News for Thursday

It's One Unwired Day® today. Celebrate at festivals nationwide. Intel also has a Zagat Survey of Wi-Fi Hotspots. (It's a PDF darn it.) The World Beard Championship is only five weeks away. Start growing now!

• RIAA drops lawsuit against granny who, they claimed, shared 2000 songs including Trick Daddy's "I'm A Thug." She doesn't even use Kazaa - she's on a Mac. Record companies say "we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant." Senator Brownback says this calls into question the RIAA's congressional testimony that the music industry was not unfairly targeting alleged downloaders. The problem is the lack of due process in DMCA subpoenas. "I call on my colleagues in the Senate to join with me in working to correct this threat to privacy and personal safety before we witness the use of non-judicially reviewed information subpoenas to more severe effect than an improper lawsuit," said Brownback. Maybe Senator Brownback needs to play a round of "Starving Artist."
• Just a week before the national Do Not Call registry was to go into effect, a Federal judge strikes it down, saying the FTC went too far.
• AOL subject to Messenger spam over UDP port 1026 as well as 135. Thieves using pop-ups to steal AOL passwords, credit card info, and more. Go to AOL Keyword "Pop-Up" for a program that disables Windows Messenger. Microsoft says you should only disable Net Send as a last resort(!) and recommends a firewall instead. Hunh?
• Verisign has settled with the FTC over its deceptive campaign (ended a year ago) that tricked people into transferring to Verisign. These guys never give up, do they?
• BeOS lives. BeOS Max version 3.0 shipped yesterday. Free. We should do a review.