Tuesday Toonage

Today's news, now with podcaster flavor. (Download the five minute audio version as a 1MB MP3 or subscribe to the RSS audio feed.) Congratulations to our three new Nobel Laureates. David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek, researchers at UCSB, the California Institute of Technology and MIT respectively, won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for their exploration of the force that binds particles inside the atomic nucleus. Steve Jobs is back to work at Apple after his successful cancer surgery. Ray Kroc was born on this day in 1902. Space Cowboy Steve Miller is 61. The first World Series radio broadcast was on this day in 1921. PBS became a network in 1970.

1. Original Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper passed away yesterday at his home in Ventura. He was 77. He is survived by three of the original seven Right Stuff astronauts: John Glenn, Scott Carpenter and Wally Schirra.
2. Bill Gates told a crowd in Silicon Valley that Microsoft is working on its own anti-spyware program. Gates finally admitted that the naive Windows security model doesn't work: "We thought that if we told users: 'This might be dangerous, think about it,' that people would think about it." But users ended up receiving so many warnings that they started to ignore them altogether, he said. Gates finally realized the scope of the problem when he was forced to remove spyware from his home computer. How long before he installs Linux at home?
3. AT&T is looking on doing it at work. The company is testing Linux to replace Windows on its 70,000 PCs. CIO Hossein Eslambolchi said "We have had more viruses attacking PCs in the last six months than in the previous 10 years.'' He'll make a decision by the end of next year.
4. Meanwhile security experts are worried that a proposed feature in Microsoft's next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, will make writing viruses even easier. Microsoft Shell is a powerful new scripting language which will allow developers or administrators to configure Windows systems using text commands and scripts. Microsoft says its security model will prevent viruses from using the shell. See story two above.
5. Here's a new way to make money with spam. There's a scam e-mail going around which uses a bogus US presidential poll to con you out of $1.99 a minute. The junk e-mail invites people to dial a premium rate number to express their support for President George W Bush. The poll is phony - the call (to the Czech Republic) costs $2 a minute.
6. Can't wait to get home to buy a song? AT&T has opened a music store for mobile phone users. Don't know the name of the song? Hold the phone close to a speaker and the Music ID will tell you it's name and allow you to buy it. 99 cents a song. $10 per CD. You can download the song when you get home.

Wednesday Wonkage

The Amercian Chess Association was formed on this day in 1857 and held the first major chess tournament in the US. Thomas Edison showed his first motion picture in 1889. The first talkie, The Jazz Singer, premiered in 1927.

1. The US House of Representatives voted 399-1 to crack down on spyware. The bill requires spyware companies to get customer permission before loading software on their machine, and prohibits browser hijackers, keystroke loggers, and sticky pop-up ads. Representatives vote today on another bill that mandates jail time for violators.
2. AMD has announced dual core chips that the company says perform 125-140% faster than dual processor systems. AMD underclocks the chips to keep power consumption under 95 watts. Each 64-bit core contains a whopping 1MB of L2 cache but both share a single interface to RAM - a possible bottleneck. Expect the chips some time next year.
3. The other shoe drops. After Steve Ballmer's prediction on Monday that an IP-enabled set-top box would dominate the digital media market, Microsoft announced a new MSN TV on Tuesday, a - you guessed it - IP-enabled set-top box. The $200 box has no hard drive, but it does come with 128MB of RAM and 64MB of flash, Wi-Fi and ethernet connectivity, slots for camera flash cards. Users will have to pay a monthly fee to use it, however.
4. Wikis are hot all of a sudden. A new Palo Alto startup, JotSpot, offers its Java-based wiki sites free for the first three months. It's the brain child of two former founders of Excite. Another wiki provider, Socialtext, launched in August. Both received venture capital - looks like "social software" is the next buzz phrase. All I can say is that it sure beats Lotus Notes.
5. XBox-Scene does it again. They've got Mac OS X running on an X-Box. Now that's a hack.
6. Suse 9.2 ships today with kernel 2.6, Evolution 2, and improved wireless support.
7. Evan is quitting . The inventor of Blogger six years ago has announced he will leave the company, 20 months after its acquisition by Google.

