It looks like Stardock’s strategy of ignoring game pirates has paid off, as the publisher has announced that it has sold around 500,000 units of Sins of a Solar Empire. Broken down, this number includes 400,000 via retail, with the rest being sold through digital distribution.

Part of the reason for the games success in the supposedly struggling PC market is its low system requirements, explains Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. “Sins of a Solar Empire was explicitly designed to work on a wide variety of machines,” Wardell told Gamasutra. “It will run on a four-year-old video card, and it looks great.”

“You make those kinds of design decisions (to lower systems specs), and you greatly increase the number of people who can play your game,” he added. “You lose out on some piddly super-mega effect, but you get those units. The results come in sales.”

It looks like Sins is becoming an example of what it takes for a hardcore PC title to be successful in today’s market. Low system requirements, no annoying DRM, and multiple venues of distribution are all vital to generate the kinds of sales that the game has been enjoying.

• Elise’s diary :: ::

This rule does not provide a clear definition of birth control or abortion - allowing the health care worker to utilize their own personal definition each time, so if you go to your doctor attempting to get birth control pills, you may find yourself denied that prescription because the doctor defines birth control pills as an abortifacient.

Leavitt says you shouldn’t concern yourself too much though:

But Leavitt said the regulation was intended to protect practitioners who have moral objections to abortion and sterilization, and would not interfere with patients’ ability to get birth control or any legal medical procedure.

“Nothing in the new regulation in any way changes a patient’s right to any legal procedure,” he said, noting that a patient could go to another provider.

It’s that simple - your doctor, nurse, receptionist, volunteer, pharmacist, pharm tech, etc. won’t help you get your birth control? Just go somewhere else!! And I’m SURE you won’t have any trouble finding another provider…or maybe you will - based on the rule.

From WaPo (bold is mine):

The regulation drops the most controversial language in a draft version that would have explicitly defined abortion for the first time in a federal law or regulation as anything that interfered with a fertilized egg after conception. But both supporters and critics said the regulation remains broad enough to protect pharmacists, doctors, nurses and others from providing birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraception and other forms of contraception, and explicitly allows workers to withhold information about such services and refuse to refer patients elsewhere.

Just how far does this regulation go? The same WaPo article gives us a clue:

But critics said they remained alarmed at the scope of the regulation, which could apply to a wide range of health-care workers. For example, the regulation would cover “participating in any activity with a reasonable connection to the objectionable procedure, including referrals, training, and other arrangements for offending procedures.

In other words - if your job is to clean the tools used in an operating room after a patient has had a vasectomy or a tubal ligation, you would be protected from any punishment if you flat out refused (on grounds of conscience) to clean those tools because you disagreed with that patient’s right to get that procedure.

Here’s the language from the actual rule:

Assist in the Performance means to participate in any activity with a reasonable connection to a procedure, health service or health service program, or research activity, so long as the individual involved is a part of the workforce of a Department-funded entity. This includes counseling, referral, training, and other arrangements for the  procedure, health service, or research activity.

Which facilities would be affected by this new rule?

Hospitals, nursing homes, physicians offices, Offices of Other Health Care Practitioners, Outpatient care centers, Medical and Diagnostic Laboratories, Home Health Care Services, Pharmacies, Dental schools, Medical schools, Nursing schools, Occupational Therapy Schools, Optometry Schools, Podiatry Schools, Pharmacy Schools, Public Health Schools, Residency Programs, Health Insurance Carriers and 3rd-Party Administrators, Grant awards, Contractors, and State and Territorial governments.

Daily Kos diarist, Malacandra gave us an idea as to exactly how this kind of law could be interpreted in a widely missed diary last week, Bush Administration to protect Vegetarians of Conscience. Can you imagine going to the butcher to get some sirloin for dinner and being told that you’ll have to go elsewhere because the butcher is a vegetarian? And that their job is protected - even though they refuse to perform that job - because of a law that protects their “freedom of conscience”??

How many women will be put at risk due to this new regulation because they will be unable to get access to birth control - which isn’t solely used for preventing pregnancy. According to the Center for Young Women’s Health, birth control is prescribed for a wide variety of medical problems:

Adolescent girls and young women are frequently prescribed oral contraceptive pills for irregular or absent menstrual periods, menstrual cramps, acne, PMS, endometriosis, and hormone replacement therapy. For example, girls diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) (a hormone imbalance which causes irregular menstrual periods, acne, and excess hair growth) are prescribed oral contraceptives to lower their hormone levels back to normal and regulate menstrual periods. Girls with acne that is not responding to simple measures are often prescribed hormone pills. Girls whose ovaries are not producing enough estrogen (because of anorexia nervosa, excessive exercise, or damage to the ovaries from radiation or chemotherapy) often take oral contraceptive pills to replace estrogen. Girls with endometriosis are also often prescribed oral contraceptives, in cycles or continuously, to suppress the condition.

The CDC gives us a sense as to how many people would be affected by this rule:

In 2002, 98% of women who had ever had sexual intercourse had used at least one method of birth control only 7.4 percent of women who were currently at risk of unintended pregnancy were not using a contraceptive method.2 The most popular method of birth control was the oral contraceptive pill, used by 11.6 million women in the United States, followed by female sterilization, condoms, male sterilization, and other methods of birth control.2

98% of women have used a method of birth control - and this regulation could result in refusal of access to health care for every single one of those women depending on how they access that birth control.

• The ACLU has a letter you can send.
• Planned Parenthood has a letter you can send.
• NARAL has a letter you can send.

I urge you to sign and send every one of them - and pass every one of them along to every single family member and friend you know.

We have 19 days. After 19 days this regulation goes into effect and every single health care worker in the United States will be able to refuse any woman health care based on their own personal moral views.

NARAL provides us with a few specific results this regulation could have:

– This regulation could undermine good state laws that require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape survivors and ensure that pharmacies fill women’s prescriptions for birth control.

– The proposal could allow health-care corporations (hospitals, HMOs, and health plans) to refuse to provide services or make referrals for birth control.

– The proposed regulation could affect Medicaid and the Title X family-planning program. For instance, staff at clinics or health-care plans that contract for Medicaid services could refuse to provide contraception.

If this rule takes effect, I wonder what other health care procedures and medications providers could begin to deny patients because of their own personal conscience…the list could extend well beyond birth control or abortion. Just think of all the different religions out there and the wide variety of procedures people object to based on those religious beliefs.

