YouTube lets users see what friends are watching

YouTube unveiled a test version of a service that tells people which videos their friends are watching.
YouTube RealTime lets users know when friends are online, what they are viewing and when they comment on or upload videos, according to YouTube product manager Ryan Junee.
In a posting on YouTube's official blog, Junee described RealTime as "a new way of discovering what your friends are doing on YouTube."
Junee said invitations to try out RealTime will be sent to the first 100 volunteers.
"Please keep in mind that you will need to have friends on YouTube for this to work -- the more you have, the richer the experience, so be sure you accept friend invites and actively manage the list," Junee wrote.

Nintendo's Game Boy turns 20

Twenty years ago Japan's Nintendo Co. launched the Game Boy, the iconic handheld video game player that spawned characters from Super Mario to Pokemon and sold 200 million units worldwide.
When the Game Boy was first launched this week in 1989, Japan was enjoying its economic "bubble years," Madonna's "Like a Prayer" topped international charts, and Chinese students were just starting to mass on Tiananmen Square.
Video games had recently moved from the arcades into family homes. In Japan children were playing Nintendo's Family Computer or "Famicom" games on their television sets, and simple handheld games called Game and Watch.
But the Game Boy -- sold at 8,000 yen (80 dollars at today's exchange rate) -- was the first portable console with changeable game cartridges and marketed as "35 hours of games in your pocket with just four batteries."
"Children were so happy they could play on the train after school and before the inevitable evening crash courses," recalled Hirokazu Hamamura, head of Enterbrain, a publishing company on the gaming industry.
"If Nintendo beat its rivals in this field, it's because the company has spent decades in the universe of social gaming," he said.
Kyoto-based Nintendo started off in 1889 as a maker of card games and moved into toys in the early 1900s. In 1983, it launched the hit Famicom, called the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States.
Nintendo "understood the young public, which was not the case for electronic groups like Sony, which targeted adults," said Hamamura.
Sony came up with the Walkman in 1979 but only launched a hand-held game console, the PlayStation Portable, years after the Game Boy.
The Game Boy -- first associated with games ranging from Tetris to the endless adventures of Pikachu and its Pocket Monsters friends -- has since then kicked off a revolution in gaming software.
"Video games played on television essentially revolved around fight games or a game between two players or against the console," said Hamamura.
"But with the Game Boy and Tetris, the types of missions began to evolve," leading to more diverse and sophisticated games such as Pokemon, he said.
Consoles of the Game Boy series -- which includes the pocket, lite and colour versions -- have since sold 118 million units, while the follow-up Game Boy Advance series sold 82 million consoles.
Twenty years on, Nintendo's portable consoles have grown up with their users. Nintendo in 2004 launched the dual-screen or DS portable console, which has since sold more than 100 million units around the world.
It boasts games such as the popular "Dragon Quest," but also study applications, restaurant guides, dictionaries and other functions. Some primary schools in Japan now use it to teach English and Japanese kanji characters.
"Nintendo has always preserved the same philosophy: entertaining the family," said Hamamura. "But in 20 years the company has also expanded its range of games with educational titles, which has turned adults into players."
Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata reportedly said recently that "it's a grand vision to have every student at every school using a DS.
"It will take time and energy to reach that goal because the DS has been viewed by teachers as an enemy for a long time."

'Madden NFL 10' to cover Polamalu, Fitzgerald

For the first time in its storied (some say cursed) history, the cover of EA Sports' "Madden NFL" video game will feature two cover athletes: Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu and Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald.
"Being on the cover of 'Madden' is a real honor," Fitzgerald said Friday after Electronic Arts made the announcement. "And sharing it with a talent like Troy is really special."
The shared cover of "Madden NFL 10," which arrives in stores Aug. 14, has something for everyone: Polamalu is a defensive AFC player and Fitzgerald an offensive NFC player.
EA Sports senior product manager Anthony Stevenson called the two Pro Bowlers "exemplary examples of the epic battle between offense and defense in the NFL."
Both played in last season's Super Bowl, which the Steelers won in a 27-23 nail-biter. Both athletes are known for their long, helmet-defying hair. Steel City football fans should be particularly happy, since Fitzgerald played college ball at the University of Pittsburgh. (He was also on the cover of EA's "NCAA Football 2005.")
EA's football franchise is feared for its mysterious "Madden curse": Previous cover models like Donovan McNabb, Shaun Alexander and Vince Young have suffered injuries during their "Madden" season.
Fitzgerald, however, was defiant. "I didn't think about the curse," he said. "If both of us have MVP years, everybody will be chomping at the bit to get on the cover."

British government backs down over database plan

The British government said Monday it wants communications companies to keep records of every phone call, e-mail and Web site visit made in the country. But it has decided not to set up a national database of the information, a proposal that had been condemned as a "Big Brother"-style invasion of privacy by civil liberties groups.
The government said in October it was considering a central database of phone and Internet traffic as part of a high-tech strategy to fight terrorism and crime.
But Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said Monday the plan had been dropped.
A document outlining the department's proposals said the government "recognizes the privacy implications" of a database and "does not propose to pursue this approach."
Instead, the government said it was backing a "middle way" that would see service providers store and organize information on every individual's phone and Internet traffic so that it could be accessed by police and other authorities on request.
The Home Office estimated introducing the new system would cost up to 2 billion pounds ($3 billion).
Under current rules, British Internet service providers are already required to store records of Web and e-mail traffic for a year. The new proposals would also require them to retain details of communications that originated in other countries but passed across British networks — for example if someone in Britain accessed a U.S.-based e-mail account.
Industry group the Internet Service Providers Association said companies would want the government to compensate them for the cost of keeping the data. Secretary general Nicholas Lansman said the group would hold talks with the Home Office on details of the proposal.
The government said providers would not store the content of calls, e-mails or Internet use. They would retain details of times, dates, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web site URLs.
Smith said officials had to strike "a delicate balance between privacy and security," but insisted police and intelligence agencies needed more tools to fight crime and terrorism in an ever-more complex online world.
"Advances in communications mean that there are ever more sophisticated ways to communicate and we need to ensure that we keep up with the technology being used by those who would seek to do us harm," Smith said.
The proposals are still a long way from becoming law. The government is seeking public comment until July, and widespread opposition is expected.
Chris Grayling, law-and-order spokesman for the opposition Conservatives, said the government had "built a culture of surveillance" and should scale down its proposals.
"Too many parts of government have too many powers to snoop on innocent people and that's really got to change," he said.
The government said there would be strict safeguards on who could access the information, but critics say existing surveillance powers have been abused by local authorities investigating relatively trivial offenses such as littering or failing to clean up dog mess.
That led the government in December to say it would clamp down on abuses of surveillance laws.
Trust in the government also has been hit by a series of lost data incidents. In November, a government department lost a disk that contained the names, addresses and bank details of 25 million people.

Stanford offers free downloads of its iPhone development class

Last fall, Stanford University's School of Engineering began teaching a class on developing applications for the iPhone. This quarter, you don't have to empty your savings account to attend the class, as Stanford is now offering free video downloads of the class, "iPhone Application Programming," to the public on its iTunes U Web site. The class began this week, and will run for 10 weeks (users can also download slides and other course materials from the Web site for the course, CS 193P).

The class is being taught by several Apple employees including Evan Doll, a Stanford Computer Science alum who has worked on the iPhone team since version 1.0 was released. And Alan Cannistraro and Paul Marcos have more than twenty years of Apple experience between them and now work on a variety of iPhone applications. Marcos formerly taught other programming courses in the Computer Science department at Stanford.

Judging by the success of the fall quarter, the class is likely to be quite popular. According to Troy Brant, a second year computer science masters candidate who was the teaching assistant for the fall course and now for the current one as well, there are only 60 spots available and more than 150 people have applied (Stanford doesn't determine the final enrollee list for classes until several weeks into a course). In an interview, Brant described the relationship between Stanford and Apple as symbiotic and said the class is “a great introduction for people who haven’t had much mobile programming experience,” and presents an opportunity to learn convention, design patterns, and “good design.”

