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This page displays an up-to-date listing of changes to our
customer support web. We'll also place notices here regarding product updates,
scheduled releases, or problems and solutions that may affect all customers.
Latest News
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VIA sales down, SiS sales up
VIA Technologies posted sales of
$66.36m in March (NT$2.32bn), 0.87 per cent up on February, but
48.37 per cent down on the same period last year, when the
Taiwanese core logic designer posted revenues of $128,545m.
SiS, its chipset rival, by contrast saw March sales rise 16 per
cent on February, posting revenues of NT$ 1.286bn for the month.
SiS sales for the quarter are 50 per cent up on Q1, 2001, while
VIA's sales are down 29 per cent year-on-year, according to
Digitimes.
VIA has a bigger product portfolio than SiS and remains twice its
size in turnover terms, but it lacks that crucial product licence
from Intel to sell chipsets for the P4. SiS, an official licensee,
is the major beneficiary of the legal spat between Intel and VIA,
mopping up business that would otherwise naturally go VIA's way.
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Windows Messenger 'Trojan
update'
This is too cute. You can wipe
Windows Messenger from XP with a simple hack, and yet MS will
defy you with a 'Critical Update'. That's how desperate they
are to force this little Trojan on you.
Following a tip from a Messenger-averse reader whose uninstall
got thwarted, I looked into it, starting with a clean install
of Win-XP. Messenger was, of course, lurking in the background
and consuming RAM though I have no use for it. And of course
MS doesn't allow you to uninstall it.
But that doesn't make it impossible. NTcompatible.com has a
very
simple hack which will allow you to use the Windows
add/remove feature in Control Panel to get rid of the
offending progie.
Use a text editor to open C:\WINDOWS\inf\sysoc.inf, and change
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7 to
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,7
That's it. Messenger will now appear in the add/remove
application under Windows Components where you can uninstall
it.
Enjoy the fact that this irritating memory-resident progie is
no longer consuming RAM and haranguing you to obtain an MS
Passport every time you reboot.
But that's not the end of it.
No, there's a 'Critical' item which MS foists on you during
Windows Update. It's called the 'Windows Messenger 4.6
Connectivity Update', and MS "strongly recommends that you
download the update even if you don't use Windows Messenger."
It's that last bit, acknowledging the fact that you might not
use Messenger, which makes it seem benign. Surely, this fix
has more to do with some idiosyncrasy in 'Windows
connectivity' than Messenger itself. Right?
And when we consult the related MS
'knowledge base' article, we're told that "to improve
connectivity and system performance, even if you do not use
Windows Messenger, Microsoft recommends that you install this
update."
Man, they desperately want you to install this fix.
And the result? Do you get 'better connectivity and system
performance?' Of course not. The only result is that Messenger
is now back on your machine, consuming RAM even when you have
no use for it, and haranguing you to obtain an MS Passport.
The only thing this Critical Update does is integrate
Messenger into Outlook Express. And by default it runs on
startup, and runs in the background. So now you have to go to
Outlook Express/Tools/Windows Messenger/Options/Preferences,
and turn it off.
Assuming, of course, that you already uninstalled it according
to the instructions above. Otherwise it will run no matter
what you do.
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Doubleclick squares privacy
suit
Doubleclick, the world's biggest
online ad serving company, is coughing up $1.8m in legal fees
and costs to settle all privacy class actions against the
company.
At the same time it "commits to a series of industry-leading
privacy protections for online consumers". This includes
limiting the life of cookies to five years (there wasn't a
limit before) and stronger opt-in provisions.
Yahoo! meanwhile yesterday earned the wrath of privacy
campaigners with its new privacy and email policies, which see
the Internet giant move from opt-in to opt-out for email
advertising.
This new policy simply allows Yahoo! to send customers more
spam, But Catlett, president of Junkbusters,
told ComputerWorld. We agree, but Yahoo! has a long way to
fall, before it becomes as unpopular on this score as did
Doubleclick.
The ad server company fell foul of privacy campaigners in
January 2000, shortly after it bought an offline database
business. The company then set to work on seeing how it could
merge personally identifiable information culled from this
source with its own online stats.
Doubleclick quickly backtracked, following a blizzard of
protest. But by then the damage was done, with privacy suits
galore, and the company's name becoming synomymous with
privacy abuse in the eyes of millions.
As it happens, the company was better than many, and no worse
than most in its late 90s laisser-faire attitude towards
personal data. But mud sticks. At some point Doubleclick may
consider changing its name; its main ad server product is
called DART, and this as good a candidate as any for a
corporate makeover.
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