Friday Fish Fry

Stand by for news. The last lunar mission, Apollo 17, came home today in 1972.

1. Microsoft has confirmed rumors that it's going into the online music sales business. The MSN Music Store will open some time next year. Meanwhile former Microsoftie, Rob Glaser, now head of Real Networks, has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for (insert Dr. Evil pinkie here) one billion dollars. Real claims Microsoft is -gasp- illegally using its Windows monopoly to limit consumer choice in media.
2. Wal-Mart launched its music download service today. They're offering WMA files for a cut-rate 88 cents.
3. The Dutch Supreme court has ruled that the makers of Kazaa can't be held liable for the illegal activities of its users.
4. Microsoft hasn't done it yet, so Openwares.org, an open source site, has released a patch for the URL spoofing vulnerability in Internet Explorer. The site also features test pages to see if you're vulnerable. FLASH: Openwares.org is down. According to The Register, the patch introduced more flaws than it fixed, including a buffer overflow flaw, memory leak, and enabled a spyware DLL. Makes Microsoft look good, doesn't it.
5. The British built Beagle II has separated from the mother ship and now begins its descent toward Mars. The lander is scheduled to touchdown Christmas Day. Its US brother will arrive next month. Watch the cool flash animations at NASA.gov.
6. Unfortunately, 13 NASA web sites were defaced by a Brazilian anti-war group yesterday. NASA.gov was not hit.
7. BusinessWeek Online is getting into the sketchy Apple rumor business. Columnist Alex Salkever predicts Apple will ship a G5 laptop next year based on a new low power chip IBM appears to be developing for its Blade servers. Sounds good to me.
8. In a breakthrough for pasty-faced gamers everywhere, a Chinese court has ordered an online gaming company to return virtual goods, including a stockpile of imaginary bio-chemical weapons, to a player whose account was looted by hackers.