known things about Snow Leopard:

Snow Leopard includes some new anti-malware capabilities. While it only protects against two files at the moment, Apple can and probably will upgrade this functionality to protect users from any number of files in the future. Technically, Sysadmins could also use this functionality to block users from installing software they didn't want users to install.

The Snow Leopard "Upgrade Disk" isn't really an upgrade disk. It is a full install and can not only be applied to Leopard, but it can be applied to machines without an OS. If you install a new hard drive, for instance, you won't need to have an OS running or install Leopard and then Snow Leopard.

I can say right here, if you've ever had to reinstall a Microsoft OS, you know this is a fantastic feature that will save you hours and hours.

As Walt Mossberg says, you "can" update Tiger with a $29 Snow Leopard disk. You also "can" just download it off a torrent for free. Both are in violation of Apple's license agreement. Point is: Apple's EULA states that if you run Tiger, you need to buy the Box set to upgrade. $150 is still less than Windows is charging for 7 updates - plus you get iWork and iLife thrown into the package.

If you run Tiger, or even Leopard, you'll need to upgrade your iLife to '08 or '09. A lot of Tiger users won't have had done this so even more reason to buy the Snow Leopard box set.

Even though most mainstream applications work beautifully with Snow Leopard, a surprising number of lesser known apps don't work. If you are an audio engineer using Pro Tools, you'll be used to waiting. If you are a MacSpeech 1.4 user, you'll need to be upgrading. Cyberduck FTP will also need an upgrade.

Snow Leopard will check your IP address and adjust your timezone based on your IP. Nice touch, but hopefully when I connect to to corporate VPN in Los Angeles from London, the OS doesn't decide to change me to Pacific time. I haven't had this issue yet.

There is a new auto-correct across all Apple applications in Snow Leopard that works similarly to Microsoft Word's auto-correct. Now my iChat will has correct grammar...hopefully.

Quicktime X has a number of feature upgrades including direct to Youtube publishing and video screengrabbing that come in handy pretty quickly. Also Perian works for Quicktime X, allowing AVIs and other not native supported files to be used in Quicktime.

Part of Snow Leopard's 6GB of "triming the fat" is its default of only installing printers nearby. That is great and even better is that new printers will install automatically when they are plugged in or found on the network. However, if you aren't plugged into the network, you need to go old fashion and install the drivers manually.

Overall, this is a worthy upgrade, just for the faster Mac it gives you. The bonuses above make it all the more of a "no-brainer"...if your apps are ready.

Microsoft: Xbox 360 Price Drop Timing Coincidental

Welcome to the day after Microsoft lowered the price on its $300 Xbox 360 Elite, wrinkling its brow and lowering its horns to meet Sony's slimmer, $100 cheaper PlayStation 3 in battle. While the incidentals differ between the two, we've officially entered the melee phase of the campaign. The riders are off their horses, lances in the mud, swords drawn, endorsement-and-feature-laden tabards flapping. Welcome to the first day of the headiest holiday game sales season in years.

Microsoft's director of product management for Xbox Live Aaron Greenberg is doing his best to dismiss assumptions that the Xbox 360's price drop was reactionary. He's popped up in several locations in the last 24 hours claiming the timing of the 360's price drop was simply "coincidental."

I don't doubt him. It's that time of year, and getting out in front of the holiday action is essential. In a few weeks, the kids are back in school. Before you know it, the leaves will be turning and we'll be talking Halo 3: ODST, Gran Turismo PSP, Sony's PSP Go, Uncharted 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and Modern Warfare 2.

But don't think for a minute Microsoft and Sony aren't eyeing each other like tomb raiders squaring off over the Holy Grail. The analysts haven't weighed in yet, but I'm betting they'll mark this holiday season as pivotal. Will Sony bite back into Microsoft's lead? Will Microsoft pull away permanently? Will Nintendo maintain its pole position? Or are its halcyon days finally over? Stand back, because the meaningless rhetoric (but correspondingly meaningful sales deals) could be explosive.

That's good news, because it means we're finally well enough along that these systems are becoming affordable. Sony's PlayStation 3 started off at nigh 3DO price levels, something I think we can all agree at this point was a terrible starter move. And Microsoft...let's just say I'm amazed that peripherals like a $100 802.11g adapter and $150 120GB hard drive upgrade haven't incited a Thermidorian Reaction. However cynical it sounds, you do have to admire the latter for getting its "modular" medicine down our throats with spoonfuls of marketing sugar.

