Office 2010 general available on June 15 2010

That Office would be released in June was news last November, but now Paul Thurrott mentions a hard date June 15th 2010 in his weekly WinInfo Short Takes.
GA or General Availability means that RTM should be at least a month before that, but I expect even 2 months.
Next week is February vacation in the Boston area (which, unlike much of the country, doesn't do a March spring break), and although I'd like to go to Barcelona for the Mobile World Conference and Microsoft's Windows Mobile 7 unveiling, I'll have to do that virtually—because we're going to Florida with another family on vacation. Of course, vacations for me are virtual vacations, and I'll still be working. So aside from some email-response slowness, it should be business as usual here.

Leo and I recorded the Windows Weekly podcast on Thursday at the usual time, so you can expect the new episode to appear by the weekend, as usual. Be sure to check out the SuperSite for Windows, however, because I'm now doing weekly Windows 7 feature overviews and tips, and publishing both to the site each week.

China accuses Google of breaking the law

The Chinese government has blocked access to Google across large swathes of the country and accused the internet giant of breaking Chinese law.

An initial nationwide ban saw screens go blank between 9pm and midnight on Wednesday.

However, Google was inaccessible in several cities and on some mobile phone networks yesterday evening, almost 24 hours after the ban expired.

China's Foreign ministry accused Google's English-language search engine of spreading vulgar content and made it plain that various "punishment measures" had been carried out by the government.

"I want to stress that Google China is a company operating within China to provide Internet search services and it should strictly abide by Chinese laws and regulations," he said.

A spokesman for Google admitted that a range of Google services, including Gmail, its email site, had been cut off. "We hope that service will be fully restored soon".

Google has been repeatedly blocked in China for upsetting the government. The first block came as long ago as 2002. However the latest action is the biggest crisis the company has faced so far and could endanger its future business on the mainland.

Although the government accused Google of spreading pornography, several commentators speculated the block may be connected to competition with the local internet search engine, Baidu.

Google was roundly criticised by CCTV, the state broadcaster, which relies on Baidu for a large slice of advertising revenue. Although Baidu leads Google in the Chinese market, it has been suffering lately, particularly since its marketing department went on strike in May.

Jeremy Goldkorn, the founder of Danwei, a website that analyses Chinese media, said that the order to ban Google had probably been vaguely communicated to local internet companies, who continued to block the website after the ban had been lifted.

"Google's stated mission is to organise all the information in the world. The Chinese government has a similar idea. The two have always had an uneasy relationship," said Mr Goldkorn.

Facebook wants you to do it live

When Facebook launched its latest redesign, it became evident that the company was putting a lot of emphasis on real-time information--inspired, undoubtedly, by the runaway success of Twitter. Now the company's rolled out two small but crucial new features that put instant updates even more front and center.

First, Facebook is aiming to use the "publisher" tool--formerly known as the status update box--as members' gateway to the Web at large. Starting Wednesday and rolling out gradually, according to a post on the company blog, a beta version of the new content-sharing box will allow members to select exactly how public or private to make each piece of content that they share. The post by Facebook engineer Ola Okelola explained that something shared on a profile can be visible by friends, friends of friends, friends and networks (school, region, or company), user-created custom friends groups--or everyone on the Web.

Facebook's probably hoping that this will spur people to share more content: if members know that sharing a video, a photo, or even a status message won't by default go out to everyone who can see their profile, they might be more likely to share things along the lines of party photos and videos of their kids.

But, wait. There's more.

In addition, a post on the Facebook developer blog Wednesday explained that developers can now take advantage of live-streaming status update boxes much like the one that CNN used during President Obama's inauguration this January. "With the Live Stream Box on your website, users log in using Facebook Connect and share updates that appear both within the Live Stream Box and on their Facebook profiles and in their friends' home page Streams," the post by Tom Whitnah explained. "Each post includes a link back to the Live Stream Box on your site so users can discover the live event and immediately join based on their friends' recommendations."

It's intended so that people watching an event simultaneously can comment in sync on Facebook. And it's also supposed to be a no-brainer to create your own, meaning that Facebook is hoping a lot of developers and site owners will jump on this bandwagon.

"The Live Stream Box is easy to install and takes just a minute to set up," the post added. "To get the Live Stream Box on your website, get a Facebook API key, upload a small file to your website, and then embed a few lines of code into your Web page."