Thursday's Throaty Moans

Bababooey, it's time for news. The dark side of Moon was seen for first time on this day in 1959. American Bandstand premiered in 1957. The MPAA adopted the film rating system in 1968. Adam Rich was arrested for stealing hypodermic needles in 1991. Happy Birthday physicist Neils Bohr, 1885 and Bishop Desmond Tutu, 1931. John Cougar Mellencamp is 53.

1. The Senate Judiciary Committe votes on the Induce Act this afternoon. The highly controversial bill, created by and for the RIAA, makes fundamental changes to the copyright law, making it illegal to distribute any product that can be used to steal music or movies - that means Kazaa and Morpheus, of course, but also DVD recorders, CD burners, and even the iPod. This bill would jeopardize the entire consumer electronic industry. If it's voted out of committee the Senate is expected to take it up after the November election recess. Contact your member of Congress today.
2. Stern's doing it. As expected, the syndicated radio shock jock announced Wednesday that he's moving the lucrative program to satellite radio provider Sirius starting January 1, 2006. The five year, multimillion dollar deal is a big blow to Infinity broadcasting, Stern's current employer, and an even bigger boost for Sirius. There's a giant ad for Sirius on Stern's site saying "some things should be censored, just not your radio." Sirius says the show will cost $100 million a year to produce.
3. Microsoft has released a patch and a scan tool for TV Media, a piece of spyware that was causing Service Pack 2 to blue screen. Spyware seems to be the number one cause of SP-2 issues and Microsoft is recommending scanning for spyware before attempting the upgrade.
4. Microsoft also warned webmasters this morning of a flaw in ASP.NET that could give attackers access to password protected areas of web sites. There is no fix as yet for the bug which affects 2.9 million active sites.
5. Vice President Cheney slipped when he sent debate viewers to factcheck.com Tuesday night. It's Factcheck.org for one thing. For another, the dot-com site now sends surfers to financier George Soros's anti-Bush site. Frankly, factcheck.org is not much better. It does point out some inaccuracies in John Edwards's debate claims, but it's harder on the Vice President.
6. Amazon launched Google competitor A9 last week. Turnabout is fair play. Google is putting book pages online, ala Amazon. print.google.com lets you search through the handful of books they now have online, but they're soliciting publishers for more.
7. Netscape founder Marc Andreesen told the Web 2.0 conference yesterday that he expects Microsoft to take aim at Mozilla and Apple's Safari real soon now. "If I were them I'd take another look, and I would see how I could screw with other people's businesses with this monopoly (I) have," he said.
8. Just when you thought the DVD camcorder was dead, Sony, Sharp, and Panasonic have announced they'll offer camcorders with 15GB Blu-ray DVD recorders built-in some time next year. The cameras would likely be aimed at the HD prosumer crowd. Give me a hard drive instead.
9. Skype says it's going to target businesses next with its free peer-to-peer Internet telephony software. Skype for Business will include expanded conference calling, SkypePlus voice mail and SkypeIn, for receiving calls from POTS phones.
10. Jib Jab's new video, Dixie, premieres on Leno tonight then will be available online at jibjab.com. In addition to this years presidential candidates, the 80 second animated film features John Ashcroft, Dan Rather, Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh and Jane Fonda. Atom films is stocking up on bandwidth even as we speak.

Listen in tomorrow at 8:35a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles.

Friday's Futurama

News is now... Ozzie married Harriet in 1935. Happy Birthday! Chevy Chase is 61. Sigourney Weaver is 55.

