Getaway Day News

Sure I'm getting on a plane in an hour. But I wouldn't leave you without a news summary! The Screen Savers is dark today since Patrick and I are on the road. Kevin Rose will fill-in for me on Call for Help for the very first time. Help him out with some good questions, today at 3p Eastern.

• An LA woman who was the victim of identity theft has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for Windows' security flaws. She claims that the disclaimers in Microsoft's licence agreements constitute an unfair business practice under California law, because consumers have little choice but to use Microsoft software. You go girl! Microsoft says the lawsuit misses the point. The attacks aren't their fault. It's the evil-doers!
• Speaking of evil-doers, Valve acknowledges that the Half-Life 2 source code was indeed stolen. Managing Director Gabe Newell says his email was hacked, and keystroke loggers were installed at Valve HQ. And Valve and Steam have been DoS attacked for the past year. Newell asks anyone with information about the hack to email helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. Hey it's one thing to hack a 50 year old mother of two, but stay away from our games, dude.
• Better start stocking up on tuna fish. New Federal sentencing guidelines will significantly increase jail time for hackers starting next month. Mitnick says it won't make a difference. "I really can't see people researching what the penalties are before they do something."
• Fairfax county, VA, has started putting the names of vehicle tax cheats online. You can even turn in your neighbors online.
• Did you see that? New Scientist has reported the closest approach by an asteroid ever recorded. An asteroid the size of a small house whizzed by on September 27, just 88,000 kilometers away.
• Traffic reporters say the economy must be getting better because Silicon Valley traffic is getting worse. That reminds me, I've got a flight to catch. I'm in NYC Monday so there probably won't be a news summary, but I'll be back on Tuesday. See you then.

Today's News

I'm back, just in time for Marriage Protection Week. Wait 'til I tell my wife. Maybe I'll write a poem for her like President Bush did for Laura. Ford started the first assembly line on this day in 1913. USSR's Luna 3 satellite shows far side of the moon for the first time in 1959. The MPAA started rating films in 1968. And it's Election Day in California. Allow a little extra time for voting; the 135 candidates for governor are in random order on the ballot. I sent in my absentee ballot last week voting against the recall. No matter what you think of Gray Davis, the recall process just doesn't work, as we'll learn when Arnold is elected and then recalled within six months. And now the tech news...

• 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco yesterday instructed the FCC to reconsider its policy requiring DSL providers to open their networks but exempting cable modem providers. The ruling could mean that cable companies will have to offer other ISPs access to their broadband service. The FCC will appeal.
• Micrsosoft reveals planned changes in Internet Explorer in response to Eolas patent victory. Users will be prompted each time an ActiveX control is to be loaded. Content providers are encouraged to provide data in non-ActiveX form, as well. Well it's about time - ActiveX is a proprietary standard that leaves out all non-Windows users. It's insecure, to boot.
• Here's one way to beat Linux. Microsoft is working with Phoenix to put DRM and other parts of Windows into the BIOS.
• ICANN stands up to Verisign, and wins, at least temporarily.
• US Supreme Court hands RAMBUS a victory in fraud case. The company still faces civil charges from the FTC over not disclosing its pending patents to memory standards group. The group unwittingly incorporated RAMBUS technologies into the standard and now RAMBUS is demanding royalties from makers of DDR and SDRAM.
• Sony shows PSX in Japan. Available later this year in Japan, the product may debut elsewhere by next year. The $720 PSX combines Tivo-like functions with a PS/2 and DVD player.
• Charter sues recording industry over P2P subpoenas.
• New Thinkpads have built-in shock protection.
• Survey says, only 50,000 blogs are updated daily and most bloggers give up within one year. Perseus Development Corp. randomly surveyed 3,634 of the estimated 4.12 million blogs online and found that two-thirds hadn't been updated in over two months. Over one million blogs only contained a single day's posts. Active blogs were updated on average every 14 days. Only 106,579 of the hosted blogs were updated on average at least once a week. Fewer than 50,000 were updated daily. There's lots more in the report - it's interesting reading. QOTD: When's the last time you updated your blog.

News for Wednesday

Good morning, Governor Schwarzenegger, Adolf is on line one for you. At least we've finally got a Kennedy in the state house. I guess our official Screen Savers election projection was wrong, but hey, we were first and that's what counts. Georgy Russell did get 1,904 votes and came in 33rd in a field of 135. Doesn't she deserve a cabinet post or something for that? Do you find it at all depressing that some guy named George B. Schwartzman got over 10,000 votes because his name looked like Schwarzenegger? Is it too late to emmigrate to Canada? Mrs. O'Leary's cow starts the Great Chicago Fire on this day in 1871. The DJIA begins in 1876. Ozzie marries Harriet in 1937. In today's technology news...