Please take action today and please ask everyone you know to join you. This rule has the potential to eliminate access to healthcare for women all over the country - and will very likely hit women in less populated areas the hardest. Some women simply don’t have the option to “find another provider” in their area. Some women don’t have the option to “find another pharmacy” in their area. We must do everything in our power to stop this rule before it takes affect.

If you aren’t concerned, you damn well should be.

google-chrome-browser

Maybe Google really does have something here — in just two days, they have leapfrogged Opera in market share, and have their eyes set on bigger fish. I would have thought that Google’s foray into the browser market would have taken a bit more time to develop, but it seems that adoption has been extremely rapid. According to TechCrunch, most users are coming from Internet Explorer, not Firefox.

Microsoft must be worried, or at least they should be — imagine how embarrassing it would be if Google begins to dominate IE in short order, and Microsoft continues to lose search market share regardless how hard they try.

I would be interested in hearing your honest opinion on Chrome — personally, I have made the switch, and I am definitely not looking back. It’s everything I need, and nothing I don’t. It’s so important for newly launched services and applications leave a good taste in the mouths of early adopters — unfortunately, that is usually an extremely hard thing to accomplish.

Until I had a chance to look at some new screen shots on LiveSide.Net of Windows Live MovieMaker — yet another of the Windows Live Wave 3 services going to beta real soon now — I hadn’t really put two and two together.

The lightbulb that just went off: As part of Microsoft’s mission to insure that Windows 7 and Windows Live Wave 3 are joined at the hip, Microsoft is exorcising features that used to be part of Windows from the operating system.

I had a similar, half-formed idea about this earlier this year, when I wrote “Windows 7 might go to pieces.” But now it’s crystalizing further….

Think this through: Microsoft has been hit with lawsuits (and threatened with additional new lawsuits) over its propensity to add formerly unbundled features to Windows. When I heard about its plans to tightly integrate Windows Live and Windows 7, I immediately thought that the company was opening itself up, yet again, to more potential antitrust actions.

But what Microsoft seems to be doing, instead, is continuing to gradually remove certain features — like MovieMaker (which one codename tipster reminded me last week has been going internally by the name “Sundance”), Mail, Photo Gallery, Messenger, etc. — from Windows and making them optional add-on services. (MovieMaker, for example, was cut from Windows Vista around the time of the Longhorn reset.)

Yes, these Wave 3 Windows Live services still have a software component (as required as part of Microsoft’s Software + Service strategy). But to get that component, you are going to have to download the software onto your Windows machine — or at least agree to install it if it’s already preloaded somewhere on a new system.

Could Microsoft have found a way to secure one of the flanks that its opponents have used to keep the company in check in recent years, specifically, the threat of antitrust suits if and when the Redmondians decide to bundle any new bits with the Windows OS? Can you envision other formerly bundled pieces of Windows that Microsoft could and should turn into Live Services?

Wow, a tough day for Windows.

BusinessWeek reports that HP, the world’s biggest PC company, is so troubled by Vista’s ‘tepid reception’ and Apple’s resurgence that it is developing its own operating system. Meanwhile a New York Times columnist writes on his blog that Windows is “already dying a death by a thousand cuts.”

Sounds pretty dire. But like the Steve Jobs obituary that Bloomberg accidentally sent out last week, this Windows epitaph may be a bit premature.

HP has a “Skunk Works” team of engineers secretly working on its own variant of Linux for desktops and notebooks, according to the BusinessWeek story. A company executive downplayed the R&D project, saying HP isn’t devoting “large-scale resources” to it. And it turns out what they could really be working on is a set of driver and utilities that make it easier to use PCs running Linux with HP printers and digital cameras, backed by technical support. Given that many PC companies already sell a handful of systems with Linux, that doesn’t sound like a big leap. Having used a Dell Latitude notebook with Ubuntu, I’d say enhancing the driver support is a necessary move.

Where HP really is spending R&D resources is on a customer experience group that aims to “develop software that would make Windows Vista easier to use, or bypass some of its more onerous features.” That includes features such as the touchscreen technology found in its TouchSmart PCs, the QuickPlay utility that lets you work on e-mail or other common tasks while waiting for Windows to load in the background, and other graphical interfaces for improving music, movies and digital photography. None of this is that new. Asus and Lenovo also offer some systems with a Linux micro-OS that pre-boots, and Dell has announced it will offer a similar feature on some Latitude laptops. And, as the story points out, Dell’s new Studio line includes a Dell Dock that cribs from Mac OS X. In fact, many PC players have offered docks for quickly accessing commonly-used applications over the years.

Google’s new Chrome browser is hyped as a Windows killer, but setting aside the whole debate over whether (or when) the browser and Web-based applications will overtake Microsoft, The New York Times’s Joe Nocera writes that “ever-so-gradually, the Internet is upending its business model just as surely as it has upended models for the music, television and newspaper businesses.” His reason: No one really cares what operating system they use anymore. Users spend most of their time in browsers and Web-based mail clients, file formats are largely interchangeable, iTunes works on both Macs and PCs, and even many games–the last bastion of Windows users–can be played online.

I’m convinced that iTunes and the iPhone are not the only reasons Mac is gaining market share. The other is that people have come to realize that they do not really need Windows anymore. Any ol’ operating system will do. The browser and the Internet have already rendered them largely irrelevant.

It’s fairly obvious at this point that the software landscape is changing. The business of selling software on DVDs in boxes is clearly shrinking (Microsoft recently announced that its Money personal finance software would be sold online-only once the retail inventory runs out). The market is suddenly flooded with smartphones, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), and netbooks running Linux (or Windows XP). And it does appear that after a brief honeymoon with Vista, the PC companies are once again experimenting with ways to take back some of that desktop real estate. But this has everything to do to with differentiating their PCs from the competition, and nothing to do with competing with Microsoft.

Windows is proving to be a durable and–despite all of the bad press for Vista–lucrative franchise. The truth is that browsers and Web-based applications have a long way to go before they will match the features, stability, security and off-line capabilities of the Windows Vista and Microsoft Office ecosystem. Furthermore Microsoft saw this coming a long time ago. The real question is: How well will they will respond to it? The latest indication is likely to come at its Professional Developers Conference in October, where Microsoft is expected to offer up an alpha of Windows 7.

