Monday Meanderings

Good morning! Put down that bagel, Ramadan begins today. The US Navy was established on this day in 1775. New York's IRT subway opened in 1904. DuPont names its new synthetic fiber "nylon" in 1938. IBM introduces EGA in 1982. There officially launches today.

1. AOL is disabling the Windows Messenger service on customer's computers without warning. The company says it's taking this action due to spam and an MSBlast-like worm that uses Messenger. When you launch AOL it changes the settings on your PC, permanently. You can re-enable if you know what you're doing. I agree this service is worthless for home users and poses a huge problem, that's why we alerted people to it over a year ago, but should AOL be taking it upon itself to change people's Windows settings without asking them? Seems a bit intrusive. Microsoft is reported to be considering disabling Messenger in SP-1.
2. California wins its first anti-spam judgement. $2 million against PW Marketing of LA for sending out spamming how-to guides.
3. Dell will be back at Comdex for the first time in six years. IBM and Intel will also have a presence. The conference which begins November 16 in Las Vegas will be much smaller than in years past, though. 50,000 are expected to attend, down from 200,000 at its peak, and there will be 500 exhibitors in just one hall at the LVCC.
4. Dell has alsoannounced its own iPod clone, the Dell DJ. $249 for 15GB (great price!), $329 for 20 GB, it syncs with MusicMatch. No listing on the Dell site, yet.
5. Two MIT students have created an online music library any student can listen to over the university's cable TV network for free. The Library Access to Music Project, LAMP, is in effect a 12 channel campus radio station with 3,500 CDs, and is apparently legal. The students say they'll release the software to any other school that wants it.
6. 60% of email users say they've curtailed their use of the medium in "a big way" due to the flood of spam. However, 7% of e-mail users said they had ordered a product or service that was offered in an unsolicited e-mail, and 33 percent had clicked on a link to get more information. Doh!
7. Yoshi's next mod: hack traffic lights so you never see red again.

Friday Frights

I'm taking the day off to work on some projects at home, but the news must go on. Happy Halloween. I'm already in costume, as you can see above. Where's yours? Pumpkins and power tools - now there's a match made in Hell. Toyota USA was created on this day in 1957. First American models were the Toyopet Crown and Land Cruiser.

1. The RIAA is back in court with 80 new lawsuits. The association mailed 204 notices a few weeks ago. 124 people settled. ""The overwhelming majority of those who received the notification letter contacted us and were eager to resolve the claims," says President Cary Sherman. We'll see the rest in court. Meanwhile, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, the use of Kazaa has dropped from a high of seven million last June to just 3.2 million this month. Which is weird because Download.com says 2.1 million copies were downloaded just last week. Could Nielsen be undercounting?
2. The San Jose Mercury News says Friendster spurned a $30 million buyout from Google, and took $13 million in VC instead. Have these guys learned nothing?
3. Apparently Microsoft has shell envy. According to one blogger, at PDC Microsoft showed a new command line interface slated for Longhorn called Monad.
4. Mysterious white blotches are marring the displays on some new 15" Powerbooks.
5. China's new richest man is Internet entrepreneur, Ding Lei. But according to the Guardian, it's not the best list to make.

Monday's Meander

Another week, another news feed. On this day in 1679 Europe panicked over the close approach of a comet. The first national automobile show debuted in Madison Square Garden in 1900. Laika, the first space dog, was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Happy Birthday to the Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792). Today's daily productivity killer: The 80's Lyrics Quiz. "I'll love you with all the joy of living until the lights go out in ________ __________."

1. Mimail.C is on the loose and spreading fast. Subject line: Our private photos. The virus is in an attached .zip file. Now who could resist that? Open the zip and it unpacks photos.jpg.exe and runs it. Once installed the virus launches a DDoS attack against anti-spam sites.
2. Bill Gates tells ITBusiness that Microsoft code is "closer to perfect" but that if you'd been running a firewall and software updates you wouldn't have had any problems. In other words, it's all your fault.
3. Server shipments show double digit growth for third consecutive quarter. HP is #1, followed by Dell, IBM, and a setting Sun.
4. Apple's Panther problems are traced to external Firewire 800 drives with Oxford bridge chips. Apple says eject the drive before installing or using Panther.
5. Scarier than the Halloween memo, Friday's rumor that Microsoft planned to acquire Google. With an IPO in the offing I'm sure Larry and Sergei quickly spurned the approach from the Evil Empire. QOTD: Would you trust a Microsoft Google?