This is a move clearly aiming in the direction of Twitter, where real-time updates and discussions around events have become so commonplace that members regularly agree on a "hashtag" to flag related posts in advance of the event. (For the inauguration, for example, it was #inaug09.) The question is whether Twitter use has already become the standard for chronicling and commenting on events in real time--will enough people be willing to use Facebook widgets rather than apps built on Twitter?

Block scripts in Firefox

The Internet is full of threats like cross-site scripting attacks and clickjacking. A lot of these attacks work by injecting scripts in web pages that you don't even know are there. You can give yourself a modicum more protection by running a Firefox plug-in calle

d NoScript.

NoScript blocks all scripts from running until you authorize them. Let me show you how it works.

Go to addons.mozilla.org and search for NoScript or get it from Download.com. Intsall it like you would any add-on. Once you have it installed, look in the bottom right corner at the little S with the cross-out symbol.

Clicking on it brings up a sub-menu that allows you to choose how to handle scripts on the page you're at. The safest way to go is not to allow any scripts. You'll never fall victim to code that doesn't run.

But some sites won't work without scripts so, the next safest thing is to Temporarily allow only the scripts you need and or trust. A lazier and slightly less safe method is to temporarily allow all on a page.

The next more convenient level, but also next less safe is to permanently allow scripts either individually or all for a page. This becomes necessary for things like your Bank's website or Google Docs where you don't want to constantly allow scripts every time you launch your browser. If you permanently allow scripts from a site, you're putting your trust in that site that it will never allow itself to be infected by a malicious script.

The worst thing you can do is globally allow all scripts. You might as well not run NoScript at that point. If you have allowed a script on a page and you change your mind about it, you can always choose forbid, to start blocking it again.

Running noScript means you're going to have to do a bit more thinking about pages you surf to. It was enlightening when I first started running NoScript which of my banks and utilities worked just fine without scripts and which became disabled. If nothing else, NoScript gives you more control over what risks you expose yourself to on the Net.

Virgin Media trials 200Mbps broadband

Broadband speed freaks take note: cable broadband purveyor Virgin Media has upped the ante by announcing a trial of 200Mbps broadband - four times faster than its current fastest fat pipe service.

The company said it will use the trial to assess the commercial viability of deploying a 200Mbps service in the UK - and to investigate the kind of applications consumers could use regularly in such a speedy future.

Around 100 'pilot customers' will eventually be involved in the trial, which started last week in Ashford, Kent and will run for at least six months. The ISP claims it is the fastest implementation of DOCSIS3 technology (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) in the world - faster even than cable services in Japan and the US which have 160Mbps and 101Mbps respectively.

Possible next-gen broadband apps could include HD and 3D TV entertainment services, remote delivery of IT support to home users, videoconferencing and home surveillance, according to the ISP.

At the end of last year Virgin launched its current fastest 50Mbps service - still the fastest consumer broadband service available in the UK. However BT has been making noise on the speed front - pledging to roll out fibre to 10 million homes by 2012, enabling speeds of up to 100Mbps and opening up the possibility that Virgin could be lose its headline-speed crown.

Ian Fogg, principal analyst at Forrester Research, told silicon.com that while he doesn't believe Virgin will be offering a commercial 200Mbps service anytime soon the company is nevertheless firing "a shot across the bows" of DSL providers to let them know it has more to offer.

"Virgin Media is clearly positioning around the speed of its broadband service and they're looking to make hay while the speeds of their rivals using DSL are limited by the copper telephone line," said Fogg.

"Virgin Media are shaking up the UK broadband market. They're looking to increase [consumer] dissatisfaction with speed."

But the analyst said the trial is not just about posturing: "There's a genuine piece of work to be done here," he said, adding: "It's all very well testing something in the lab but actually giving even a small number of consumers this service into their homes will deliver different information, different feedback."

One area where the trial could well shine a light in Fogg's view are on "bottlenecks" lurking elsewhere in the network.

"You get a point where the web servers, the general speed of the internet becomes the bottleneck - not the connection into someone's house. And I would expect that 200Mbps would reveal those bottlenecks elsewhere," he said.

"How fast a particular service is depends on all sorts of things - the speed of the web server to deliver the webpage, the speed of the connection of that web server onto the internet, the connection across the internet, the connection through that internet service provider's network and then there's the connection into the house… and of course there's the connection inside the house."

Fogg added that wi-fi routers can't currently support 200Mbps - so wireless home networks would also constrain users' speed dreams.

