Friday Night Lights

Headed home in a little bit. But there's still time for a news update. Skylab was launched on this day in 1973. Gabriel Farenheit was born in 1686. Happy 60th Birthday George Lucas.

1. The German police continue to diss Sven J, the author of the Sasser worm and 18 Netsky variants. Now they're calling him a "script kiddy." (I'd love to know the German for that.) Sven says he originally wrote Netsky as an anti-virus (true - it removes Bagle). Apparently his poor programming skills created a monster instead. He will be tried as a juvenile and will likely avoid jail time.
2. And now there's a new worm that attacks Sasser infected computers. Dabber uses the FTP server installed by Sasser to install itself. Once embedded, Dabber allows backdoor access to the compromised system.
3. Yahoo is taking on Google on the email front. Yahoo Mail has announced it's going to up it's free storage from 6 to 100 megabytes. Paid users will get virtually unlimited storage.
4. CNN has switched from Google to Yahoo for it's on-site search tool.
5. Yahoo and Google agree on one thing: not listing WhenU. The adware company was removed from both search engines when it was accused of manipulating search results using a technique called "cloaking." WhenU said cloaking was used by an outside contractor and they've stopped doing it.
6. 2.6 million Americans have taken advantage of cell phone number portability to switch providers since the new rules went into effect in November.

Tune in tomorrow at 7:40a Eastern for my weekly visit with John Donabie on 1010 CFRB Toronto. And, of course, every Saturday and Sunday, noon to 3p Pacific on KFI 640 AM, Los Angeles.