Tech News for Friday

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day. Reclaim those pirated words (like Pirate) with Word Pirates. And now the news...

• New email virus poses as patch from Microsoft. Say it with me... Don't open attachments. Especially if they claim to be from Bill Gates. This one also uses the MIME exploit to execute automatically on unpatched systems. Updated anti-virus signatures are available from most vendors already.
• Senator Sam Brownback introduces bill to repeal anti-privacy clause of DMCA. New bill says "An Internet access service may not be compelled to make available to a manufacturer of a digital media product or its representative the identity or personal information of a subscriber or user of its service" unless criminal or civil action is already pending. Currently the DMCA allows any copyright holder to demand the name and address of any Internet user without filing suit.
• Search engine Netster sues Verisign for $100 million over controversial SiteFinder redirect service (see yesterday).
• Consumers are suing Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba over misstating hard drive capacities. Companies use decimal to describe size, computers use binary so that a drive described as 160 GB really has less than 150 GB usable storage.
• Tough California anti-spam legislation awaits signature from Governor Davis. The measure bans unsolicited commercial e-mail unless the sender has a business relationship with the receiver. It covers e-mail either sent from California or to California residents. Those receiving unsolicited e-mail have the right to sue for $1,000 per message, up to $1 million.
• New York Times/CBS Poll says file sharing has dropped 5% since lawsuits. Only 36% of respondents said file sharing is always wrong. [free registration required]

News for Tuesday

It's Tuesday. Merkle's Boner occured on this day in 1908 and ABC's first color TV series, The Jetsons, debuted in 1962. Happy Birthday, Bruuuuuce.

• Watch out Intel, Athlon 64 ships today. Tom's Hardware says AMD wins PR battle, but says enthusiasts are giving AMD an interest free loan until 64-bit software appears. Interesting. We'll have benchmarks tonight.
• Microsoft responds by announcing a beta test version of 64-bit Windows XP but it won't ship until the first half of 2004.
• Yahoo opens a Froogle like comparison shopping site.
• Google trials local search service on Google Labs. Enter address and search term to narrow to specific location. You get a map in the results, too!
• Microsoft settles with Massachusetts for (insert Dr. Evil look here) one million dollars to pay legal fees. Mass was the last state still holding out for harsher penalties in the DOJ vs Microsoft case.
• BMG Entertainment plans to release a copy protected compact disc today that allows consumers to download, email, and burn songs up to three times. Why three copies? SunnComm Copy protection COO William Whitmore says, "Well, we could have made it zero copies. "
• Galileo ended its 14 year mission Sunday with fiery crash onto Jupiter. Researchers hailed the craft as one of the most successful ventures in the history of space exploration.
• Now we've got a fight. Verisign says hell no we won't go.

Wednesday's News

CompuServe started on this day in 1979.

• October 14 Microsoft will close its free unsupervised MSN chat rooms. MS says it's to protect children from being targeted by pedophiles and being bombarded with pornographic messages and spam, but critics say it's purely a financial decision since paid chat rooms will continue. And, of course, there's always IRC.
• California Governor Gray Davis signs anti-spam measure. It's the strongest in the US, allowing penalties of up to $1000 per message, $1 million per campaign, to junk emailers who don't have an existing business relationship with their victims. Both spam services and the companies advertised are liable. Individuals and ISPs can also sue.Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association says in the New York Times, "This is a group of politicians trying to cash in on a popular issue and will create more confusion and problems than solutions." It may be unconstitutional, too, since it's an attempt by a state to regulate interstate commerce.
• Acacia Research shuts down Go Entertainment over the weekend claiming patent violations, sending a chill over the entire streaming media industry. "All the methods we have looked at for streaming audio and video over the Internet are covered by our patents," said Rob Berman, senior vice president and general counsel for the company. Acacia is demanding license fees from companies that stream media.
• Meanwhile, the EU approves software patents similar to the US over strenuous objections of Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
• HP indemnifies HP Linux users from SCO lawsuit.
• Comcast sent letters to 1% of its users this summer saying they're using too much bandwidth, but won't say what the limits are. Cox allows 2GB per day. Road Runner 40 GB per month. Possible poll question: Should there be a limit on unlimited Internet service?
• Apple pulls 10.2.8 update saying some Power Mac G4 users suffered Ethernet issues when they applied it. Worked great for me.
• Report by anti-Microsoft group led by Oracle, AOL, and Sun, says that continued reliance on Microsoft Windows threatens national security. Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer for network monitoring service Counterpane Internet Security and one of the paper's three authors says Microsoft is "using security technologies to extend [its] monopolies."