Wednesday's Whetstone

Hello, Neo. The Matrix Revolutions opens today. It's Guy Fawkes Day in Britain. Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for trying to vote in 1872. Happy Birthday Roy Rogers, Ike Turner, and Art Garfunkel.

1. As expected, the FCC has voted 5-0 in favor of "broadcast flag" rules that will require that all devices capable of receiving digital TV signals come equipped with anti-piracy protection to keep flagged programs from being copied. By July 1, 2005 all TVs, VCRs, DVD players, and PCs must include anti-copying measures that prevent redistribution of flagged material. How long before these measures are cracked and defeated? Does anyone not know how to defeat region-encoding?
2. Microsoft is offering $250,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest of the creators of MSBlast and SoBig. News.com says this is the first time a company has offered a reward for the capture of cybercriminals.
3. The revolution is well on its way. Legal downloads have exceeded CD single sales in the US since the end of June by nearly 2 to 1.
4. Intel claims that it has saved Moore's law with the discovery of two new chip materials.
5. As we reported on the show yesterday, Novell is back in the Linux business. The company, which already owns Ximian, is offering $210 million for Germany-based SuSE Linux. IBM pitches in $50 million. With Big Blue's backing, the #2 Linux poses a real threat to #1 Red Hat. Newsforge has the morning after analysis.
6. Xbox Next will have G5 like chips from IBM inside, graphics from ATI, and a chipset from SIS. Don't expect anything before 2005, though. Just proves that gaming is now on the cutting edge of hardware innovation.
7. Speaking of gaming machines, Sony has announced a new low cost handheld for late next year that will do everything but change the baby. The dual-processor PSP is a GameBoy competitor that will include a 16:9 24-bit screen, iPod like features, and maybe even a cell phone.

Thursday's Thuringer

Stand by for news. The first telegraphic link between New York and San Francisco was established on this day in 1872, a by-product of the transcontinental railroad. RCA displays TV for the press for the first time in 1936. The first commercial television station, WGY Schenectady, begins operation three years later. The first hydrogen bomb was detonated on Eniwetok Atoll in 1952. You still wouldn't want to live there.

1. It looks like the tech slump may be over. Chip sales revenue rose 15.8% this year and the industry is forecasting even more robust growth in 2004. Expect prices to grow, as well, in response.
2. If you thought the 100,000,000 songs from the iTunes store Pepsi is giving away was a lot, how about 1,000,000,000 songs? According the the NY Post, McDonald's is set to announce a one billion song giveaway in the near future. Both companies will pay the full 99 cent price for the songs, so this could be a huge win for Apple not to mention a big kickstart to legal music downloads.
3. Whoa. Steve Jobs tells financial analysts Apple could easily "port Panther to any processor," including Intel, but they're happy with the PowerPC chips right now. He also says Jaguar is already where Microsoft hopes to be in 2005 with Longhorn.
4. That didn't take long. Critical security patches have been issued for both Panther and Office 2003 already. Apple's software update will automatically patch Panther. You can get the Office fix from Microsoft.
5. The FTC has issues its first Do Not Call fines. The telemarketer to first break the rule? AT&T. They face penalties of $780,000. That's ten grand per call. Alrighty then.
6. Kevin Rose first publicized the Windows Messenger hole in March 2002. Microsoft ignored us. Now the FTC is set to make a public statement on Messenger popups today. Microsoft is finally considering disabling the feature. We hate to say we told you so but...
7. Earthlink says it's going to collect more customer information so it can "better market to them." How thoughtful. Earthlink will collect items like age, gender, education and marital status, in addition to the name, address and credit card number they already have. Les Seagraves, EarthLink's chief privacy officer, says "We don't know a lot about our customers at this point." But you can bet they'd like to. Opt out in the My Account area quick.
8. Running scared? You bet! According to NPD, 1.4 million households deleted their entire digital music collection in August.
9. NTT DoCoMo, the Japanese telecom, has created a wristwatch phone that uses your finger as the earpiece. You answer the phone by touching your thumb and forefinger together. You listen by sticking your finger in your ear. The microphone is in the wristband. NTT DoCoMi has not set a date for the release of the "Finger Whisper" phone. Is there really a market for a phone that makes its users stick their fingers in their ears?
10. Great news. BBC radio has announced it will be producing a sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, based on the late Douglas Adams's last three books. The original cast will return. H2G2 was first produced for radio and the original episodes are cult classics. A six-part adaptation of Life, the Universe and Everything will air this spring, followed by 8 episodes based on So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless to air in late 2004. A movie version of H2G2 is also in the works.