| Tuesday, 30 September 2003, 8:38 pm Tags: Alerts, Books |
I just received word from Peachpit that the rebound 2004 Almanac will be released on Wednesday, October 1st.
The Amazon listing should return today and they should be shipping by next Monday. Phew!
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| Tuesday, 30 September 2003, 3:05 pm Tags: News, Technology |
We’re chewing up the bandwidth again. This time it’s the Return of the King trailer, available from Apple and The Lord of the Rings official site. The first information revolution began on this day in 1452 when Gutenberg published his bible. And pianos went airborne when the first Boeing 747 rolled out on this day in 1968.
- Microsoft has demanded that Lindows take down its MSFreePC web site claiming the site includes false and misleading information and encourages filing of fraudulent claims.
- It’s looking good for the RIAA. 64 lawsuit targets have settled with the RIAA, 838 others apply for amnesty. Kazaa use is down 40% since last spring. Will it jump back now that students are back on campus?
- Don’t open that online greeting card! Lover Spy claims to be able to spy on loved ones by simply sending them an innocuous e-greeting. Using the software could violate the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. (I’ve received spam advertising this program many times already.)
- Microsoft has agreed to open its source code to China. The Chinese government is worried about security and NSA backdoors. Russia, the UK, and NATO are also said to be browsing the Windows source looking for holes. No word that Adrian Lamo will be given a shot at the source.
- PanAmSat launches HDTV satellite this week.
- In attempt to block a Yahoo! group sponsored by a separatist movement, Indian ISPs block ‘em all.
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| Monday, 29 September 2003, 10:19 pm Tags: Announcements, Books, Friends |
My buddy Alex Wellen’s book, Barman, is out, and it’s a peach. Sexy, funny, and a great read.
Alex will be doing a reading at Cody’s on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, 7:30 tonight. I’m going to have to miss that one, but Megan and I plan to attend his reading Wednesday at 7:00p at Book Passage in Corte Madera. See you there?
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| Monday, 29 September 2003, 2:41 pm Tags: News, Technology |
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.
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| Friday, 26 September 2003, 2:46 pm Tags: News, Technology |
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.
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| Thursday, 25 September 2003, 10:04 pm Tags: Books |
Amazon.com has, for some reason, removed the listing for the 2004 Alamanac.
For a while I even had the URL amazon.com/leo. No longer. I feel so empty.
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| Thursday, 25 September 2003, 3:16 pm Tags: |
It’s One Unwired Day® today. Celebrate at festivals nationwide. Intel also has a Zagat Survey of Wi-Fi Hotspots. (It’s a PDF darn it.)
The World Beard Championship is only five weeks away. Start growing now!
- RIAA drops lawsuit against granny who, they claimed, shared 2000 songs including Trick Daddy’s “I’m A Thug.” She doesn’t even use Kazaa – she’s on a Mac. Record companies say “we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant.” Senator Brownback says this calls into question the RIAA’s congressional testimony that the music industry was not unfairly targeting alleged downloaders. The problem is the lack of due process in DMCA subpoenas. “I call on my colleagues in the Senate to join with me in working to correct this threat to privacy and personal safety before we witness the use of non-judicially reviewed information subpoenas to more severe effect than an improper lawsuit,” said Brownback. Maybe Senator Brownback needs to play a round of “Starving Artist.”
- Just a week before the national Do Not Call registry was to go into effect, a Federal judge strikes it down, saying the FTC went too far.
- AOL subject to Messenger spam over UDP port 1026 as well as 135. Thieves using pop-ups to steal AOL passwords, credit card info, and more. Go to AOL Keyword “Pop-Up” for a program that disables Windows Messenger. Microsoft says you should only disable Net Send as a last resort(!) and recommends a firewall instead. Hunh?
- Verisign has settled with the FTC over its deceptive campaign (ended a year ago) that tricked people into transferring to Verisign. These guys never give up, do they?
- BeOS lives. BeOS Max version 3.0 shipped yesterday. Free. We should do a review.
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Wednesday, 24 September 2003, 8:28 pm
Tags: Alerts, Leoville, WebYes my message boards were down for almost 24 hours yesterday. As were Cat’s, Morgan’s, and Megan’s sites. They’re all hosted by the generous folks at Annex.com. The outage was caused by a server move that took a little longer than expected. Mike Chandler from 2Xtreme media explains…
Greg sends his humblest apologies to y’all for the downtime but asked that I brag a bit about the new facility, so here goes… Faster pipe with BGP routing for redundant feed, 24 hour NOC, impressive power generators to keep your site online in the event of a significant power outage, and 24 hour security to ward off evil server bandits. As an added bonus, our 2Xtreme Media servers will be neighbors in the same colo facility, so I’ll still have hands on access to your server as needed (that’s more of a bonus for me, I suppose).
We appreciate the fact that none of you tried to choke Gregory or the Annex crew yesterday for keeping you offline, but we still feel bad. Hopefully the swifter connection speeds and greater uptimes will make up for yesterday’s outage.
Apology accepted. And thanks for the continued great service. Leoville Town Square alone sucks up about 30GB of Annex’s bandwidth each month. I really appreciate their generosity!
That’s one of the reasons I spread the site out over four servers now. It’s all accessible from Leoville.com, but if any one site is down, you can always reach the rest by going there directly:
Leoville.com, the main site http://www.leoville.com Leo’s Mob, my mobile phone picture blog http://leoville.textamerica.com Two Shows Nightly, my text blog (you’re soaking in it) http://leo.typepad.com Leoville Town Square, the message boards http://leovilletownsquare.com (No Ratings Yet) Loading ...0 Comments · Print Wednesday’s News
Wednesday, 24 September 2003, 2:47 pm
Tags: News, TechnologyCompuServe 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.”
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Tuesday, 23 September 2003, 3:42 pm
Tags: News, TechnologyIt’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.
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