1. More good news from Congress. The House passed anonther anti-spyware bill, its second in three days, adding penalties of up to five years in prison for people convicted of installing the bogies without a computer user's permission. The "Internet Spyware Prevention Act," passed 415-0.
2. And the FTC is suing its first spyware companies. The FTC requested a temporary restraining order against Seismic Entertainment Productions, Smartbot.Net, and uber-spammer, Sanford Wallace, claiming the companies secretly installed software that pops-up dozens of ads, and then sends a message offering to stop the pop-ups with $30 software. Nice.
3. Sun and Kodak have settled out of court. Sun will pay Kodak $92 million to license the patents Kodak says were infringed by Java. Kodak was asking for one billion.
4. Dell is recalling some of its laptop power adapters because they can overheat posing a fire hazard. 4.4 million AC adapters sold between September 1998 and February 2002 are affected.
5. Secunia is reporting that there is a critical flaw in Microsoft Word for Windows 2000 and possibly 2002 that could allow a malicious Word document to place a trojan horse on your system. No patch from Microsoft as yet.
6. Now that the Ansari X-Prize has been won, it's time for a new X-Prize - this time aimed at stimulating developments in technology. The WTN X-Prize hasn't yet specified the challenges or prize amounts.
7. Google is testing a new SMS search. Send your query as a text message from your cell phone and Google will reply. The number is 46645 (GOOGL on most phones).
8. ThinkSecret claims Apple is in production of a new 60GB PhotoPod - an iPod with a color screen and photo synchronization software that works with Apple's iPhoto. The pod will reputedly have a video out connector for playing slide shows on your TV. Toshiba has confirmed that Apple has ordered its 60GB mini-drive "in quantity."

Tune in tomorrow at 7:45a Eastern for my weekly visit with John Donabie on 1010 CFRB Toronto. And, of course, listen to my show every Saturday and Sunday, noon to 3p Pacific on KFI, Los Angeles.

Wednesday in Bill Gates's America

Some big anniversaries in today's Tech News... Netscape turns 10 today. According to the original press release, the browser was "optimized to run smoothly over 14.4 kilobit/second modems." And OpenOffice.org turns four today.

1. Microsoft has released 10 new security fixes - seven of them critical. Run Windows Update kids. One of the patches fixes the JPEG patch released last month because it didn't work on machines with Office XP. Surprise!
2. But Bill Gates isn't moping over the miscue. His date for the Windows XP Media Center 2005 roll-out on Tuesday was Queen Latifah. Gates said, "Today, the dream of digital entertainment becomes a reality." Today? Really? Wow. When asked "what about Apple?" in an interview with USA Today, Gates said, "We have a more ambitious view of software than they do." I believe that's true. When asked about the holes in Internet Explorer Gates said, "Understand those are cases where you are downloading third-party software."
3. The Funner worm is spreading itself using MSN Messenger. It spreads itself as a file named funny.exe, modifies the registry, changes the Hosts file, then sends itself to entries in the host machine's Messenger buddy list. It's not just fun, it's Funner.
4. PayPal's technical issues are mostly resolved. The electronic payment service was up and down all weekend and early this week due to an upgrade that went awry.
5. Motorola is adding credit card capabilities to its newest phones. You'll be able to pass the phone over a reader in stores and restaurants to pay for goods. A password is required to authorize the transaction. The company is currently testing the technology in 100 phones and will expand the tests nationwide by the end of the year. Nokia has been testing PayPass in its phones since May 2003.
6. But wait. Who needs a phone? The FDA has approved the implantation of VeriChips in humans. The RFID chips are the size of a grain of rice and can contain a patient's medical records. Or, as in the case of some Spanish club hoppers, credit card information to speed the purchase of drinks and food.
7. Virgin announced a 5GB MP3 player to compete with the iPod Tuesday. The $249 player weighs 3.1 ounces and supports MP3 and WMA formats.
8. Dell's new Axim X50v PDA also plays MP3 and WMA files on its 624Mhz processor, runs PocketPC 2003SE and supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The $499 handheld comes with 64MB of RAM, 128MB of flash, a 480x640 display, and CF and SD slots. This thing is more powerful than my first dozen computers.
9. Maui X-Stream has announced Cherry OS, a Mac OS X emulator for Windows. The $49 program claims to run Panther on a PC. I find this very hard to believe, but I'm not willing to waste $50 to find out. If it is true, the authors will be shut down before you read this. In order to emulate a Mac you'd have to copy a considerable amount of proprietary Apple software and firmware. It seems highly unlikely that a lone programmer in Hawai'i could reverse engineer such a significant amount of code.