The real bad news for Microsoft? If the first of its new ads are any indication, its $300 million marketing campaign with Jerry Seinfeld could be a bust.

Microsoft launched its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) anti-piracy program in early summer 2006. Its first year was, to put it charitably, a disaster. An epic fail. A big fat F on the year’s report card.

A certain amount of error is inevitable in any activation and registration system, but those numbers were clearly too high when WGA first rolled out. In an interview last week, Microsoft WGA director Alex Kochis tacitly acknowledged that fact, pointing out that “we’ve made major strides in the accuracy of the program” in the past two years.

How bad was it? Users began suffering unpleasant consequences almost immediately, including system failures and false positives that flagged perfectly legitimate Windows copies as “non-genuine.” I wrote about WGA and its problems extensively throughout 2006 and 2007, documenting the extent of the problems. (The complete index of WGA-tagged posts is here.) In August 2006, I performed an exhaustive survey of problem reports from Microsoft’s own WGA support forum and discovered that “42% of the people who experienced problems with WGA and reported those problems to Microsoft’s public forums during that period were actually running Genuine Microsoft Windows.”

There was another wave of failures in October 2006 and the first reports of Vista validation problems appeared in February 2007. I met with managers of the WGA program several times in early 2007 and we discussed how they were responding to these issues. To their credit, they made major changes in support policies, back-end systems, and the online experience. But in August 2007, just as the WGA program appeared to be running smoothly at long last, “human error” caused a WGA server failure, with an estimated 12,000 legitimate customers affected. Most of the glaring bugs in the system had been worked out, as I discovered when I examined forum reports from December 2006 and discovered that the failure rate had dropped from 42% to 22%. That failure rate was still too high to rate anything higher than a D-.

The August 2007 outage inspired a wave of rethinking and re-engineering at Microsoft to ensure that this sort of problem couldn’t happen again, Kochis says. “We needed to think about what the impact to the customer was so that we minimize negative impact on customers. In response, we put in place what we call a ‘circuit breaker.’” According to Kochis, the systems are now monitored continuously in real time, through automated systems and by engineers. “If we detect anything that’s happening in response to our automated and human monitoring, one of the first things we do is evaluate pulling the breaker, which will [respond to] any system that calls in for validation and either use the last validation status for that system or just pass that system for that moment in time.” In effect, any time an anomaly in the system is detected, the result defaults in the customer’s favor, declaring the system “genuine,” at least until the next check.

Page 2: No false positives for Windows XP?

Page 3: Windows Vista is more complicated

Page 4: For 2008, WGA gets a C+

Kochis also says the WGA group has revamped its internal processes to make them more responsive to issues that might affect Windows customers. “We do drills,” he told me, “many, many drills. And we get better every time. We’ve had some real events, too, [although] none have been as significant as the [August 2007] server outage. They’ve been invisible or transparent to end users or customers.” The biggest test of the “circuit breaker” system came in January 2008, when two undersea cables in the Mediterranean were severed, disrupting Internet service over much of the Middle East and Europe, including some of Microsoft’s busiest call centers.

“We learned about it very quickly and later that same day, we had a plan pulled together that would enable us to provide support for customers in a number of different ways. We did whatever we could to reduce call volume at that time. In Egypt, we have a call center that services a number of languages, including those in Europe. So one of the first things we did was have people on airplanes flying [from Egypt] to a call center in Germany so we could redirect phone traffic there and have local language support. Likewise, support calls for Spanish-speaking customers were routed to Latin America.

“Our online activation systems were also affected,” Kochis notes. “We actually pulled the circuit breaker in that situation, so that we would minimize call volume. All systems passed, none failed, until we were ready with our rerouting process.”

If that incident had happened a year earlier, the impact on activation and validation systems would have been catastrophic. With the new systems in place, there was literally no discernible impact. I’ve been monitoring WGA longer and more closely than anyone outside of Microsoft, and in the year since the August 2007 server outage, I have seen no reports of even brief failures in the WGA system. (One report at Ars Technica in July turned out to be a false alarm that shut down the telephone-based activation system for about 90 minutes but left WGA untouched.) That doesn’t mean WGA is working perfectly today. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, as I note in the conclusion of this report.

Back in 2006, the percentage of people affected by WGA failures and glitches was  unacceptably high. Microsoft richly earned a big fat F in WGA in its freshman year. And 2007 was only a little better. Although the embarrassing conflicts with third-party software that falsely triggered WGA alerts in its early days had mostly been vanquished, the server outage of August 2007 clearly served as a wake-up call.

So the question is, two years later, has Microsoft finally gotten WGA right? Or at least good enough?

For the answers, I went back to the same rich data source I used in the original August 2006 report and for a follow-up in December 2006: Microsoft’s own WGA support forums. When I did the earlier study, Windows Vista had not yet launched, so all reports involved Windows XP. Today, two years later, there are separate WGA support forums for XP and Vista, and I looked at both of them. Back in 2006, I counted data for a 15-day period, August 1-15, and tallied 137 support requests directly related to product activation, validation, or WGA “non-genuine” messages. For the 2008 version, I used a larger sample, examining every thread on the two WGA forums that was started between August 1 and August 26

——-

Windows XP: No false positives?

For the 26 days in this study, I tracked 101 separate threads on the Windows XP Genuine Advantage Validation Issues forum. Of those, 20 were simple questions (How many computers can I install my copy of Windows on? Where can I order a replacement for my lost Windows CD?), 4 were comments or notices from administrators, and 13 were off-topic support requests from people who had wandered onto the wrong forum. That leaves a total of 64 separate requests for support with an issue related to product activation or validation. No doubt some were triggered by seeing this message on the desktop:

A total of 16 reports were confirmed cases of piracy (blocked VLK or keygen). Another 9 were cases where the report specifically noted that the system had been attacked by a virus that wreaked havoc with crucial system files, including the activation components. This report is typical:

I have just managed to clear-up a severe malware attack on my laptop. However, XP will not now validate. I searched the registry and discovered that the ProductID has has its first group replaced with ‘VIRUS’. How do I recover the genuine product ID - I have my product key.

In all those cases, the correct answer was to back up data and reinstall Windows, because the compromised system was probably beyond repair. After a severe malware attack, the safest way to ensure that no trace of the original infection lingers is to start from a clean slate.

The remaining 39 cases all involved situations where the user needed help, often because they had reinstalled Windows and were stymied by some part of the activation process. Although activation is technically separate from WGA, the issues overlap so closely that it’s almost impossible to separate them. In at least three cases (here, here, and here), a problem occurred because the user was trying to reinstall Windows XP using the wrong media for the system (a Dell reinstallation CD won’t work on a system with an ASUS motherboard, for example). In many but certainly not all cases, the forum staff was able to resolve the problem by stepping the user through an online validation process or pointing to a Knowledge Base article (here and here, for example). They couldn’t help this guy, who had lost his product key, or this desperate soul, who was trying to use a borrowed copy of Windows XP Professional to repair a company-issued laptop without calling the IT department. One can only imagine the back story there.

In 26 days’ worth of problem reports, I read a handful of reports of “non-genuine” messages caused by some unknown combination of software, devices drivers, malware, and hardware. I could find only one report that appeared to be a genuine false positive (but turned out not to be after all). The story was an odd one:

I purchased a new OEM version of Windows XP Home Edition.  It came with a product key certification and appears to be a genuine copy of XP.  I installed it on my  iMac under Mac OS Leopard.  The software installed with no problem, but failed online activation with “UNAUTHORIZED PRODUCT KEY’.  The telephone approach also did not work.

According to the Microsoft employee who responded on the forum, the product key in question “is not genuine and has been blocked.” Normally, this response would mean that the purchaser had bought counterfeit software from a shady online dealer, but in this case there was a twist:

I purchased the software from an authorized MS partner.  I called them and they told they me they are experiencing a number of complaints regarding invalid activations, with a number of MS products including Vista.  They have been told by MS that there is a problem with the activation server.  They requested full details of the copy, including numbers on the CD.  The vendor has assured me they are working with MS directly and will correct the problem by issuing a new key within three days.

Sure enough, three days later, the thread was updated with this post:

I reinstalled WXP and used the replacement activation key provided by Microsoft through the vendor.  It worked, activation was successful!

I asked Microsoft to comment on this particular case. After looking into the specifics, they confirmed that the person making the report was indeed a (probably innocent) victim of piracy. A Microsoft spokesperson said that the product key in the initial report “was identified as a keygen and does not match the standard product key format.” One possibility (pure speculation on my part) is that a legitimate dealer received a shipment of high-quality counterfeit product from a reseller and quickly cleaned up the mess after figuring out what had happened. I found no additional reports of similar problems, which suggests that this was an isolated case.

————-

Windows Vista: It’s complicated

For the 26 days in this study, I read through 109 separate threads on the Vista support forum. Of those, 40 were either simple questions or off-topic posts, leaving 69 legitimate requests for help with product activation and validation issues, or a “not genuine” report.

Sorting the XP trouble reports into buckets was relatively easy compared to its successor. The Software Protection Platform in Windows Vista is much more complex, which means it has more points of failure than the relatively simple WGA validation process. In fact, the sorting process helped me determine two big issues that still need to be fixed in Vista (and, presumably, in Windows 7).

Of that total, 10 involved counterfeit software, and another 2 were the victims of serious malware attacks that had scrambled the operating system beyond repair.

There were a total of 17 help requests, eight of which involved activation and product keys. Several of the remainder involved “Invalid License” messages, for which the response was a boilerplate set of steps to reset the license store, using a command-line switch for the familiar slmgr.vbs script (the same one that allows you to “rearm” a system beyond its initial 30-day grace period. In this typical case, the results were successful.

The remaining 40 appeared to be false positives. This one was the strangest of all. After acknowledging that the license appeared valid, a Microsoft employee wrote:

Currently what you have experienced happens very rarely. You are experiencing a problem with the Trusted store where your drivers are stored for the hardware on your computer. Usually this will correct itself once you restart the computer. Should this not resolve the situation we recommend you to update the drivers for all hardware which you have in the computer.

I’m filing that one away for future reference. Meanwhile, the remainder of the 40 error messages were split into two large groups, each of which had earned its own boilerplate response.

Problem #1 occurs when the System Licensing service is shut down. As Microsoft’s Darin Smith explained in this typical Q&A session, the symptoms are fairly easy to identify:

In your Diagnostic Report it shows the error code “Online Validation Code: 0×80070426″. This means that the Software Licensing Service has stopped. Vista uses this service to check itself and confirm it is Genuine. When the service is stopped, Vista is unable to confirm it’s own Genuine status and may show Genuine or Non-Genuine. The fact that the Service has stopped is also, most likely, the cause of  other issues you may be experiencing (such as not having access to the Control Panel).

Judging by feedback on the forums, the boilerplate instructions are usually sufficient to resolve the problem. In other cases, the shut-down service is apparently a symptom of a much larger problem, as in this extremely detailed report that included this baffling error code:

That report eventually resulted in a stalemate, with the forum staff unable to solve the problem and the customer unwilling to pay $59 to open a support ticket.

Problem #2 involved apparently erroneous reports from Windows Vista that its core components had been modified or tampered with, as is characteristic of BIOS-level hacks that try to fool the system into sliding past validation requests. According to a response from Microsoft’s Darin Smith in this thread, the symptoms appear in the online Diagnostic Report under the heading “File Scan Data,” in a format like this example:

File Scan Data–>

File Mismatch: C:\Windows\system32\msvcrt.dll[7.0.6001.18000]

File Mismatch: C:\Windows\system32\gdi32.dll[6.0.6001.18023]

File Mismatch: C:\Windows\system32\ole32.dll[6.0.6001.18000]

The mismatch is between the hash of the signature embedded in the file itself and the corresponding signature hash value listed in Vista’s System Catalog. That typically means one of two things:

1. The file has been tampered with, modified, or corrupted, so that its signature hash no longer matches the value in the System Catalog; or

2. The system has been updated legitimately but the value stored in the System Catalog was not updated to reflect the updated file’s signature hash.

According to Microsoft, a signature hash mismatch has different effects, depending on the file involved. Vista’s status may or may not change to non-genuine, the operating system won’t validate correctly, and “other strange behavior” may occur. Typical resolution steps involve using System Restore to perform repairs, as well as uninstalling and reinstalling Service Pack 1 (which updates all system files and their corresponding values in the System Catalog). In this example, the error was caused by disk corruption of unknown cause; the resolution required a lengthy CHKDSK session and a startup repair from the Vista DVD, followed finally by using System Restore to roll back to a configuration from a few days earlier.

