Archive | January, 2004

I decided to start linking to all of the different stories I find on a particular issue in the text of a paragraph. If you are looking for full coverage, follow all the links to each news outlet’s site for their take. My most common sources are Cnet News, Wired News, Infoworld, Lockergnome and PCWorld. Here’s today’s roundup:

via everybody:

• The tricky email worm, MyDoom or Novarg, spells doom spreading quickly hitting inboxes and whacking SCO. Make sure you update your virus definitions before you open any email with attachments, including displaying said email in a viewer pane. For technical details of the virus, see Symantec’s Security Response site.
• Microsoft is unveiling an MSN toolbar beta in its rush to compete with Google on the browser search front. I blogged about the Google deskbar vs. Dave’s quick search bar in my earlier post. Here’s a link to the toolbar site for MSN. Keep in mind, this one runs inside Internet Explorer only. Since I made my switch to Mozilla Firebird as my primary browser recently, I won’t be using the MSN bar.
• Mike Rowe has named his price – an Xbox. I have to say, I am sorry to see that this one gave up at all. I don’t think MS had a leg to stand on in the suit.

via Wired:

• Teen Blogger Turns Heads Online – this one is a story about one of the guest bloggers over at Daily Kos. I’m not sure how much of an impact on political races this 15 year old has, but he certainly provides a welcome view into the future of our country, even if you don’t agree with his views.

Here’s the list for today:

via eWeek

• Identity theft complaints climbing – Keep your credit card numbers safe, and don’t give out personal information unneccesarily.

via Cnet News:

• Security pros question flaw find – This article discusses a security posting from some researches that indicated some hardware and network devices have failed after a flood of fragmented UDP information. That being said, it is not particularly unusual for computers and hardware with smaller amounts of processor and memory resources to have issues with network flood attacks. The article is an interesting read, nonetheless.
• CD lock loosened for freer copying – The problem I have with any CD copy protection is the fact that I wrote about before, the music industry is compensated for the risks of copying by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The danger to the music industry from copying has been around since the invention of the casette recorder, and I believe they got similar royalties related to that device. Granted, the ease with which digital files can be shared with unknown third parties is more severe, but if the industry wants protection like the one in this article, they should give up their other forms of compensation.
• Google spawns social networking service – Google entered the social networking space with orkut. It looks like it is already closed to new members and only accepting members by invitation, probably because of the publicity and vast quantities of members it got during its initial release.

via Wired news:

• Amazon: Support Your Candidate – users can give political contributions of up to $200 to the presidential candidate of their choice through Amazon. Amazon is charging the campaigns the normal processing fees, but is donating those fees to a non-partisan civil group of its choice.

via various sources, including Slashdot, Lockergnome, and eWeek:

• Bill gates is going to get an honorary knighthood from the Queen of England. Slashdot, Lockergnome, eWeek.

Here are the items I culled from the feeds today:

Tech firms fail to squelch database bill (via CNET News) – The Database and Information Collections Misappropriation Act of 2003 made it out of committee that will give database owners the ability to sue in civil court, “any person who makes available in commerce to others a quantitatively substantial part of the information in a database.” The bill is supported by Amazon, Google, Yahoo, and other Internet database owners. It is opposed by the US Chamber of Commerce, a technology coalition, and various library and civil liberties groups. Here is the full text of the committee hearing.

Siebel predicts rise in hosting services (via CNET News) – the important item here is that the CEO of Siebel is predicting a rise in the hosting side of Customer Relationship Management(CRM) software. Obviously, this prediction comes after the company’s foray into the hosting marketplace for CRM, which seems to be dominated by Salesforce.com, and on a conference call about earnings, but the prediction still represents a move back to the idea that the old Application Service Provider(ASP) model of hosting software for customers could have a targeted rebound.

Inverting the IT pyramid (via CNET News) – Jeffrey Kaplan of Think Strategies has an interesting opinion piece at CNET on the shift of focus by technology companies from products to services. He cites IBM and HP as examples of large organizations who have made or are in the process of making that shift.

AOL tests caller ID for e-mail (via CNET News) – this article discusses the Sender Permitted From(SPF) protocol for fighting spam. AOL is testing the protocol, and as the largest ISP in the world, could give credence to SPF over competing protocols.

PalmOne cuts staff (via eWeek) – PalmOne is the hardware division that is a result of Palm, Inc.’s spinoff of PalmSource, the new Palm Operating System company, and the acquisition of rival handheld manufacturer, Handspring. The article indicates the company’s new focus for investment will be the smartphone category. We’ll have to see what sort of new products they can come up with and whether or not they can continue to innovate on the regular handheld market, as they did with the Tungsten T3.

Dell fixes smoking PowerEdge servers – evidently there is a problem with the Dell Poweredge 1650 line of servers that can cause it to start smoking and shut down. According to this article, Dell will be contacting owners of the servers for corrective action. I also noticed this covered at PC World.

Gay Marriage Poll Gets Annulled (via Wired) – whether you agree or disagree with the topic here, this article discusses how an Internet poll has the potential to yield vastly different results than the pollster suspects. In this case, the AFA (American Family Association) wanted to poll its members for their opinion on homosexual marriage. Proponents of homosexual rights found the poll and encouraged their constituents to vote, and the results have been affected with respondents supporting homosexual marriages or civil unions with full benefits by a 2-to-1 margin. It is almost impossible to predict the results in an Internet-based poll, unless you can guarantee that only a target audience will have the ability to vote. Any group wishing to poll for a specific result, which is what I believe the AFA was doing, should be aware of that fact. The Internet does, however, have the potential to democratize any issue, but only with regards to the priveleged few who are really connected. We would all do well to note that the vast majority of even American society does not yet have access to, or if they do have access choose not to participate, in polls like these.

RIAA Strikes Again at Traders (via Wired) – the RIAA strikes again, filing four lawsuits against 532 John Doe file sharers. It will be interesting to see how many of this batch turn out to be people who couldn’t possibly have engaged in the practice of which they are accused. I do not, in any way, advocate the illegal sharing of music. I would welcome a system whereby the artists are paid more fairly for their work, and where we all have access to the music we want when we want it.

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