• A Princeton student discovers how to disable SunComm's audio CD copy protection as used by BMG. Just press the Shift key when you insert the CD guys. BMG says, we knew that.
• The Federal Do Not Call list is a go. Again.  
• Vonage Victory. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Minnesota can't regulate VoIP services as they do phone companies.
• Microsoft patents that little IM trick that shows when the other guy is typing.
• President Bush has a blog with its own RSS 1.0 and 2.0 feeds and this lovely election countdown clock, too. Someone on the campaign is paying attention.
• Apple announces Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) ship date: October 24. Upgrade will cost $129. -gulp- It also releases new versions of iCal and iSync.
• Nokia phones are bursting into flames.
• Chrysler puts Bluetooth into British car for safer hands free. Unless it bursts into flames, that is.
• HalfLife 2's source code leak could slow the game's release as key technologies are rewritten to prevent cheating.
• Disney's MovieBeam service puts 100 movies in a set top box. You get 10 new movies a week all for $7 a month and $2.50 to $4 per flick.
• Interesting article in yesterday's USA Today about how old line companies like Motorola, Kodak, and Xerox are trying to re-invent themselves for survival in the new era. QOTD: Can old dogs learn new tricks?
• California may have The Gubinator but the UK has Angle-Grinder Man, a masked super hero who cuts wheel clamps from cars in London.

Focus Groups Never Lie

I've been re-reading George Gilder's fascinating Telecosm and I came across this telling anecdote about focus groups. In 1980 when Bob Metcalfe, inventer of Ethernet, came to pitch the industrial megacorporation General Electric on behalf of his fledgling company 3COM, GE executives explained that they had done considerable research on the new personal computer and networking industries. In focus groups composed of GE customers held all over the country, executives were told over and over that there was no consumer interest in personal computers. PCs, the focus groups said, only were of interest to businesses. And the same could be said for networking. The GE execs came to the conclusion that there was no home PC market, and never would be. They decided to stick with refrigerators, nuclear reactors, and light bulbs, and to this day the company has never touched in personal computing or networking thereby missing the fastest growing businesses in the past 20 years.

News for Thursday

Good morning. It's day two of California held hostage. OK Arnold, where's my Hummer? Yale University was chartered on this day in 1701. The first two-way telephone conversation occurred in 1878. The first consumer use of home banking by computer occurred in 1980 in Knoxville, Tennessee. John Lennon was born on this day in 1940. Imagine.

1. SANS and Homeland Security have released their annual Top 20 Security Vulnerabilities list, for the first time tagging Outlook and P2P software as threats. The SANS recommendations include instructions on how to uninstall Outlook saying its "embedded automation features are at odds with the built-in security controls" which are "often disregarded by end users" anyway.
2. The US House of Representatives is taking the recommendations to heart. They voted yesterday to reduce security risks from P2P software on government computers. That should do the trick.
3. Eolas isn't waiting for Microsoft to redesign Internet Explorer. The company asked a judge yesterday to block further shipments of IE until Microsoft pays up. Web designers had better hurry up and fix their pages if they want them to work with IE, and that doesn't just mean ActiveX controls as I mistakenly reported Tuesday - it means Flash, Quicktime, Java and other embedded content. Apple has a great support page for web developers with Javascript code that will work for most content.
4. Intuit apologizes to customers in ads today, saying it won't use copy protection in future versions of TurboTax.
5. Download.com has delisted Spam Remedy v2.3 Pro due to suspicions that the program is actually spam in disguise. The Register reports that not only do the publishers use spam to promote the product, but that it may even be designed to act as a spam proxy on systems where it is installed.
6. The Napster 2.0 beta launches today as a paid service from Roxio using a model very similar to Apple's iTunes Music Store. Songs are 99¢ per track, $9.95 per album, with a whopping 500,000 songs available, all in WMA format. The service rolls out to the public October 29.
7. Meanwhile there's bad news for fans of unencumbered legal MP3 downloads. eMusic has been acquired and is dropping its all you can eat service.
8. On a brighter note, Berkeley based record label Magnatune uses file swapping as its business model. It's essentially shareware music and the artists get 50% of the gross. Their motto: "We are not evil."
9. An anonymous paper [PDF] published on an Australian web site says the techniques the RIAA may be using to snag file sharers could easily trap the wrong people. The paper cited issues with Gnutella, but the principle extends to all P2P networks: you can't trust what P2P applications tell you about users.
10. Federal law enforcement officers have arrested a disgruntled Phillies fan for hacking into computers to spam two Philadelphia sports reporters. He faces 471 years in prison and $117 million in fines for messages like "Corrupt Philly Media Keeps Phils in Cellar." Or it could have been their 37-44 road record.