Those two categories collectively involve 57% of the problems reported by Vista users on Microsoft’s support forums. Some are false positives. Others might be caused by Microsoft updates that failed to install properly. Still others might be caused by undetected malware or badly written programs that are interfering with system services and tampering with system files. It’s clear that Microsoft has some work to do to identify the root causes of those two failure types and prevent them from occurring.

———

For 2008, WGA gets a C+

There’s no question that Microsoft’s performance on WGA and Vista validation has improved significantly in the past year. That’s the result of experience and some very diligent engineering and process improvement work by Microsoft’s WGA group. A more robust back end, more accurate detection tools, better communication, and improved self-help options for users have all resulted in improvement. I noted a dramatically lower number of support requests compared to two years ago, with a drop of more than 40% in the number of requests for help. (It helps that the measurements were taken at the same time of year, so no seasonal adjustment is necessary.)

For XP users, the difference is especially striking. WGA errors seem to have become genuinely rare, with most issues relatively easy to resolve using online tools or simple commands.

There’s no historical database. The decision to remove Vista’s “reduced functionality” option with Service Pack 1 was also smart. That option shouldn’t even be considered with a detection system that is less than 100% accurate (or, in layman’s terms, never), and even then it’s too likely to sweep up innocent bystanders. As of Vista SP1, a glitch or hiccup in the Software Protection Platform components won’t prevent you from using Windows or any programs. It will have zero impact on performance, with only an annoying delay of a few seconds at startup to display a warning message, and a watermark on a black background displaying a similar “Not Genuine” message on the desktop after you successfully log on.

In the past, Microsoft has taken some heat for being disingenuous when it argues that WGA and Vista validation actually benefit customers by alerting them to potential system problems. After sifting through hundreds of problem reports on their forums, I’m willing to give that argument a little more weight. In example after example, a WGA message or validation error was the first sign of what turned out to be a larger problem.

Still, reading through those forums also provides plenty of ideas on how Microsoft can improve not just WGA but the entire Windows experience. Here are four suggestions I’d like to see incorporated into Vista and especially into Windows 7:

1. Simplify Windows licensing and activation. It is almost impossible for mere mortals to understand the nuances of OEM SLP activation and why the product key on the sticker on the side of your PC won’t work after you reinstall Windows. Corporations can pay people to figure this stuff out. Consumers and small business people shouldn’t have to.

2. Provide a plain-English license display that anyone can understand. I should be able to log on as an Administrator, click a link on the Windows Welcome Center, and see a single screen that tells me what type of license I have purchased, when and how my computer was activated, and whether the license can be transferred to another PC. Include a link to the full license agreement, but don’t make me read through it to figure out all the details. On the PC sitting to my left, for instance, clicking this link would tell me the following:

• I have an OEM license for Windows Vista Home Premium.
• This license was included with my purchase of an HP Pavilion Elite m9300t.
• The product ID number is 89583-OEM-7332157-00061.
• This license cannot be transferred to another PC.
• The product was activated when the operating system was first installed, and will be automatically reactivated if I reinstall using the restore options HP provided me.

3. Provide a deactivation option for retail copies of Windows. That will make it easy to transfer a license from one machine to another without having to go through activation hassles.

4. Build a simple, usable, web-based front-end for troubleshooting WGA and validation errors. As I noted in my travels through the two support forums, the solutions for most common problems are simple boilerplate, lifted from Knowledge Base articles and pasted into forum messages. Wouldn’t it be easier if that information were organized in a FAQ page that users could find through a search engine and that forum posts could simply link to?

5. Make the Complete PC Backup utility a part of every Vista edition. Most Windows systems can be backed up onto two or three DVDs or to an external hard drive in 1o minutes or less. Well, they can if they’re running the Business or Ultimate or Enterprise editions of Vista. The sad part is that a good backup image can help any Windows user recover from most problems, including validation and activation hassles, in minutes. Home Basic and Home Premium users should have access to this option. It’s too late to make that change for Windows Vista, but it’s not too late to do the right thing for Windows 7.

Out supporting her twin sister, Samantha Ronson was up bright and early with Lindsay Lohan as the two headed to the Charlotte Ronson show as part of New York City Fashion Week on Saturday (September 6).

Sam’s sister’s show got underway at around 11 AM ET in the Promenade, with much excitement over her return to the big Bryant Park show following 5 seasons of hosting displays offsite.

“It wasn’t really a sudden decision, it’s been a progression,” Charlotte said of returning the Fashion Week. “It’s very exciting for me to know that at this stage of my fashion career, I am able to show in the Tents.”

Sam’s sis added: “At the same time, I am nervous and overwhelmed at the thought. Being in the Tents has always implied a certain status and achievement as well as recognition within the fashion world. I am thrilled and feel honored.”

Enjoy the pictures of Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson at the Charlotte Ronson show (September 6).

As the summertime winds to a close, Nicole Richie was spotted taking advantage of the fine weather as she spent a little quality time with Joel Madden on Friday afternoon (September 5).

The cute couple stopped to get frozen yogurt and soda at a deli in the Beverly Glen Country Mart, with Nicole sporting a beanie, short jean cut-offs, a grey t-shirt and a pair of classic aviator sunglasses.

Quickly approaching, an episode with Nicole taking on a guest appearance on the NBC hit show “Chuck” is scheduled to air this fall.

Of her experience on the set, the former “Simple Life” star told press, “I had a stunt double, but they said I was allowed to do as much as I wanted - except for serious things.”

Meanwhile, “Chuck” executive producer Josh Schwartz said: “Nicole auditioned for the part and was very funny. This role is a great opportunity for her to show off her comedic skills and be diabolically evil and kick some butt.”

Enjoy the pictures of Nicole Richie and Joel Madden at the Beverly Glen Country Mart (September 5).

Hello all! Today let me introduce a new mamber to my blog! My new Divine’s Baby!

Divine's Baby

Hope you all love this cute little baby!