Where to next? After I trot out an updated price guide, it's back to games and services. The PlayStation 3 may be slimmer, and at $300, the Xbox 360 Elite may be "eliter," but in the end, we play games, not boxes.

With no official press release in sight, the MSI Wind U210 AMD Neo-based netbook is now available stateside on pre-order. This diminutive ultra-portable packs quite a punch - offering a 12.1-inch LCD, 250GB HDD, 2GB RAM, a 6-cell battery providing up to five hours of run time and a weight of only 3.2 pounds (1.45kg).

The U210 is based on MSI’s Wind U200, but runs on an AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 1.6GHz CPU instead of an Intel CULV processor. This ultra-compact netbook also squeezes in an ATI Radeon X1250 GPU, a 16:9 HD WXGA display with 1366 x 768 resolution, WiFi b/g/n, an HDMI port and a 1.3-megapixel webcam.

Measuring just 7.4″ (18.8cm) x 11.7″ (29.7cm) x 1.2″ (3.05cm) the U210 isn’t quite as slim as MSI’s X600 Notebook we saw recently - but the width, depth and weight make for a very portable netbook indeed.

The MSI Wind U210 comes with Windows Vista Home Premium and is available now on pre-order in either white (U210-006US) or black (U210-008US) for a very reasonable $429.99 from Amazon.com.

Internet Age re-inventing music business: Bandwidth

Music and Internet worlds merged on San Francisco's posh Nob Hill as insiders brainstormed about industry rocking Web 2.0 trends from social networking to smart phones with cameras.

Internet technologies will transform a music industry in which recording studio revenues have tumbled along with CD sales, according to those gathered for an elite Bandwidth Conference.

"The technology is really there to empower the consumer and the artist," said Gracenote vice president of product and content management Stephen White.

"It is about creating better experiences around music, and we think the same is true for movies, TV, and other entertainment content."

Gracenote specializes in music recognition technology and is used in Apple's iTunes online shop. Sony bought the California company last year for a reported 260 million dollars.

CarStars unveiled by Gracenote this year lets drivers pick beloved musicians to be "musical guides" that orchestrate playlists based on what they think best fits a moment, whether it be touring a coast or commuting.

"We see in the future a much better experience; holistic offerings," White said.

Fans will be able to interact with artists in more rewarding ways, White predicted.

Creative Allies plans to soon launch a test version of software that lets artists hire fans to create anything from concert posters and t-shirt designs to music videos and biographies, according to the startup.

The amount of money raked in from live concerts has rocketed, triggering an array of commission-based online services for hunting down tickets, according to JamBase chief executive David Rosenheim.

The JamBase mission is to be the ultimate online resource for live music fans.

The availability of recorded music online pressures musicians to deliver live shows that go far beyond playing songs from their CDs.

"Definitely, you have to put on a show," said Diaris Alexander of Youth Movement Records, a group that works to cultivate music business savvy in young members of the Hip Hop generation.

"We look for interactive media...we need a greater experience otherwise why not just listen to their music online?"

Live shows drive sales of recorded music in the Internet Age and provide opportunities to cash in by selling fans videos of performances on flash drives or DVDs as they leave venues.

It appears that amateur video shared online at websites such as YouTube inspires fans to seek professional versions where money can be made.

"YouTube videos are the gateway drug," said a professional music videographer at Bandwidth. "I think most bands do embrace the bootleg model as a way to get people to the pro sites."

Artists can also cash in on data bases of contact information about fans, firing off emails or text messages to alert them to new songs, band merchandise, or show dates.

Online communities such as MySpace and Facebook are influential venues for musicians, since suggestions from friends factor into almost all purchase decisions, according to Rosenheim.

New age jukebox approaches that stream music online as paid or ad-supported services seem to be gaining traction.

Online radio service Pandora is showing lasting power and music streaming service Spotify offers an iPhone application considered a challenge to Apple's online iTunes shop.

"There are tons of new models around recorded music; most haven't worked," Rosenheim said. "People are consuming more music than ever before. Unfortunately for the labels, they are not paying for it."

Snow Leopard Proves No Threat to Windows 7

After months of headlines about the phenomenon known as Snow Leopard, it has hit the streets and reality has set in. It turns out that the updated Mac OS X is.....well, it's simply an updated Mac OS X.

After all of the hype in the media regarding the Snow Leopard frenzy, Friday's official release seemed lacking. Not to say Snow Leopard is a dud. By all accounts it puts some zip into lagging Mac OS X systems, but it offers little else to impact the day-to-day experience of most Mac OS X users.

To be fair, Apple has been clear from the start that the focus of Snow Leopard was performance and that the update offers little in the way of new features. But, some in the media have tried to turn the coincidental timing of the Snow Leopard and Windows 7 releases into a battle of the titans with Snow Leopard playing the role of underdog to challenge Microsoft for desktop dominance. Not.

I wrote recently about the various ways that Snow Leopard demonstrates that Mac OS X is maturing into an operating system that can be used in an enterprise, but that doesn't mean it can take on Windows 7 or threaten Microsoft's desktop dominance. Let's examine the ways that the Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 OS battle is delusional:

1. Existing hardware. Windows 7 will work on existing PC hardware. Obviously a faster processor and more RAM will improve performance, but it only requires a 1GHz CPU and 1Gb of RAM- requirements met by the vast majority of systems in use now.

By contrast, Snow Leopard will only work on Intel-based Mac systems. That means that not only will Snow Leopard not work on the hardware most people use, it won't even work on much of the hardware used by current Mac OS X users.

2. Incremental vs. Monumental: Despite the hype, Snow Leopard is not a new operating system. It is a performance update with some feature tweaks. Microsoft does those as well- they're called Service Packs and they're free.

Windows 7 is a new operating system. The "I'm a Mac" crowd might suggest that Windows 7 is simply a flashy update of Windows Vista, but Microsoft already provided Snow Leopard-like updates to Windows Vista- twice. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 already addressed Windows Vista issues.

Windows 7 has a similar UI, but delivers a completely new operating system. Ask anyone who has used Windows Vista and hated it, but fell in love with the Windows 7 Beta and see what they think of comparisons between the two.

Snow Leopard has a significant number of feature enhancements and updates, but with the exception of the built-in support for Microsoft Exchange none of them is really blazing new territory. In fact, contrary to surpassing Windows 7, many of the features seem to just catch Mac OS X up to the capabilities of Windows Vista.

3. Netbooks. Sorry Apple fanboi's- netbooks are a very attractive platform for the core Mac market. College students, the young, hip market that the "I'm a Mac" dude is supposed to represent, are generally broke. Its hard to justify investing this semester's beer book money and rent to purchase a Macbook when you can get a netbook for peanuts just by signing up for a contract with Verizon or AT&T.

Rumors have gone back and forth about Apple possibly developing a netbook of its own. History seems to guarantee one thing: any netbook Apple will make will be more expensive than its competitors and proprietary in nature. A Mac netbook might allow Apple to put a finger in the dike, but cost-conscious users will still struggle to justify the steeper investment in an Apple alternative.

Snow Leopard seems to be a relative success. Like Apple's sensational claims about the number of Safari downloads earlier this year, the sales volume of Snow Leopard is a tad dubious though. Microsoft would be able to report fairly significant operating system sales if they sold Service Packs as new versions as well. It's a ‘captive audience'.

At $29 Snow Leopard seems like a reasonable investment for existing Mac OS X users fortunate enough to have hardware compatible with the upgrade and who will not be significantly impacted by the various application incompatibilities introduced by Snow Leopard. As far as the desktop market goes, Windows 7 probably faces more of a threat from Linux operating systems like Ubuntu or Fedora that run on the same hardware and are available for free.

DHS Clarifies Laptop Border Crossing Rules: What You Need to Know

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security made it clear that border crossing officials could continue to search any device that can store electronic media without any suspicion of wrongdoing.

Although the revised policy ensures searches will be completed in a "timely manner" (up to 30 days) and that travelers will stay informed about the search's progress, travelers crossing the border might want to consider a few things.

Officials can still seize any device (including MP3 players or flash drives) and look at any file on it (including Internet browsing history) without giving any reason.

The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) believes agents take laptops, make an image of the hard drive and then return the laptop to its owner in the mail. Any copied files could be stored "indefinitely." (Imagine what the Border Patrol's iTunes Library will look like after "indefinitely" storing DRM-free music from several dozen searches.) The ACLU is also taking a dim view of the DHS policy, and is challenging it in court.

For the moment, though, it's smart to be prepared. Although the DHS's exact procedures are unspecified, the department's new policy states when travelers are subject to a search, agents will provide them "with clear and concise material informing them of the reasons for the search, how their data may be used and detailed information about their constitutional and statutory rights."

If you're traveling for business and have important files you'll need on your trip, it wouldn't hurt to save them to multiple locations so you aren't left without them. Better yet, use Google Docs or another Internet-based storage system to ensure your private information stays private.

In the case of a search, ACTE recommends you inform the agent that you have sensitive information on your computer. Try to get your concern noted in writing; at least, be sure to express it verbally. ACTE says this will help you retain more legal rights for registering your concern.

Although these searches don't occur very often (the Border Patrol looked at around 1000 laptops and searched 46 laptops in-depth in the past ten months) the best bet for travelers concerned about privacy is to leave unneeded electronic storage behind.

Software ‘detectives’ track the lost (or stolen) laptop

In 2007, Mat Mullen walked out of a party in Marin County, Calif., and found that someone had stolen the iPod in his car.

“It had all of my music in it.” he said. “I work in a recording studio and it’s something that’s always been close to my heart. I never backed it up.”

Besides getting angry, Mullen started thinking. “There’s got to be a way to track your iPod,” he recalled saying to himself. “Apple has to have some way to do it. There’s a unique serial number. I did some research and found there was a huge user community saying the same thing.”

That’s how Mullen founded iHound Software (fees vary), a company that helps owners of MP3 players, iPhones, or flash drives find their gadgets if they’re lost or stolen.

A variety of products and services for a fee, will try to help find missing gadgetry, but they all work similarly. To begin with, any recovery service will have to install a small application onto your laptop, smartphone, flash drive or other device. While your gadget is in your possession, this program lies dormant. But once you activate it (usually by going to the service’s Web site) the software does what it can to get your device back in your hands.

The simplest way to reunite an owner and gadget is to display on the screen the owner’s name and phone number, as well as any reward for the device’s return. The iHound package for flash drives, for instance, displays such a message when the drive is inserted into a new machine.

Once lost, but found
“We’ve had about 23 recoveries that we’ve been told about,” said Mullen. “More often than not, it’s from people who’ve just lost their devices.”

A more advanced method of recovery is for the gadget to tell its owner where it is. This isn’t as James Bondian as it may sound: Most smartphones have GPS technology, so location services are already built in. And every time a laptop connects to the Internet, it is assigned an IP (Internet Protocol) address by the Internet service provider. If the embedded recovery software records and transmits the IP address to its owner, the owner can usually get the ISP to determine the actual address with that data. (Be advised that this may require a warrant).

Some packages can go a bit further. Software from Gadgettrak ($25 a year for most devices), another recovery service, can use the laptop’s Wi-Fi circuitry to collect the names and the signal strength of all Wi-Fi base stations in range. This can often locate a device.

All of this information about a device’s location makes its way back to the owner through various paths. IHound, for instance, stores the data in its servers and may record thousands of reports. A user can log into the iHound servers and check the latest reports and, if necessary, print out a list of recent locations to give to the police investigating a crime.

Another service, Prey (free), along with Gadgettrack, takes a different approach and collects nothing at their servers. Their packages send an e-mail message with the location directly to the user. Gadgettrak can also snap photos with any built-in camera and upload them to the owner’s Flickr account.

Apple’s MobileMe service ($99 a year) lets iPhone owners track and control their phone remotely. Users can determine an iPhone’s location and, at a command, wipe all the data off the phone by visiting the MobileMe Web site. (If you have wiped the phone clean and then discover your iPhone is merely lost and not stolen, you can restore the data as well).

Different responses
When the user reports a theft, recovery companies respond in different ways. Many just pass along all of the information about the location directly to the owner. While this may be efficient if the device has only been misplaced, it may be dangerous if it has fallen into the hands of criminals.

“We will purposefully never reveal a location to a consumer customer,” said John Livingston, chief executive of Absolute Software. The company’s Computrace package ($14 to $53 a year) is marketed as “Lojack for Laptops,” and is available as a preinstalled option on computers from Lenovo, Dell, HP and other manufacturers. “We won’t do it. Once you declare that it’s lost or stolen, we take control over the location at that point. We purposely keep some safe distance between the end user and the thief.”

Absolute employs a team of 40 investigators with previous experience in law enforcement. They track the location, remotely install extra software for capturing keystrokes, and build a dossier of evidence that they pass on to local authorities.

Some more basic online systems don’t depend upon adding extra software or asking the gadget to phone home. The Web site Juststolen.net lets you store the serial number of your devices in its database, which police can then search and flag any recovered.

Tom Shea, a Brookline (Mass.) police officer, started Justolen.net in his spare time after he grew frustrated with manufacturers that did little to help him track down owners.

He points out that companies often record serial numbers in order to market to customers, but they often won’t open up this information to the police looking to solve a crime or reunite a device with an owner.

“These companies that can definitely identify this property won’t cooperate with us. Even if we recover your radio today, they’re not going to tell us it’s yours,” he said.

If all of the other techniques fail, the Undercover program from Orbicule ($49 for Macs; $4.99 for iPhones) has a “Plan B” for laptops that makes the computer’s screen dimmer and more erratic. This makes it less valuable and may even encourage the thief to bring the device into a repair shop that might detect that it is stolen.

Absolute Software is working with Intel to create a new mechanism that will not just delete the data, but permanently break the computer.

“It’s another arrow in the quiver,” Livingston said. “If we can’t get a computer back, we can at least turn it into a brick.”

Tech Test Drive: G-Force (PS3, Xbox 360)

"G-Force" is an action title featuring a unique team of specially trained guinea pigs that use high-tech gadgets to complete dangerous missions for the government.

This game puts players in control of Darwin, the guinea pig leader of the covert intelligence squad, and a housefly surveillance sidekick named Mooch. They team up with the other G-Force agents and use their gadgets, stealth mastery and pint-size teamwork to save the world from the malevolent technology of an evil genius.

This game uses innovative gameplay with a unique sense of scale. Players get a sense of what it's like to be just a few inches tall. And there is puzzle-solving that requires players to manipulate environments and enemies, including evil robotic waffle irons and other evil household appliances.

The game is funny and complements the movie on which it is based. For example, there are driving sequences in which you pilot an armed hamster-ball. The gadgets are clever and the game looks great.

You often must manipulate multiple buttons at once, though, which requires dexterity with your fingers. It is a kids' game that some younger players may find too much of a challenge. But those with experience playing games like this will be delighted by the action,

One shortcoming is players control only Darwin and his sidekick, and they don't have the opportunity to play any of the other characters the movie is based on. That's a missed opportunity.

Also,

the game's 3-D technology, while heavily touted, doesn't work well. The game comes with red and blue glasses, but they wreck the colors, making it harder to play. Video games may be going 3-D, but they won't be successful with this kind of antiquated technology. Luckily, it's turned off by default.

Usually gamers avoid movie-licensed games because they so often are disappointing. But "G-Force" delivers a satisfying experience with engaging combat, crafty puzzles and rewarding exploration.

As Internet turns 40, barriers threaten its growth

Goofy videos weren't on the minds of Len Kleinrock and his team at UCLA when they began tests 40 years ago on what would become the Internet. Neither was social networking, for that matter, nor were most of the other easy-to-use applications that have drawn more than a billion people online.

Instead the researchers sought to create an open network for freely exchanging information, an openness that ultimately spurred the innovation that would later spawn the likes of YouTube, Facebook and the World Wide Web.

There's still plenty of room for innovation today, yet the openness fostering it may be eroding. While the Internet is more widely available and faster than ever, artificial barriers threaten to constrict its growth.

Call it a mid-life crisis.

A variety of factors are to blame. Spam and hacking attacks force network operators to erect security firewalls. Authoritarian regimes block access to many sites and services within their borders. And commercial considerations spur policies that can thwart rivals, particularly on mobile devices like the iPhone.

"There is more freedom for the typical Internet user to play, to communicate, to shop — more opportunities than ever before," said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor and co-founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "On the worrisome side, there are some longer-term trends that are making it much more possible (for information) to be controlled."

Few were paying attention back on Sept. 2, 1969, when about 20 people gathered in Kleinrock's lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, to watch as two bulky computers passed meaningless test data through a 15-foot gray cable.

That was the beginning of the fledgling Arpanet network. Stanford Research Institute joined a month later, and UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah did by year's end.

The 1970s brought e-mail and the TCP/IP communications protocols, which allowed multiple networks to connect — and formed the Internet. The '80s gave birth to an addressing system with suffixes like ".com" and ".org" in widespread use today.

The Internet didn't become a household word until the '90s, though, after a British physicist, Tim Berners-Lee, invented the Web, a subset of the Internet that makes it easier to link resources across disparate locations. Meanwhile, service providers like America Online connected millions of people for the first time.

That early obscurity helped the Internet blossom, free from regulatory and commercial constraints that might discourage or even prohibit experimentation.

"For most of the Internet's history, no one had heard of it," Zittrain said. "That gave it time to prove itself functionally and to kind of take root."

Even the U.S. government, which funded much of the Internet's early development as a military project, largely left it alone, allowing its engineers to promote their ideal of an open network.

When Berners-Lee, working at a European physics lab, invented the Web in 1990, he could release it to the world without having to seek permission or contend with security firewalls that today treat unknown types of Internet traffic as suspect.

Even the free flow of pornography led to innovations in Internet credit card payments, online video and other technologies used in the mainstream today.

"Allow that open access, and a thousand flowers bloom," said Kleinrock, a UCLA professor since 1963. "One thing about the Internet you can predict is you will be surprised by applications you did not expect."

That idealism is eroding.

An ongoing dispute between Google Inc. and Apple Inc. underscores one such barrier.

Like some other mobile devices that connect to the Internet, the iPhone restricts the software that can run on it. Only applications Apple has vetted are allowed.

Apple recently blocked the Google Voice communications application, saying it overrides the iPhone's built-in interface. Skeptics, however, suggest the move thwarts Google's potentially competing phone services.

On desktop computers, some Internet access providers have erected barriers to curb bandwidth-gobbling file-sharing services used by their subscribers. Comcast Corp. got rebuked by Federal Communications Commission last year for blocking or delaying some forms of file-sharing; Comcast ultimately agreed to stop that.

The episode galvanized calls for the government to require "net neutrality," which essentially means that a service provider could not favor certain forms of data traffic over others. But that wouldn't be a new rule as much as a return to the principles that drove the network Kleinrock and his colleagues began building 40 years ago.

Even if service providers don't actively interfere with traffic, they can discourage consumers' unfettered use of the Internet with caps on monthly data usage. Some access providers are testing drastically lower limits that could mean extra charges for watching just a few DVD-quality movies online.

"You are less likely to try things out," said Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist and one of the Internet's founding fathers. "No one wants a surprise bill at the end of the month."

Dave Farber, a former chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission, said systems are far more powerful when software developers and consumers alike can simply try things out.

Farber has unlocked an older iPhone using a warrantee-voiding technique known as jail-breaking, allowing the phone to run software that Apple hasn't approved. By doing that, he could watch video before Apple supported it in the most recent version of the iPhone, and he changed the screen display when the phone is idle to give him a summary of appointments and e-mails.

While Apple insists its reviews are necessary to protect children and consumer privacy and to avoid degrading phone performance, other phone developers are trying to preserve the type of openness found on desktop computers. Google's Android system, for instance, allows anyone to write and distribute software without permission.

Yet even on the desktop, other barriers get in the way.

Steve Crocker, an Internet pioneer who now heads the startup Shinkuro Inc., said his company has had a tough time building technology that helps people in different companies collaborate because of security firewalls that are ubiquitous on the Internet. Simply put, firewalls are designed to block incoming connections, making direct interactions between users challenging, if not impossible.

No one's suggesting the removal of all barriers, of course. Security firewalls and spam filters became crucial as the Internet grew and attracted malicious behavior, much as traffic lights eventually had to be erected as cars flooded the roads. Removing those barriers could create larger problems.

And many barriers throughout history eventually fell away — often under pressure. Early on, AOL was notorious for discouraging users from venturing from its gated community onto the broader Web. The company gradually opened the doors as its subscribers complained or fled. Today, the company is rebuilding its business around that open Internet.

What the Internet's leading engineers are trying to avoid are barriers that are so burdensome that they squash emerging ideas before they can take hold.

Already, there is evidence of controls at workplaces and service providers slowing the uptake of file-sharing and collaboration tools. Video could be next if consumers shun higher-quality and longer clips for fear of incurring extra bandwidth fees. Likewise, startups may never get a chance to reach users if mobile gatekeepers won't allow them.