Friday Update

Call for Help is dark today for our monthly planning meetings. OK we're really just busy downloading the new Matrix: Revolutions trailer. Patrick is on vacation, racing trucks; Kevin Rose will fill-in for him on tonight's The Screen Savers. Jack LaLanne is 89. Abbey Road, the last album the Beatles recorded as a group, was released on this day in 1969.

• The author of a report critical of Microsoft's dominance has been fired by his company. Security firm @Stake said that CTO, Daniel R. Geer Jr.'s participation in preparation of the report was not sanctioned by the firm, and that "the values and opinions of the report are not in line with [@Stake's] views." Oh yeah, and Microsoft just happens to be a client. CIO Magazine had already refused to assist the CCIA in distributing the report, saying it was "too sensitive." Bet you want to read it now, don't you? (It's in this PDF alas.)
• The Register says Sobig is being used to target anti-spam sites with DDoS attacks. SPEWS, Monkeys.com and Compu.Net blacklisting sites have been closed. Spamhaus is under constant attack. In addition, Messagelabs says 70% of spam is coming through open proxies - half of which are created by trojans Sobig, Fizzer, and BugBear.
• As we reported yesterday, Congress acted with unusual alacrity and unanimity to save the Do Not Call registry, but now a second judge has ruled that the list blocking telemarketing calls violates the First Amendment. Can Congress repeal that overnight?
• The New York Times has an interview with Sarah Ward, the retired school teacher who the RIAA wrongly accused of sharing hip-hop. It's very disturbing. These lawsuits smack of a police state. Instead of Orwell's Thought Police, we have the Copyright Police, and they're clearly out of control.
• Meanwhile major library organizations file brief in support of Morpheus and Grokster. Wow.
• Send spam, go to jail. Senate Judiciary Committee approves a bill that includes jail time for spammers but it's unlikely that Congress will have time to pass it before adjourning. Congress could never pass a bill in just a week, could it? Hmmmm.
• House effectively kills TIA by eliminating it from the budget. I guess Admiral Poindexter will have to find work other than spying on Americans. Sen. Ron Wyden told c|net that the "program that would have been the biggest and most intrusive surveillance program in the history of the United States will be no more. The lights are going out at the office." The Senate still has to approve.
• On the heels of Yahoo's new shopping search service, Amazon says it's going to start a Pricewatch style site, too.
• The dog genome has been mapped. Craig Ventner donated the genes of his poodle, Shadow, for the effort.

Moanday's News

Tonight you'll have a rare chance to spot Uranus. No I won't be saying that on TV.

• A flaw in Internet Explorer that was thought fixed is still there, leaving all users vulnerable to rogue web pages. One exploit places huge charges on your phone bill. The fix: turn off ActiveX until Microsoft issues a patch, then turn it back on to visit Windows Update. This is getting ridiculous.
• Rollin' up the ribbon clerks. Investigators in Seattle have arrested another teenager for creating an MSBlaster variant.
• Musicmatch introduces iTunes-like service for US Windows users. Musicmatch Downloads offers songs for 99¢ and whole CDs for ten bucks. Songs are in WMA format but can be burned to disc and copied to WMA compatible MP3 players. Dell plans music store, too.
• Yahoo is blocking Trillian.
• Segway is recalling all 6,000 scooters sold for safety fix. Maybe it's time to build your own.