9月5日上午，日本自民党干事长、前外务大臣麻生太郎在自民党总部召开记者会，正式宣布参加将于本月22日举行的自民党总裁选举。当天下午，日本前防卫大臣石破茂也在自民党总部宣布将参加自民党总裁竞选。

据日本媒体报道，67岁的麻生表示，他“将在总裁竞选中强调恢复经济和彻底消除国民的不安”。 麻生在记者会之前举行的紧急干部会议上宣布，为了准备选举，他将辞去自民党干事长职务，并委托总务会长笹川尧接替其工作。麻生打算9日发表竞选纲领，其支持团体将在5日下午在东京正式设立选举对策事务所。

麻生太郎出身政治世家，其曾祖父麻生太吉是贵族院议员，父亲麻生太贺吉是自民党众议员，外祖父吉田茂和岳父铃木善幸都是日本前首相。麻生毕业于日本学习院大学政经学部，后留学美国斯坦福大学和英国伦敦大学政治经济学院。 1979年起，他先后9次当选众议院议员，先后出任文部政务次官、自民党副干事长、国务大臣、经济企划厅长官、经济财政政策担当大臣、外务大臣等职。

在2001年4月举行的总裁选举中，麻生太郎与小泉纯一郎竞争，结果大败。 2006年9月，麻生太郎又与安倍晋三争夺总裁宝座，再次遭遇滑铁卢。在辞职后，麻生又向总裁宝座发起冲击，与福田一决高低，无奈还是败北。此次福田辞职，又给了他问鼎首相宝座的契机。

此外，5日下午宣布参选的日本前防卫大臣石破茂目前已获得了20名党籍国会议员的推荐，符合参选条件。日本经济财政担当大臣与谢野馨（70岁）和日本东京都知事石原慎太郎的长子、自民党前政调会长石原伸晃（51岁）4日相继表示将参加本次自民党总裁选举。这样包括已经于3日表明参选意向的日本前防卫大臣小池百合子（56岁），本次自民党总裁选举已成5人对决局面。据悉，前科学技术担当大臣棚桥泰文、外务副大臣山本一太也有意参选。

自民党将在本月10日上午11点前接受总裁候选人的报名，并于当天下午2点在自民党总部举行候选人的集体记者见面会。22日，自民党将进行新总裁选举投票，由党籍参众两院议员一人一票共387票，加上全国47个都道府县地方党部各3票的141票，总共528票投票选出第23任总裁。

据《朝日新闻》4日公布的全国舆论调查结果显示，有30%的人认为，在所有国会议员中，麻生最适合成为新首相。这一比例远远高于排在第二位的民主党代表小泽一郎的8%。而在日本共同社3日公布的全国舆论调查结果中也有35.3%的回答者认为，自民党内最适合成为新首相的人是麻生，高于列第二位的前首相小泉纯一郎的15%。上述结果皆显示，麻生在自民党总裁选举中占有很大优势。

WASILLA, Alaska  – It was the night before Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was to accept the Republican vice presidential nomination in a nationally televised speech, and Becky Moore couldn’t sleep a wink.

Dr. Curt Menard, Gov. Sarah Palin’s family friend and childhood dentist, looks over her high school yearbook.

She paced around her room and prayed before sending Palin an e-mail wishing her good luck.

“I was so nervous for her,” said Moore, a dietitian who lives in Palin’s hometown of Wasilla. “I felt like she was my relative, like she was about to prove herself to the country.”

As much as Moore was hoping for the best, there was a part of her that didn’t want to share her governor and former mayor with the lower 48, a term Alaskans use to refer to their distant countrymen with a mix of playfulness and disdain.

“No matter what happens, we win. If she becomes vice president, the rest of the country will see what a great leader she is. If she loses, we get her back,” Moore said.

The night after Palin’s speech, Moore and friends from her book club gathered at Wasilla’s Pandemonium bookstore to discuss the Jeffrey Eugenides novel “Middlesex.”

But instead, the conversation centered on the poise and bravura with which Palin explained her views on resource development — another Alaska term for oil and gas drilling — family values, fighting corruption and reducing the role of government in private lives.  Watch why some say Palin may overshadow Sen. John McCain »

“As a longtime Alaskan, she makes me proud. She’s sophisticated and intelligent. She can wear bunny boots and high heels and be comfortable in both,” said Paula Esche, a retired teacher who moved to Alaska from Wisconsin in 1963.

Indeed, with each proverbial crack Palin has made in Alaska’s political landscape, the story of her rise from hometown girl to political upshot has been retold over and over again in the Alaskan press and some national publications, including Vogue.

To many, Palin’s iconic status is well-deserved, considering that the high school basketball star, former beauty queen and television journalist rose from Wasilla City Council member to Alaska’s first female governor in less than 14 years.  See photos of Palin and her family »

In Wasilla, a railroad town nestled among the mountains of south-central Alaska, she has earned a reputation for pursuing agendas with such doggedness that critics and supporters alike are compelled to acknowledge her fighting spirit.

Palin’s family moved to Alaska in 1964, when her father took a teaching job in Skagway. She was 2 months old. Her parents settled in Wasilla a few years later.

Family friend and Matanuska-Susitna Borough Mayor Curt Menard said he would have never guessed that Palin’s tenacity would bring her this far. Nevertheless, he is not entirely surprised by her success.

“She has always gone after what she wants with great intensity and careful judgment. She works for what she feels is right,” said Menard, who is willing to take some credit for Palin’s winning smile as her childhood dentist.

A table in Menard’s sunroom is littered with family photos and high school yearbooks that bear testament to the local folklore surrounding Palin.

“We did a lot of hunting and hiking together when the kids were little,” said Menard, gesturing to a picture of Palin as a young teen with her sister and Menard’s sons, surrounded by moose carcasses in a room for curing big game.

Menard’s collection of Wasilla High School yearbooks contains pictures of Palin on the honor society, student council, cross-country team and, most notably, as co-captain and point guard of the 1982 championship basketball team.

In high school, Palin also met her future husband, Todd, who moved to Wasilla in his senior year. In a story that has also charmed its way into the hearts of Palin’s constituents, they married at the courthouse in nearby Palmer in 1988 under the eyes of two witnesses they pulled from a nearby senior center.

Palin entered local politics as a Wasilla City Council member in 1992, serving two terms before she campaigned against incumbent Mayor John Stein on a platform of fiscal responsibility and pledges to break up the “good old boys” network.