Conficker Attacks Pakistani Internet Users

The PTCL (Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited), on April 3, 2009, alerted Internet users in the country about attacks from the dangerous Conficker worm, saying that the virus was striking most of the Pakistani online surfers just as it was hitting surfers in other countries.

Dr. Sadik Al-Jadir, Senior Executive Vice-President, (Commercial) PTCL, stated that the worm had slowed the speed of the Internet bandwidth, as reported by The Nation on April 4, 2009. Al-Jadir further said that the Conficker virus had targeted the popular operating systems worldwide, affecting a massive number of personal computers.

He also stated that most of the Internet and broadband users in Pakistan were encountering browsing problems because of the virus, and were reportedly dialing 1218 to contact Technical Support. The executive VP reported that there was a fourfold increase in the number of incoming calls to 1218 Broadband Technical Support since April 1, 2009.

Moreover, the security specialists stated that the malware prevents users from accessing websites, which offer the worm's removal programs.

Notably, the Conficker virus is a highly complicated and prevalent worm in the history of Internet. In recent days, security researchers remained largely troubled with this malware. However, IT security experts hope that the volume of PCs infected with the worm would decline soon.

This decline stems from the fact that two security investigators belonging to the global, non-profit research organization Honeypot Project have invented a technique with which administrators can easily detect infected computers on their wider networks. The technique would aid in eliminating the infection from the PCs as well as diminish the possibilities of the spread of infection across the entire network. Meanwhile, this method is already being used as part of the popular commercial and free network scanners.

Suggesting precautionary measures, the security specialists said that users needed to regularly update their computer systems with the most recent updates of Windows operating software as well as the latest antivirus as it would prevent the worm from penetrating into the systems. Also, users needed to turn off the Autorun facility to remain guarded from the virus, they added.

YouTube Blocked in China, Google Says

Google said Tuesday that its YouTube video-sharing Web site had been blocked in China.

Google said it did not know why the site had been blocked, but a report by the official Xinhua news agency of China on Tuesday said that supporters of the Dalai Lama had fabricated a video that appeared to show Chinese police officers brutally beating Tibetans after riots last year in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

Xinhua did not identify the video, but based on the description it appears to match a video available on YouTube that was recently released by the Tibetan government in exile.

It purports to show police officers storming a monastery after riots in Lhasa last March, kicking and beating protesters. It includes other instances of brutality and graphic images of a protester’s wounds. According to the video, the protester later died.

“We don’t know the reason for the block,” a Google spokesman, Scott Rubin, said. “Our government relations people are trying to resolve it.”

Mr. Rubin said that the company first noticed traffic from China had decreased sharply late Monday. By early Tuesday, he said, it had dropped to nearly zero.

China routinely filters Internet content and blocks material that is critical of its policies. It also frequently blocks individual videos on YouTube. YouTube was not blocked Tuesday or Wednesday in Hong Kong, the largely autonomous region of China. Beijing has not interfered with Internet sites there.

“The instant speculation is that YouTube is being blocked because the Tibetan government in exile released a particular video,” said Xiao Qiang, adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and editor of China Digital Times, a news Web site that chronicles political and economic changes in China.

Mr. Xiao said that the blocking of YouTube fit with what appeared to be an effort by China to step up its censorship of the Internet in recent months. Mr. Xiao said he was not surprised that YouTube was a target. It also hosts videos about the Tiananmen Square protests and many other subjects that Chinese authorities find objectionable.

The video about the beatings was pieced together from different places, Xinhua said on Tuesday, citing an unidentified official with the Tibetan regional government in China.

There has been no independent assessment of whether the video is authentic. In a statement sent via e-mail, Lobsang Nyandak, a representative of the Tibetan government in exile, said that the video was authentic.

The government did not directly address whether YouTube had been blocked. When asked about the matter at a news conference, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said: “Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact, it is just the opposite.”

Even as China steps up its censorship efforts, the country’s Internet participation is booming. Often, critics often find a way to avoid censors and debate controversial topics.

Ai Weiwei, a prominent Chinese artist, has been using his blog on Sina.com to criticize the government’s management of the rescue and relief efforts after the devastating earthquake in May in Sichuan Province.

In recent months, Beijing has announced major crackdowns on pornographic Web sites, even citing Google and other large companies for listing the sites on their search engines. Many critics say they believe that Beijing is using the word “pornography” as a rationale to eliminate Web sites that it deems troublesome.

YouTube has been blocked for varying periods of time in several countries, including Pakistan, Thailand and Turkey. These countries often state directly why they have acted.

David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai.