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Municipal broadband networks could help boost the availability of high-speed Internet access and even help to ensure Net neutrality in the U.S., said Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google.

Cerf, known as one of the fathers of the Internet for his role in creating its basic architecture, spoke at a lunch in Seattle, a city that is investigating the possibility of building its own broadband network. Seattle would follow its southern neighbor Tacoma, which has been operating its own fiber network for several years.

Cerf disputed arguments that operators sometimes give for why they should be able to limit or block bandwidth-hungry applications on their networks, and suggested that since they don't have technology facts to back up their arguments, people should be able to build their own networks to meet their needs.

“Many people raise the issue that video use on the Net is somehow going to drive it into congestion,” he said. While in certain scenarios that could be true, the reality is that increasing the throughput solves the problem, he said.

A person could transfer an hour's worth of video over a gigabit channel in about 16 seconds, he said. That means that rather than streaming video, which is indeed taxing on the Internet, users would download it instead. “It's much easier on the network, and people have more than enough storage to download,” he said.

Some operators also talk about the capacity of the Internet backbone itself. “As for running out of capacity, we've barely touched the surface of the fiber capacity. We are far from having exhausted this capacity,” he said.

Operators may simply not want to invest in their networks to bring higher bandwidth to users, he said. “That comes back to the municipal argument. Citizens that want the capacity should be able to decide among themselves to put the resources in place to get that kind of capacity,” he said.

Some operators contend that municipal networks create competition between the government and private companies. “That's nonsense,” Cerf said. Governments would contract with the private sector to build the network and maybe even operate it, he said, so the two would be partners. In Tacoma the city maintains the network, but other companies serve as ISPs (Internet service providers), selling access to end-users.

Cerf's comments come as a new bill was introduced by lawmakers in the U.S. this week that would subject broadband providers to antitrust violations if they block or slow Internet traffic. Some lawmakers and operators argue that such legislation is unnecessary and would slow investment in broadband networks. The bill follows discussions across the industry and by government leaders around practices at Comcast, which says it has slowed some customer access to the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol during times of network congestion.

Cerf has been a vocal opponent of operators that limit access to certain applications. “I still think it's not a bad idea to have legislation that says don't discriminate unfairly simply because you happen to have control over this shared resource,” he said on Friday.

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. has agreed to settle a pair of class-action lawsuits in Canada alleging it misled customers about the staying power of their iPods, the latest courtroom truce over the dwindling battery life of early generations of the device.

According to a court document, the Cupertino-based company is offering credits for its online store of about $44.75 to people who live in Canada and bought certain iPods there on or before June 24, 2004.

To be eligible, the battery life of their iPods — while continuously playing music — needs to have dropped to five hours or less for the first and second generation of the device and four hours or less for the third generation.

The lead plaintiffs in the lawsuits — iPod owners Ines Lenzi and Bradley Waddell — claimed Apple misrepresented iPods’ battery life by claiming they were capable of eight to 10 hours of continual music playback. After recharging, however, the iPods’ battery life began declining.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the notice of the settlement agreement Apple posted on its Web site.

Motions to approve the settlement are scheduled for June 11 in Quebec Superior Court and June 20 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the two courts where the lawsuits were filed.

In 2005, the company settled a separate class-action lawsuit in the U.S. over similar claims about iPod battery life. In that case, Apple agreed to give some iPod owners $50 in store credit or $25 in cash if the battery life in their early-generation iPods dropped below certain levels.

Security researchers have developed a new type of malicious rootkit software that hides itself in an obscure part of a computer's microprocessor, hidden from current antivirus products.

Called a System Management Mode (SMM) rootkit, the software runs in a protected part of a computer's memory that can be locked and rendered invisible to the operating system, but which can give attackers a picture of what's happening in a computer's memory.

The SMM rootkit comes with keylogging and communications software and could be used to steal sensitive information from a victim's computer. It was built by Shawn Embleton and Sherri Sparks, who run an Oviedo, Florida, security company called Clear Hat Consulting.

The proof-of-concept software will be demonstrated publicly for the first time at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this August.

The rootkits used by cyber crooks today are sneaky programs designed to cover up their tracks while they run in order to avoid detection. Rootkits hit the mainstream in late 2005 when Sony BMG Music used rootkit techniques to hide its copy protection software. The music company was ultimately forced to recall millions of CDs amid the ensuing scandal.

In recent years, however, researchers have been looking at ways to run rootkits outside of the operating system, where they are much harder to detect. For example, two years ago researcher Joanna Rutkowska introduced a rootkit called Blue Pill, which used AMD's chip-level virtualization technology to hide itself. She said the technology could eventually be used to create “100 percent undetectable malware.”

“Rootkits are going more and more toward the hardware,” said Sparks, who wrote another rootkit three years ago called Shadow Walker. “The deeper into the system you go, the more power you have and the harder it is to detect you.”

Blue Pill took advantage of new virtualization technologies that are now being added to microprocessors, but the SMM rootkit uses a feature that has been around for much longer and can be found in many more machines. SMM dates back to Intel's 386 processors, where it was added as a way to help hardware vendors fix bugs in their products using software. The technology is also used to help manage the computer's power management, taking it into sleep mode, for example.

In many ways, an SMM rootkit, running in a locked part of memory, would be more difficult to detect than Blue Pill, said John Heasman, director of research with NGS Software, a security consulting firm. “An SMM rootkit has major ramifications for things like [antivirus software products],” he said. “They will be blind to it.”

Researchers have suspected for several years that malicious software could be written to run in SMM. In 2006, researcher Loic Duflot demonstrated how SMM malware would work. “Duflot wrote a small SMM handler that compromised the security model of the OS,” Embleton said. “We took the idea further by writing a more complex SMM handler that incorporated rootkit-like techniques.”

In addition to a debugger, Sparks and Embleton had to write driver code in hard-to-use assembly language to make their rootkit work. “Debugging it was the hardest thing,” Sparks said.

Being divorced from the operating system makes the SMM rootkit stealthy, but it also means that hackers have to write this driver code expressly for the system they are attacking.

“I don't see it as a widespread threat, because it's very hardware-dependent,” Sparks said. “You would see this in a targeted attack.”

But will it be 100 percent undetectable? Sparks says no. “I'm not saying it's undetectable, but I do think it would be difficult to detect.” She and Embleton will talk more about detection techniques during their Black Hat session, she said.

Brand new rootkits don't come along every day, Heasman said. “It will be one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting, at Black Hat this year,” he said.

SAN FRANCISCO - It’s a new kind of virus for Sun Microsystems Inc.

At the company’s JavaOne conference this week in San Francisco, more than 50 people came down with what officials believe is norovirus, a type of medical virus easily spread by touching dirty surfaces.

The city’s Department of Public Health started receiving reports on Wednesday and on Thursday and Friday warned people who believed they had been infected to stay home.

Shawn Dainas, a spokesman for Santa Clara-based Sun Microsystems, which makes servers and software and is used to protecting against viruses of the digital variety, said the company also alerted attendees about the illness by e-mail. The conference was not canceled.

Norovirus causes nausea, vomiting and diarrhea and lasts 24 to 48 hours.

About 50 to 60 people came down with symptoms; no one was hospitalized, said Jim Soos, the health department’s assistant director of public policy and planning.

Soos said workers at the Moscone Center, where the weeklong conference was being held, were disinfecting surfaces including food preparation tables, escalator handrails, desks and bathrooms to reduce the risk of the virus spreading further. It was unclear where the virus started.

“We’re saying that healthy people should be careful, wash their hands a lot, kind of the standard public health practices,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Moscone Center did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The conference was winding down Friday afternoon.

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. on Friday said it has appealed a $1.39 billion fine imposed in February by the European Commission for the company’s failure to comply with a 2004 antitrust order.

Spokesman Jack Evans said Microsoft filed an application with the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg to annul the Commission’s decision.

“We are filing this appeal in a constructive effort to seek clarity from the court,” Evans said in an e-mailed statement. He declined to elaborate.

The fine had marked the tentative end to a long-running fight between the European Union and Microsoft, triggered by a 1998 complaint by Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun alleged Microsoft was refusing to supply all the information servers need to work with its market-dominating Windows operating system.

Microsoft later made the information available to rivals, but the EU said it charged “unreasonable prices” until last October. European antitrust regulators have also required the Redmond-based company to sell a version of Windows without media player software.

In all, the company has been fined just under $2.63 billion by European regulators over the years.

Microsoft’s tussles with the EU were renewed when regulators launched new probes in January. The European Commission is examining whether Microsoft illegally gives away its Internet Explorer browser for free with Windows, and whether the software maker withheld information from companies that wanted to make products compatible with its software, including Office word processing and spreadsheet tools and some server products.

Since then, Microsoft has pledged to make those protocols freely available for noncommercial uses and available at low royalty rates for commercial software developers.

PALO ALTO, Calif. - The popular online social hangout Facebook says it’s setting up a new system that will allow its 70 million users to take their personal profiles with them as they surf other Web sites.

Users will be able to automatically copy pictures, personal information and other customized applications established on Facebook to other Web sites without extra effort once the changes announced Friday take effect.

The privacy settings attached to a person’s Facebook profile will remain in effect at external Web sites.

Palo Alto-based Facebook unveiled its intention to extend its reach into other Web sites the day after its larger rival, MySpace, laid out a similar plan.

Both social networks say it will be several more weeks before their users’ data becomes portable.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Did U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain vote for President George W. Bush in 2000?

Liberal Internet blogger Arianna Huffington says McCain told her he did not. But the Arizona senator says he did vote for Bush, a fellow Republican, in 2000 and campaigned for him all over the country after his own attempt to win the party's nomination failed.

The claims and counterclaims may provide an entertaining distraction from the day-to-day battle for votes for this November's presidential election, when McCain will face one of two Democratic contenders, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

But Huffington said in an interview the dust-up over the item she posted on her Web site earlier this week has broader meaning than whether or not McCain voted for his rival in the 2000 race for the Republican nomination.

“It's John McCain's relationship with the truth that's at stake here. It's not John McCain's relationship with me,” Huffington said.

She said on The Huffington Post — www.huffingtonpost.com — this week that McCain told her at a dinner party shortly after the 2000 election that he did not vote for Bush.

A New York Times story about the spat noted other guests at the party said they also heard McCain's comments.

McCain says it never happened and he was loyal to Bush.

“I voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004,” he said in an interview with Fox News' “O'Reilly Factor” that aired on Thursday night.

“And not only that, far more important than a vote, I campaigned everywhere in America for him,” McCain said. “I enjoyed it. I campaigned with him. I did everything I could to get him elected and re-elected president.”

(Reporting by Donna Smith; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

WASHINGTON - An online advertising partnership between Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. is facing opposition from consumer and civic groups that didn’t wait for an official deal announcement to voice their discontent.

Top Google executives said Thursday they are interested in a partnership with their closest rival but didn’t indicate how close they were to an agreement.

A coalition of 16 civil rights and rural advocacy groups, including the Black Leadership Forum and the League of Rural Voters, on Friday urged federal regulators to investigate the potential combination.

The Black Leadership Forum is an umbrella group of 36 civil rights organizations, including the NAACP and the National Urban League.

The groups argued in a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, that the deal would give Google almost 90 percent of the search advertising market and strengthen its influence over Internet users’ access to information.

Separately, the Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer advocacy group, said it will push U.S. regulators to block any deal and is already urging European consumer groups to raise concerns with European Union officials. The EU generally takes a tougher approach on antitrust, fining Microsoft Corp. $1.3 billion for anticompetitive conduct earlier this year.

“You can’t allow Google to operate a portion of its leading competitor out of its back pocket,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of CDD.

While previous attempts to block deals by both the CDD and civil rights organizations have proved unsuccessful, their opposition won’t be the only hurdle to a Google-Yahoo partnership.

The Justice Department has already made inquiries about an ad partnership test the two had for two weeks last month. And, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., who chairs a subcommittee overseeing antitrust issues, said last month he would closely scrutinize any permanent deal.

Spokespeople from Yahoo and Google declined to comment on the groups’ letter. But Google executives said Thursday they would seek to address regulators’ objections.

“If there were a deal (with Yahoo), we would anticipate structuring the deal to address the antitrust concerns that have been widely discussed,” said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Although Schmidt wouldn’t detail such a structure, analysts have speculated that it would operate the partnership as an auction-style system that would allow other rivals, including Microsoft, to show ads on Yahoo.

The two companies first began discussing a partnership as an alternative to Microsoft’s efforts to purchase Yahoo, which fell apart last weekend.

The civil rights groups noted in their letter that Google has about 70 percent of the search advertising market, and Yahoo 20 percent.

Search engines are “the primary portal into the Internet” and direct “hundreds of millions of online users to … the most relevant information, news, entertainment, education and e-commerce,” the groups wrote.

“No single gatekeeper should have unchecked control over critical segments of the market,” the letter said, which was also signed by the National Black Chamber of Commerce and several Latino groups.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O) said on Friday it was appealing against a record 899 million euro ($1.39 billion) fine imposed by the European Commission for using high prices to discourage software competition.

“Microsoft today filed to the (EU) Court of First Instance an application to annul the European Commission decision of February 27,” the U.S. software giant said in a statement.

“We are filing this appeal in a constructive effort to seek clarity from the court,” it said.

The European Union's executive Commission, which has been locked in a long-running battle over fair-competition issues with Microsoft, said in response that it was confident the fine was “legally sound.”

The Commission had said it was imposing the fine because the U.S. software group had defied a 2004 order from Brussels to provide information to competitors on reasonable terms.

Microsoft has been fined a total of 1.68 billion euros by the EU for abusing its 95 percent dominance of PC operating systems through its Windows operating system.

The 899 million euro fine was the biggest ever imposed on a company by the EU executive.

The Commission had initially fined Microsoft 497 million euros in March 2004 for withholding interoperability information for “work group server” software and for deliberately damaging rivals by tying its Windows Media Player to its Windows system.

Microsoft unsuccessfully appealed against that penalty and was also later fined 280.5 million euros by the Commission for non-compliance.

The latest fine picked up from where the 280.5 million euro penalty left off, covering the period from June 21, 2006 until October 21, 2007.

(Reporting by David Lawsky, writing by Darren Ennis, editing by

Dale Hudson)

NEW YORK - Rapper Foxy Brown has pleaded guilty to menacing a neighbor with her cell phone last year. She avoided jail based on time already served.

Brown and neighbor Arlene Raymond got into a fight last July over Brown blasting her car stereo outside their Brooklyn apartment building.

As part of the plea deal, the 28-year-old rapper wrote a letter apologizing to Raymond. Brown presented the letter to Justice John Walsh in a Brooklyn court on Thursday.

The judge extended Raymond’s order of protection.

Brown, whose real name is Inga Marchand, spent seven months in jail for a Manhattan case involving a fight she had with manicurists in a nail salon. She was released last month.