During her mayoral campaign, many residents of Wasilla fondly recall that she knocked on doors to introduce herself and talk about their concerns. After becoming mayor, she often held community forums in coffeehouses.

Within her administration, however, controversy flared up. After she took office in November 1996, she asked for letters of resignation from six department heads based on allegations that they were still supporting the former mayor. She also fired Police Chief Irl Stambaugh, who unsuccessfully sued her for wrongful termination, according to court records.

Though many favored her no-nonsense attitude and open door policy, Wasilla substitute teacher Anne Kilkenny compared the atmosphere surrounding Palin to a popularity contest.

“I found the informal manner in which she ran City Council meetings had the flavor of turning city business into a fan club,” said Kilkenny, a registered Democrat who moved to Wasilla from Seattle, Washington, in 1981.

This weekend, Kilkenny, one of the few identifiable Palin critics in Wasilla, wrote an e-mail to friends criticizing Palin’s track record that rapidly spread to blogs and Web sites.

“Everybody likes her because she’s a real nice person. She’s always been nice to me and everyone in town,” Kilkenny told CNN.com. “I wrote my message in the spirit of providing complete and accurate information. I’m not angry or jealous.”

Praise and criticism followed Palin’s ascendance to the governor’s office after she won the state Republican primary against incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski and took the general election in 2006.

Earlier this year, when Palin signed off on a contract for a Canadian company to construct a gas line linking Alaska with the lower 48, she earned accolades from Alaskans who favor the development of natural resources. Others, however, said they believe Palin rushed the application process in an effort to win over voters.

“We’re giving away finite resources when we should be trying to get the maximum value for them,” said Jay Cross, a retired Alaska Guardsman who is a volunteer for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign. “Why the rush to create a pipeline that’s not going to Alaska tidewaters and creating jobs for Alaskans?”

For those without strong political allegiances, the mere presence of an Alaskan on a major party ticket is enough to raise interest.

“I just think it’s cool that someone from a small town like Wasilla can get as far as being nominated for vice president of the United States,” said T.J. Montañez, 21. “Maybe now the lower 48 will stop thinking we all live in igloos.”

SINGAPORE: The man who brokered the kidney-for-sale deal, Wang Chin Sing, was on Friday sentenced to 14 months’ jail. He is out on a S$60,000 bail, pending an appeal. He is the fourth person to be sentenced in this case. 

Wang, 44, had introduced Indonesian kidney donor Sulaiman Damanik to local retail magnate Tang Wee Sung. Wang also coached them to lie to the Commissioner of Oaths about the illegal kidney donation.

Wang had also introduced another Indonesian donor, Toni, to an Indonesian woman, Juliana Soh, for a successful illegal kidney transplant here. These were among the five of 10 charges Wang pleaded guilty to. The remaining five charges were taken into consideration during the sentencing. 

Tang was on Wednesday jailed for a day and fined S$17,000. Sulaiman was jailed for three weeks, while Toni served three-and-a-half months and was fined S$2,000 in July. 

Reading out his judgement in court on Friday, District Judge Ng Peng Hong said Wang was clearly not a mere medical concierge, but a middleman who actively brokered the illegal deals. The judge added that the case smacks of being a syndicated operation. 

Judge Ng said Wang was clearly the prime mover in the illicit organ trading. 

“He negotiated the price for the purchase and supply of the kidney. He sourced for the kidney. He orchestrated the entire course of action that needed to be taken… for the transplant operation to be carried through,” said Judge Ng. 

He added that condoning Wang’s conduct could lead Singapore into becoming a hub for illegal organ trading. 

Lawyer Shashi Nathan, in Wang’s defence, had suggested a total of 12 weeks in jail, saying his client did not intend to exploit the poor and his actions were motivated by sympathy and compassion, and not greed. 

But the prosecution called for a deterrent sentence, saying he had no qualms exploiting both the donor and recipient. They said Wang was one of the directing minds behind the scams, if not the directing mind. 

Mr Nathan expressed disappointment in the sentence. “Disappointed in the sense that given the sentences that were meted out earlier to other people who were involved, I thought 14 months was a bit high,” he said. 

About five family members, including Wang’s wife, were in court for his sentencing. Wang was expressionless when the sentence was passed. 

Mr Nathan said: “He’s obviously disappointed and I think he’s a bit numb. He came in today, prepared to go to jail, of course, and he’s hoping that he could start his sentence today.” 

But after the sentence was passed, Wang decided to file an appeal, which is expected to be heard in the High Court in about two months. 

A fifth and last person involved in this case, Whang Sung Lin, has been charged with introducing Wang to Tang. His trial is being arranged.

SINGAPORE : Not all of the six new Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) gantries need to be switched on in November. Transport Minister Raymond Lim offered this little nugget of hope to motorists at a talk to the Press Club on Friday. 

ERP was an obvious hot topic at the talk, especially as it comes after rates went up at about half of all gantries in the central business and shopping areas, while five new gantries along the Singapore River were added in July. 

Explaining the rationale, the minister said such road pricing was a measure of last resort. 

He said: “We recognise that such system-wide changes will have a significant impact on people’s lives. So let’s roll it out in phases, and as we roll it out in phases, we hope we might end up doing much less than we have to.”

He added that since the July changes, speeds have picked up on many of these roads. 

Thus, not all six new gantries that the Land Transport Authority had previously announced would be switched on in November, may have to become operational. 

These are the ones along Serangoon Road, Commonwealth Avenue, Jalan Bukit Merah, Alexandra Road, AYE-westbound near Alexandra Road and PIE-westbound near Eunos. 

There was also a nugget of good news for public transport commuters - bus passengers may get higher transfer rebates. Details are expected to be announced next week. 

This means the majority of bus passengers who make one or more transfers stand to benefit. 

During question time, Mr Lim was asked if fares for children could be waived, in light of Singapore’s family-friendly thrust. 

The answer was that it boiled down to a question of government intervention and cross-subsidies - a path it is not likely to take. 

BEIJING : US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill called on North Korea Friday to accept the inspection and verification of its nuclear facilities as part of ongoing six-nation disarmament talks. 

Upon arrival to Beijing, Hill met nuclear envoys from Japan and South Korea to discuss the six-party process on disarming North Korea, and on Saturday will meet China’s envoy Wu Dawei, who has been coordinating talks. 

