Wednesday's Wiki Word

Fire up the browsers boys, it's time for news. MGM bought the rights to The Wizard of Oz on this day in 1934. It's Republic Day in India. The republic was created in 1950. Happy birthday Paul Newman and Wayne Gretzky. "Bad things just blow in." OK he's just a college kid learning to do TV, but this Novice Weatherman must be the funniest video I've seen in a long while. (Be patient - it takes a while to load.) I'd hire him in a minute - as long as he doesn't get any better.

1. Forbes asks "why didn't they think of this sooner?" Microsoft has announced it will limit access to software updates to legal Windows users. Manual updates will require authentication by the middle of this year. Apparently people who use Windows's automatic update feature will not have to authenticate. To answer Forbes's question: because millions of unpatched copies of Windows pose a significant threat to the net.
2. Of course Microsoft may be getting a packet of loot from the 19-year old author of Blaster.B. Script kiddy Jeffrey Lee Parson is facing a three-year jail sentence and $626,000 in restitution for hacking a pathetic variant of the Blaster worm. The original author has never been caught.
3. Apple is pushing its first security patch of 2005 over OS X's Software Update. The patch fixes seven holes in Safari, ColorSync, Mail, PHP, libxml, and more.
4. Meanwhile Microsoft admits to yet another security hole in its Help system for Windows 2000 and XP, but does not yet have a patch. XP Service Pack 2 users are not vulnerable.
5. Two spammers have agreed to pay Earthlink an undisclosed amount and stop sending junk mail as part of a settlement with the ISP. The Alabama spammers, so called because they used phone lines in that state, were using stolen credit cards to create email accounts to send spam about herbal Viagra and other drugs. Spamhaus ranked them among its most prolific spammers.
6. According to the New York Post, satellite radio competitors Sirius and XM are reportedly in merger talks, but anti-trust regulations could be a showstopper.
7. The IAU has named an asteroid after the late author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Asteroid Douglasadams had been provisionally named 2001 DA42 - which should be decipherable to fans of the book. Other asteroids were named after Las Vegas, Sewanee, Tennessee, Bora-Bora and the Lithuanian city of Kaunas.