If such barriers keep innovations from the hands of consumers, we may never know what else we may be missing along the way.

Can Bill Gates stop hurricanes? Scientists doubt it

Hurricane experts are throwing cold water on an idea backed by billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates aimed at controlling the weather.

Bill Gates and scientists have applied for patents aimed at reducing the strength of oncoming hurricanes.

Gates and a dozen other scientists have raised eyebrows by submitting patent applications for a technology to reduce the danger of approaching hurricanes by cooling ocean temperatures.

It's a noble idea, given the horrible memories from Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into the Gulf Coast four years ago this week.

The storm, which rated a frightening Category 3 when it made landfall in Louisiana, was blamed for $81 billion in damaged and destroyed property and the deaths of more than 1,800 men, women and children.

Skeptics applaud the motive of the concept but question its feasibility.

"The enormity of it, in order to do something effective, we'd have to do something at a scale that humans have never really done before," said Gabriel Vecchi, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

How exactly would this hurricane-zapping technology work?

Hurricanes are fueled by warm water, and cooling the waters surrounding a storm would slow a storm's momentum.

According to the patents, many tub-like barges would be placed directly in the path of an oncoming storm. Each barge would have two conduits, each 500 feet long.

One conduit would push the warm water from the ocean's surface down. The other would bring up cold water where it lies deep undersea.

World reknowned hurricane expert William Gray, who's been studying and predicting the storms for a half-century, also doubts whether the proposal would work.

"The problem is the storms come up so rapidly," said Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. "You only get two to three days warning. It's very difficult to bring up enough cold water in two to three days to have much effect."

The idea itself isn't groundbreaking, according to Gray, who said it could only be feasible if the barges were put into place at the beginning of hurricane season with the idea that storms will come.

"But you might do all that, and perhaps no storms would come. That's an economic problem," Gray said.

Even if the technology does work, Gray said it won't completely halt a hurricane.

"There is no way to stop it. The storm might weaken in the center, but the outer areas wouldn't be affected much."

And flooding and storm surges are determined by these outer winds, Gray said.

When word of Gates' five patent applications first made headlines in July, alarmed bloggers lit up the Internet, expressing fears that playing with ocean temperatures could lead to catastrophe, possibly forcing a storm in a different direction.

That's not likely, said Kerry Emanuel, a professor in atmospheric sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"You're doing something to the ocean that the hurricane would have done anyway," Emanuel said.

Cold water that churns up during a storm slows down a hurricane naturally. But the coldest water is usually at the rear of the storm, so sometimes it's too late to weaken [the storm], Emanuel said.

"The key is doing it a little sooner than the storm itself does it and make [the hurricane] weaker than it would have been," he said. "There are enough experiments to find out whether hurricanes' natural cooling could steer the storm in a different location, and the answer is no, or it's a very small chance."

While Emanuel believes the physics are conceivable, he says the cost of implementing the system shouldn't outweigh the benefit.

"This would only be practical if the amount [of money] you spend doing this would be less than the damage caused by the hurricane," Emanuel said.

Gates and scientist Ken Caldeira, both listed as inventors on the patents, did not respond to CNN's requests to comment about their venture.

The patents, which were only made public last month by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office, were filed in January by Searete LLC. The company is a subsidiary of Intellectual Ventures, an invention firm run by Microsoft's former chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold.

A spokeswoman for Intellectual Ventures, which holds about 27,000 technology patents, didn't elaborate on the cost associated with the patent.

"At this point, there are no plans for deployment, so there is no talk of funding," she said, adding that it could take up to 18 months for the patent application to be approved.

Regardless, inventors say that this technology is not something they'll be rushing to use anytime soon.

"This type of technology is not something humankind would use as a 'Plan A' or 'Plan B,'" Paul "Pablos" Holman, an inventor in the Intellectual Ventures laboratory, wrote on the company blog.

"These inventions are a 'Plan C,' where humans decide that we've exhausted all our behavior changing and alternative energy options and need to rely on mitigation technologies. If our planet is in this severe situation, then our belief is that we should not be starting from scratch at investigating mitigation options."

Hurricane expert Gray agrees.

"I don't think this is anything that's going to be done in the next few decades in a practical sense, but maybe further down the line," Gray said. "I would love to see Bill Gates, with all his money, use some of it to experiment."