Wednesday's Wassail

Stop the presses. It's time for news. The stock market crashed on this day in 1929 beginning The Great Depression. First ball point pen goes on sale in 1945. Napster 2.0 launches today. We've had one unconfirmed report that installing it mucks up iTunes for Windows.

1. Another reason to upgrade to Panther. @Stake, an Internet security firm, is warning that systemic flaws in OS X make it vulnerable to local attacks. Panther fixes the problems, although @Stake says there's no reason a small patch couldn't be issued for earlier versions of the OS. Apple has already issued one security patch for Panther last night - but it's not clear whether it's related.
2. You lose some, you win some. The US Librarian of Congress has denied the EFF's request to copyright extensions that would allow fast-forwarding through commercials on DVDs, viewing region protected DVDs on US players, putting public domain movies on DVD, and cracking copy protection on audio CDs. According to PC World, the librarian did allow decrypting lists of blocked web sites in filtering software, "accessing e-books for which the publisher has disabled the read-aloud function, circumventing obsolete digital rights management devices that prevent access due to malfunction, and accessing computer programs and video games distributed in an obsolete format." The exemptions expire after three years. 321 Studios says it will appeal in Federal court.
3. The W3C is asking the patent office to reexamine Eolas's patent on key web technologies. That's the company that successfully sued Microsoft over active content extensions in Internet Explorer. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, warned that the patent "will cause cascades of incompatibility to ripple through the Web."
4. Slashdot reports that the Tennessee Super DMCA bill is back in hearings. The Tennessee Digital Freedom Network is on the case.
5. Also on Slashdot, Microsoft has fired a temp employee for posting a completely innocuous picture of new Mac G5s being delivered to the company in his blog. For crying out loud, Microsoft is the #1 Macintosh developer. What's so secret about them buying Macs?
6. The biggest solar flare in decades hit the earth yesterday and now I can't find my watch. Hmmm.