Brent Izutsu, Stanford’s project manager for Stanford on iTunes U, explained to the Stanford News Service that “working with Apple allowed us to focus our energy on identifying and capturing great content while Apple provided us the technology to distribute it globally.” Students enrolled in the class are required to use an Intel-based Mac for programming, but don't need to own an iPhone or iPod touch—they can borrow one for the course. Students taking the class online will receive the same instruction as those in the classroom, but not receive course credit.

Apple reports more 800 million downloads on the App Store so far, making the iPhone a great testing ground for creative entrepreneurs and budding third-party developers. In fact, some of the student-developed applications from the fall-quarter iPhone development class are already available for download on the App Store.

The iStanford application, developed in part by Kayvon Beykpou, was written with cooperation from the university and not only provides a campus map, directory, and building information, but also the sense that the university is on board with the iPhone’s ability to help students.

The potential for the device is vast and universities are beginning to recognize the education value for students. MIT and the University of Missouri are also offering classes on the subject and Abilene Christian University recently hosted a summit with more than four hundred participants on how to deploy the iPhone and iPod touch in the classroom.

Wreck of first US ship sunk in WWII seen

SYDNEY (AFP) – The wreck of the first US ship sunk during World War II has been revealed in detail for the first time on the seabed off southeastern Australia, researchers said Wednesday.

Images of the merchant vessel City of Rayville, which was sunk in 1940 by a German mine, were taken by state-of-the-art sonar technology and remotely operated vehicles, Deakin University scientists said.

"It was very exciting to see the City of Rayville for the first time," said lead researcher Daniel Ierodiaconou.

The wreck could possibly still contain the remains of the first US sailor to die in the war -- more than a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour brought the US into the conflict, Ierodiaconou told AFP.

The City of Rayville was en route to Melbourne when it struck a mine in a newly-laid German minefield in the Bass Strait on November, 8 1940, going down in 70 metres (230 feet) of water off Cape Otway.

Just 24 hours earlier, the British steamer SS Cambridge was sunk after hitting a mine off the nearby Wilsons Promontory in Victoria state.

"The approximate location (of the City of Rayville) has been fairly well known for quite some time," Ierodiaconou told AFP.

But for the first time, the team used sonar technology to develop detailed three-dimensional models of the wreck and collected video using a remotely operated vehicle, he said.

All 38 crew managed to make it into lifeboats and were rescued but one went back to gather his personal belongings and went down with the ship, meaning that his remains could still be in the wreck, Ierodiaconou said.

"The wreck is laying upright on its keel, with a slight list to one side," said Cassandra Philippou, a maritime archaeologist for Heritage Victoria.

"A hatch cover near the stern is missing, consistent with reports that covers were blown off the hatches through the force of the explosion."

The wreck, which is listed as a protected heritage site, was uncovered as part of a wider project to map Victoria?s underwater environment.

Robot scientists can think for themselves

LONDON (Reuters) – Watch out scientists -- you may be replaced by a robot.

Two teams of researchers said on Thursday they had created machines that could reason, formulate theories and discover scientific knowledge on their own, marking a major advance in the field of artificial intelligence.

Such robo-scientists could be put to work unraveling complex biological systems, designing new drugs, modeling the world's climate or understanding the cosmos.

For the moment, though, they are performing more humble tasks.

At Aberystwyth University in Wales, Ross King and colleagues have created a robot called Adam that can not only carry out experiments on yeast metabolism but also reason about the results and plan the next experiment.

It is the world's first example of a machine that has made an independent scientific discovery -- in this case, new facts about the genetic make-up of baker's yeast.

"On its own it can think of hypotheses and then do the experiments, and we've checked that it's got the results correct," King said in an interview.

"People have been working on this since the 1960s. When we first sent robots to Mars, they really dreamt of the robots doing their own experiments on Mars. After 40 or 50 years, we've now got the capability to do that."

Their next robot, Eve, will have much more brain power and will be put to work searching for new medicines.

King hopes the application of intelligent robotic thinking to the process of sifting tens of thousands of compounds for potential new drugs will be particularly valuable in the hunt for treatments for neglected tropical diseases like malaria.

King published his findings in the journal Science, alongside a second paper from Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt of Cornell University in New York, who have developed a computer program capable of working out the fundamental physical laws behind a swinging double pendulum.

Just by crunching the numbers -- and without any prior instruction in physics -- the Cornell machine was able to decipher Isaac Newton's laws of motion and other properties.

Lipson does not think robots will make scientists obsolete any day soon, but believes they could take over much of the routine work in research laboratories.

"One of the biggest problems in science today is finding the underlying principles in areas where there are lots and lots of data," he told reporters in a conference call. "This can help in accelerating the rate at which we can discover scientific principles behind the data."

"Osbournes: Reloaded" not firing on any cylinders

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NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – That's it: Network programmers have officially run out of ideas. How else to explain "Osbournes: Reloaded," a half-hour from Fox that's part video game, part swearathon and part, um, "variety" show?

God love 'em, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne et al. were a vibrant television commodity on MTV from 2002-05 with their reality show "The Osbournes." Back then, watching the Prince of Darkness try to manage his family, neighbors and dogs while stealing a few minutes to watch the History Channel was alternately touching and hilarious.

But in the past four years, Sharon has morphed into a reality show host/judge, Ozzy's been on the road, and the kids have been in the tabloids. The "reloading" of the Osbournes comes about three years past their relevancy.

To be fair, they were entertaining once, so lightning could strike twice. Except the Osbournes (Sharon, Ozzy and children Kelly and Jack) aren't funny -- at least not intentionally so.

The family variety show comes with a built-in dork factor (the Mandrell sisters, Donny and Marie, the Brady Bunch) which creates a speed bump for any talent. The f-ing foursome (yes, they still all swear like, well, like rock stars) might have overcome such an obstacle if their segments -- onstage and pretaped -- had shown an iota of wit or irony.

Instead, we get them tricking a young man into kissing someone his grandmother's age; Ozzy and Kelly wreaking havoc and tossing milkshakes as drive-in restaurant workers; and Sharon forcing a wedding on an (allegedly) unsuspecting guy in the audience, who's been told he's won "a life-changing moment."

Even with the occasional ad lib from Jack, it's all planned outrageousness, a concept that's pretentious on the surface and, after about five minutes, boring. After 30 minutes, one thing is clear: The writers -- and the Osbournes -- have only reloaded their chambers with blanks.

Wii Hack Makes Light Work of Mowing the Grass

When Mary Poppins talked about turning chores into games it's a good bet she didn't expect Casmobot.

Researchers at the University of Southern Denmark have modified a Wii remote control so that it can control an industrial lawn mower.

"The Casmobot project is about making grass cutting more efficient," said Kjeld Jensen, a robotics researcher at the University of Southern Denmark who developed the system.

It uses a standard Wii remote control that communicates via Bluetooth to a computer and robotics module built into the mower. Actions of the mower are matched to tilt actions of the remote. For example, if you tilt the remote down the mower moves forwards, tilt is up and it moves backwards and so on.

The Wii-mote can be used to control the mower manually or in computer-assisted mode, where the mower is guided around the edge of the area to be cut and then left to finish the job automatically.

The Wii and its motion sensitive remote controller, dubbed the "Wii-mote," have won the hearts of millions of consumers since they first went on sale in 2007 -- and also stimulated the minds of many developers. They've hacked the remote so it can be used to control other things and there are several Web sites where details of such projects are posted.

On Hackawii.com hacks include a Web cam remote control, Wii-controlled coil gun, a self-balancing "SegWii" and a Wii-mote used as a spirit level. While on the Wii Hacks blog visitors can see Google Earth controlled with the remote and a head-tracking virtual reality system using the Wii-mote.

There's no word from the university on whether the Wii-controlled mower might be turned into a commercial product, but it's apparently had a good reception so far.

"We have been introducing this to the professional workers at the municipalities and the minute they got this Wii-mote in their hands and started cutting grass they were smiling and laughing all the time so I guess I'm not the only one that thinks this is a very good idea," said Jensen.

Nintendo rolls out DSi to U.S. on Sunday

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -

Nintendo is rolling out the next generation of its popular handheld gaming console in the United States on Sunday, pitching the product as more of an all-purpose social and entertainment device.

Aside from game-playing functions, the dual-screen DSi features two cameras, a microphone and a host of tools that will allow users to create content and share with others.

The DSi will retail for $170 apiece and began selling in Europe on Friday. The third generation in the DS franchise, the DSi was launched in Japan last November and has so far sold 2 million units.

"This thing is to the digital camera what the iPod was to the MP3 player," said Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. "You take the same form factor and you just add something to it and suddenly you're going to have a lot of people carrying it."

Nintendo's second-generation DS handheld, the DS Lite, will continue to sell for $130. Nintendo has shipped more than 100 million DS units overall since the franchise launched in late 2004.

Cammie Dunaway, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo America, said the DSi seeks to make the traditional gaming experience more personalized.

"How do you get a Nintendo game device in every briefcase and backpack and pocketbook? We realized that what you need to make that happen is a device that is highly customizable... Natural tools for customization are things like photos," she said.

Pachter said he expects the device to appeal to teens and tweens.

"They're going to turn a one DS household into a two DS household. You will hand it down to your little brother when you get your DSi."

Nintendo's DS line competes directly with Sony's PSP handheld device and increasingly faces competition from Apple's iPhone, which is emerging as a serious video game platform, and iPod touch devices.

The PSP has sold more than 50 million units, while the iPhone and iPod Touch have combined to sell more than 30 million.

Nintendo is also launching a new online store where DSi users can download new games and applications via the device's WiFi connection. The store will also offer a DSi Internet browser for download, based on the Opera browser.

Nintendo has been credited with helping expand the traditional demographic profile of the gaming industry. The company's Wii console has been a hit with consumers, attracting adults and females who are more interested in casual and social games.

The Wii, Nintendo's console platform, has sold more than 50 million units worldwide since its release in 2006.

N. Korea launches rocket, defying world pressure

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea defiantly carried out a provocative rocket launch Sunday that the U.S., Japan and other nations suspect was a cover for a test of its long-range missile technology.

Liftoff took place at 11:30 a.m. (0230GMT) Sunday from the coastal Musudan-ri launch pad in northeastern North Korea, the South Korean and U.S. governments said. The multistage rocket hurtled toward the Pacific, reaching Japanese airspace within seven minutes, but no debris appeared to hit its territory, officials in Tokyo said.

The U.N. Security Council approved an emergency session for Sunday afternoon in New York, following a request from Japan that came minutes after the launch.

The South Koreans called it "reckless," the Americans "provocative," and Japan said it strongly protested the launch.

The launch was a bold act of defiance against President Barack Obama, Japanese leader Taro Aso, Hu Jintao of China and others who pressed Pyongyang in the days leading up to liftoff to call off a launch they said would threaten peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

South Korea's presidential Blue House said the launch poses a "serious threat" to stability on the Korean peninsula and that it would respond to the provocation "sternly and resolutely." President Lee Myung-bak ordered the military to remain on alert, the Blue House said.

"We cannot contain our disappointment and regret over North Korea's reckless act," presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan told reporters Sunday. He said the launch of the long-range rocket "poses a serious threat to security on the Korean peninsula and the world."

North Korea claims its aim is to send an experimental communications satellite into orbit in a peaceful bid to develop its space program.

The U.S., South Korea, Japan and others suspect the launch is a guise for testing the regime's long-range missile technology — one step toward eventually mounting a nuclear weapon on a missile capable of reaching Alaska and beyond.

They contend the launch violates a 2006 resolution barring the regime from ballistic missile activity.

Obama said Friday the launch would be a "provocative" move with consequences. State Department spokesman Fred Lash said late Saturday in Washington that the U.S. will "take appropriate steps to let North Korea know that it cannot threaten the safety and security of other countries with impunity."

He called the launch a clear violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, adopted five days after North Korea carried out a nuclear weapons test in 2006.

Japan's U.N. mission has asked for a meeting of the 15-nation council Sunday, spokesman Yutaka Arima said. Mexico's mission to the United Nations set the meeting for 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), spokesman Marco Morales said. Mexico holds the 15-nation council's presidency this month.

On new cell phones, QWERTY eases out 1-2-3

LAS VEGAS -Goodbye, numeric cell phone keypads. You're going the way of the rotary dial. Touch screens and QWERTY keyboards will take over from here, thank you.

At North America's largest cell phone trade show, running this week in Las Vegas, there were few new phones for the U.S. market that had a numerical keypad instead of an alphabetic keyboard. Touch screens also were out in force.

These changes are a recognition of the popularity of text messaging and wireless Internet use. Industry organization CTIA Wireless, which hosts the show, said U.S. subscribers sent 1 trillion text messages last year, three times the 2007 volume. Meanwhile, the same people used 2.2 trillion minutes of voice calls, an increase of less than 5 percent.

This shift in how people use their mobile devices has overturned cell phone design. According to NPD Group, 31 percent of phones sold in U.S. stores in the fourth quarter of 2008 had full-alphabet keyboards, up from 5 percent two years earlier.

AT&T Inc., the second-largest wireless carrier after Verizon Wireless, introduced six phones this week, all of which had either a touch screen, a typewriter-style keyboard, or both. At the booth of Samsung Electronics Co., the largest seller of phones in the U.S., there were no new keypad phones.

Motorola Inc., the largest domestic maker of phones, was showing off one low-end handset with a keypad. It went on sale through AT&T two weeks ago. But Motorola's big news was a model called the Evoke, which has a touch screen. It's designed for the U.S. market, though it doesn't have a carrier distribution agreement yet.

LG Electronics Inc. displayed a new handset, the GD900, that seemed to both emphasize a numeric keypad and make it vanish. A pad slides out from the GD900's body, but it's made of transparent plastic, so you can see right through it. You don't need to use keypad at all, since the screen is touch-sensitive. Other new LG phones were also dominated by touch screens.

Even at the low end of the market, keyboards for text messaging are becoming common and affordable. AT&T expects to sell two of the keyboard-equipped phones it introduced, the Samsung Magnet and LG Neon, for about $20 to $30.

Conficker turns out to be ‘dud’

Despite some predictions of an Internet meltdown and digital apocalypse, the Conficker computer worm failed to wreak havoc on Wednesday, with at least one security expert labeling it “a dud.”

The worm, also known as Downadup, was expected to change how it checked in with its creators, increasing the number of random Internet domains with which it communicates. Security researchers worried there would be new instructions waiting for the worm when it made this change on Wednesday, which was also April Fools’ Day.

But apparently, no one answered when Conficker phoned home.

“As predicted, Conficker has been a dud so far,” said security researcher Johannes Ullrich in a podcast posted at the SANS Internet Storm Center (http://isc.sans.org), which tracks online threats. “We are now well beyond midnight Greenwich GMT, and no evidence of any ill effects so far.”

Most security experts had expected a non-event. But the fact that no one knew what instructions might be awaiting Conficker gave rise to speculative doomsday scenarios that rivaled those associated with the Y2K bug at the turn of the century.

Conficker is a worm that affects a flaw in Windows-based PCs. Microsoft issued an emergency patch in October for the flaw, and those users who installed the patch don’t have much to worry about. By default, Windows updates such patches automatically, but some people and businesses turn off auto-updating and are vulnerable.

Conficker infections are prevalent in Asia, where many copies of Windows are pirated and never updated. But large businesses and organizations that are slow to issue patches may also be vulnerable.

“The only people that have networks and who also don’t patch are government, corporates and education users,” Roger Thompson, chief research officer at antivirus software developer AVG, wrote on his blog at http://thompson.blog.avg.com. “Fortunately, they’re also the folk that have staff with expertise that they can call on to fight back. The worm probably grabbed millions of users right out of the box in December 2008, but any gov/ corp/ edu user who is still infected after five months, deserves it.”

dwight.silverman@chron.com;

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog

Conficker Worm Reaches Go Time, To No Effect

UNDATED --

The malicious Conficker Internet worm is trying to reach its creators more aggressively today. But nothing noticeable has happened.

The worm's programming included a change in tactics on April 1. Infected computers were told to step up their attempts to "phone home" for commands. But chief research officer Mikko Hypponen at antivirus company F-Secure says that's the only sign of life from the bug.

The worm can take control of unsuspecting PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system. But its creators likely want to use their vast "botnet" to send spam or perform other cybercrimes, and not to bring down the Internet.

Security companies monitoring the worm have been largely successful at blocking infected machines from communicating with whoever programmed it.

Conficker Worm Reaches Go Time, To No Effect

SAN FRANCISCO — The Conficker Internet worm's feared April Fools' Day throwdown for control of millions of infected PCs stirred lots of panic but came and went with a whimper.

Security experts say some Conficker-infected computers _ those poisoned with the latest version of the worm _ started "phoning home" for instructions more aggressively Wednesday, trying 50,000 Internet addresses instead of 250. However, security companies monitoring the worm remained successful at blocking the communications.

"We didn't see anything that wasn't expected," said Paul Ferguson, a security researcher at antivirus software maker Trend Micro Inc. "I'm glad April 1 happened to be a nonevent. People got a little too caught up in the hype on that. (The infected computers) didn't go into attack mode, planes didn't fall out of the sky or anything like that."

The worm can take control of unsuspecting PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system. Tied together into a "botnet," these PCs can be directed to send spam, carry out identity-theft scams and bring down Web sites by flooding them with traffic.

That's why the April 1 change in Conficker's programming was a small twist _ and not the end of the story. The network of Conficker-infected machines could still spring to life and be used for nefarious deeds.

One scary element is that Conficker's authors have given the infected PCs peer-to-peer abilities, which allows them to update each other and share malicious commands through encrypted channels. That ability means the computers don't have to contact a Web site at all, and the communications are protected.

And the criminals behind Conficker are likely taking their time.

"The people who are pulling the strings on this are very slow and determined and measured in making modifications to this botnet," Ferguson said. "Basically, they're building a layer of survivability."

Conficker worm reaches go time, to no effect

SAN FRANCISCO -

The Conficker Internet worm's feared April Fools' Day throwdown for control of millions of infected PCs stirred lots of panic but came and went with a whimper.

Security experts say some Conficker-infected computers — those poisoned with the latest version of the worm — started "phoning home" for instructions more aggressively Wednesday, trying 50,000 Internet addresses instead of 250. However, security companies monitoring the worm remained successful at blocking the communications.

"We didn't see anything that wasn't expected," said Paul Ferguson, a security researcher at antivirus software maker Trend Micro Inc. "I'm glad April 1 happened to be a nonevent. People got a little too caught up in the hype on that. (The infected computers) didn't go into attack mode, planes didn't fall out of the sky or anything like that."

The worm can take control of unsuspecting PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system. Tied together into a "botnet," these PCs can be directed to send spam, carry out identity-theft scams and bring down Web sites by flooding them with traffic.

That's why the April 1 change in Conficker's programming was a small twist — and not the end of the story. The network of Conficker-infected machines could still spring to life and be used for nefarious deeds.

One scary element is that Conficker's authors have given the infected PCs peer-to-peer abilities, which allows them to update each other and share malicious commands through encrypted channels. That ability means the computers don't have to contact a Web site at all, and the communications are protected.

And the criminals behind Conficker are likely taking their time.

"The people who are pulling the strings on this are very slow and determined and measured in making modifications to this botnet," Ferguson said. "Basically, they're building a layer of survivability."

Conficker spreads without human involvement, moving from PC to PC by exploiting a security hole in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. In October, Microsoft issued a software update, called a "patch," to protect PCs from the vulnerability, but not everyone applied the patch.

In one telltale sign of an infected machine, Conficker blocks Microsoft's site as well as those of most antivirus companies. Computer owners can work around that obstacle by having someone else e-mail them a Conficker removal tool.

Security researchers don't have a firm estimate of the number of Conficker-infected machines. There appear to be at least 3 million infected PCs, and possibly as many as 12 million, but tallies vary because some machines may have been counted multiple times, and the number fluctuates as PCs are scrubbed clean of the infection while other machines are compromised.