“What we need to do is verify their nuclear declaration… we are certainly prepared to sit down with the six parties or directly with the North Koreans to hear their concerns on the (verification) protocol,” Hill told journalists. 

“We are prepared to complete our obligations as they complete theirs, but a declaration without a protocol is only half of the obligation.” 

In a landmark deal signed last year, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons in return for economic aid and diplomatic recognition. 

As part of the deal, Pyongyang handed in a declaration of its nuclear programmes in June and began disabling its Yongbyon nuclear power plant where plutonium for an October 2006 atomic test, as well as an unknown number of bombs, is believed to have been produced. 

But North Korea recently said it had stopped disabling its Yongbyon nuclear complex, and would consider rebuilding it, because Washington had failed to drop it from a terrorism blacklist as agreed to in last year’s pact. 

Hill did not comment on the disablement of Yongbyon and refused to discuss media reports that North Korea was also preparing to launch a ballistic missile test. 

Washington has demanded strict verification of the declaration, including sampling of atomic materials and sites — something Pyongyang rejects as a violation of its sovereignty. 

“Publicly, what they talked about is that our proposal will allow us to make ‘house-to-house searches’… of course that is not what our protocol would be doing or what we would be interested in doing,” Hill said. 

He added he currently has no plans to meet North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Kye-Gwan during his stay in Beijing that ends Sunday, but that Pyongyang has been notified that the US is willing to talk. 

Before leaving Seoul on Friday, South Korean envoy Kim Sook said the deadlock in the six-nation process needed to be broken quickly. 

“It is an important moment, in which North Korea should resume the disablement measures,” he said. 

The six-nation talks — involving China, the United States, North and South Korea, Russia and Japan — began in 2003 with the aim of ending the communist state’s nuclear activities.

John McCain has accepted the Republican Party’s candidacy for the White House in a speech to cheering supporters at the party’s national convention.

He vowed to bring change to government, restore the people’s trust in the party and to fight for a better nation.

Praising his running mate Sarah Palin, he said she was the right person to help him bring change to Washington.

The Arizona senator said he respected Democratic rival Barack Obama and would seek a bipartisan approach to politics.

Presenting himself once again as a maverick, he pledged to fight corruption, whether Democratic or Republican, and make sure that he worked for the good of the American people.

“Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd: change is coming,” Mr McCain told the crowds in St Paul, Minnesota.

Again and again, I’ve worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed  John McCain Analysis: McCain weathers storms In pictures: Convention - Day Four Republican voters’ views US election polltracker

In a criticism of his own party, he said he would “fight to restore the pride and principles” of the party, damaged after some Republicans gave in to “the temptations of corruption”.

“We’re going to recover the people’s trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire,” he said. “The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.”

Mr McCain then turned to attacking the Democrats over taxes and spending, saying they would seek to raise taxes whereas he would keep them low and cut them where possible.

Going into some policy specifics, he pledged create new jobs, improve education and to reduce a “dangerous dependence on foreign oil” by producing more energy at home, including by drilling new offshore oil wells.

Mr McCain promised to take a bipartisan approach to resolving the nation’s problems, saying: “Again and again, I’ve worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed.

McCAIN’S MOST-USED WORDS Full text of McCain speech US media mixed over speech

“That’s how I will govern as president. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again.

“I have that record and the scars to prove it. Barack Obama does not.”

After speaking of the five years he spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and how that experience had inspired his love of his country, he called on his fellow Americans to fight with him to make it a better one.

“Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.”

The almost hour-long speech, which ended in the traditional shower of confetti and red, white and blue balloons, brought to a close the party’s four-day event.

‘Tested and true’

The BBC’s Adam Brookes in St Paul says Mr McCain’s speech was measured and entirely lacking in the sarcasm and vitriol which have been levelled at Mr Obama over the past couple of nights.

He said he hated war and would use all America’s tools - diplomatic, military and economic - to build what he called a stable and enduring peace, as well as shaking up Washington and including Democrats and independents in a McCain administration.

Mrs McCain praised her husband as a great father and devoted American

It was all a rather different tone to the Republican politics of the past eight years, and to many of the other speakers at this Republican convention, our correspondent says.

There was very little of President George W Bush in this speech, our correspondent adds, as Mr McCain tries to show that he is his own man and can signify a break with the Bush years.

Mr McCain’s wife, Cindy, in her speech praised her husband’s family values, strength of character, war service and leadership.

“If Americans want straight talk and the plain truth, they should take a good close look at John McCain… a man tested and true, who’s never wavered in his devotion to our country,” she said, after arriving on stage flanked by their seven children.

Her speech followed the convention’s formal nomination of Mrs Palin - the Republican Party’s first female vice-presidential candidate.

Mrs Palin becomes only the second woman, the first being Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, to run for the US vice-presidency.

‘Integrity and courage’

Speaking ahead of Mr McCain’s address, senior Republicans praised his courage and leadership.

I have to say, from my vantage point next to the DC delegation, my overall impression was that the audience in the hall were disappointed  BBC North America editor Justin Webb Read Justin’s thoughts in full

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, at one point hotly tipped to be Mr McCain’s running mate choice, described the Arizona senator’s life as “a testimony to service, duty, courage and common sense”.

“In this time, we don’t need a president who can just read a poll or momentarily thrill a crowd. We don’t need rhetoric or empty promises,” he said.

“We need a president who has the integrity and courage to make the tough choices so America will be stronger and safer.”

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham hailed Mr McCain’s determination to back the Bush administration’s “surge” strategy in Iraq despite the political risks.

He introduced a video presenting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a “maverick” moose-hunter from Alaska who was joining “the original maverick” Mr McCain to bring change to Washington politics.

In a well-received speech on Wednesday, Mrs Palin praised Mr McCain and attacked Mr Obama as having talked of change, but done nothing of substance.

President George W Bush has also strongly endorsed John McCain as the best man to succeed him in the White House.

The implosion of EarthLink’s citywide Wi-Fi business may have been the best thing that ever happened to Wireless Philadelphia, the nonprofit charged with helping Philadelphia bridge the digital divide.

Independence Hall, Philadelphia

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET Networks)

Now under new management, the citywide Wi-Fi network that was originally funded and built by EarthLink will have a new business model, better coverage, and a ne