Memorial Day News
May 31, 2004
From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli comes today’s tech news.
The US copyright law was enacted on this day in 1790. The Who performed the loudest concert ever with 76,000 watts of amplification in 1976. Seinfeld premiered in 1990.
It’s Memorial Day.
- Online sales boomed last year with 51% increase over 2002. Sales reached $114 billion, representing 5.4 of all retail sales. More importantly, online margins went from zero in 2002 to 21% in 2003 and 79% of online retailers were profitable. Is it too late to buy that Amazon stock?
- A British beautician has won the “world’s best female inventor” award at Inpex. Paula Ward was looking for a way to keep her daughter from logging on when she was away from home. Her device, which can block broadband access and access to specific phone numbers and can be controlled remotely, was picked up by Commtel and goes on sale later this summer.
- Computer Associates has donated its Ingres database program to the open source community. Ingres has had trouble competing with market leaders Oracle and Sybase, but it’s a mature and solid product that will be a valuable addition to the open source world. CA hopes improvements will flow back into the code base from open source developers.
- 20th Century Fox and Paramount are going after an online vendor who was still selling DVD Xcopy. In a lawsuit filed in New York on Friday, the movie companies accused Technology One of selling the DVD cracking program despite a court order pulling it from the shelves. A Technology One employee said, “no one told us to stop selling it.” Don’t get your hopes up, the link to DVD XCopy is no longer on the site.
- If you’re willing to give up some personal information you may soon be able to get a fast pass through airport security. The TSA’s Registered Traveller program will begin testing in late June with 10,000 volunteers. Frequent flyers who want to join the program will have to pass a detailed background examination and pay an annual fee of around $100. Once approved they’ll get a card with “biometric identification” that will allow them to skip all the airport security checks except the metal detector. Wonder how long before they start auctioning these off on eBay?
- Ewww. The Spot is back. The Internet soap opera which burned bright but briefly nine years ago is back and coming to a cell phone near you. Sprint PCS will beam audio and pictures from the soap to your phone for $3.95 per month.
- For the second time in two years, an Internet unknown has won the World Series of Poker. “Fossilman” Raymer earned a seat at the table in a $150 satellite event on PokerStars.com. The patent lawyer from Connecticut won $5 million dollars and the coveted silver bracelet on Friday. The 2nd, 7th, and 9th place finishers also qualified online.
- The LA Times has an excellent article that brings home the human cost of IT outsourcing. Free registration required.
Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.
Loading ...Thursday is Prince Spaghetti Day
May 28, 2004
News that’s not got much spam in it.
Happy Birthday Dashiell Hammett, 1894, Harlan Ellison is 70. Samuel FB Morse completed the first telegraph line 160 years ago today. Richard Drew invented masking tape in 1930. Construction began on Disney World in 1969.
- Yahoo has announced a new toolbar chock full of anti-spyware goodnesss. You can download the Pest Patrol powered toolbar from beta.toolbar.yahoo.com.
- Police in Canada have nabbed a 16-year old boy for helping distribute the Randex worm. The lad faces charges of computer fraud and mischief to data. Taiwanese police have also arrested a 30-year old computer engineer for writing the Peep.exe trojan horse.
- Also on the police blotter, a Buffalo, NY spammer who was convicted of sending out hundreds of million pieces of junk email has been sentenced to 3.5 to 7 years in jail. Howard Carmack had already lost a $16 million judgement to Earthlink.
- Great moments in virus history: the first 64-bit virus has been discovered by Symantec. Rugrat was apparently written as a proof of concept by a hacker who specializes in virus firsts.
- The California State Senate has approved a bill that limits what Google and other web-based email companies can do with your information. Originally targeted at preventing Google’s upcoming GMail service from scanning email contents to determine ad placement, the bill was defanged to merely prevent Google and others from saving the information gleaned in the scans. The State Assembly has to weigh in next. The Gropinator hasn’t said whether he’ll sign the bill.
- The California Public Utilities Commission has passed a model cell phone customers’ bill of rights. The bill prohibits deceptive, untrue or misleading rate quotes, gives consumers 30 days to cancel contracts without penalties, and adds privacy protections. Other states are expected to follow suit.
- Microsoft will spend $300 million to launch Service Pack 2 this summer. Some of that money will be spent upgrading new computers already in the channel. If you already own Windows XP you’ll be able to download the 100 MB file via Windows Update or buy a CD from Microsoft for around $10.
- Our brothers and sisters to the north can finally use Napster legally. Napster Canada has opened, beating iTunes, Rhapsody, and other US based online music stores to the punch. For C$9.97/month users can listen to an unlimited number of songs on the Windows Media Player. You can buy the songs for C$1.19 each or C$9.95 per album.
- Who is Rance? All of Hollywood is wondering who is writing the anonymous blog on Tripod.com. Could it be Jim Carrey? Ben Affleck? J-Lo? Boing-Boing says it’s Owen Wilson.
- Cable/phone/broadband provider RCN has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
- Eharmony, the web matchmaking site that separates itself from the pack by using personality tests to find suitable matches, has patented its technology. U.S. Patent No. 6,735,568, describes a “method and system for identifying people who are likely to have a successful relationship.” 20% of applicants are rejected because they’re not the marrying type.
- Steal music and go to jail in Italy. Sentences of six months to three years can be meted out for “transferring content via the Internet without the permission of the copyright holder.” And we thought the DMCA was bad.
Listen in tomorrow at 8:35a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles.
Wednesday’s Whiskey Sour
May 26, 2004
What’s the news across the nation? We have got the information, in a way we hope will amuuuuuuse you. La da di da. Ladies and Gents, Laugh-in brings you the news.
The Golden Gate Bridge opened on this day in 1937. The H-Bomb patent was filed in 1946. A frisbee was kept aloft for nearly half an hour in 1984. Michael Jackson and Lisa-Marie Presley celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary today. Oh, wait. Never mind.
- The RIAA is at it again. 493 more users have been sued. As before the lawsuits are filed by IP address only - the RIAA requires the help of the court to get actual names and addresses. Of the nearly 3,000 people sued by the recording industry so far, 486 have settled. None of the cases have gone to court, yet, but you have to love stories like this.
- Meanwhile the US Senate is moving forward on the Pirate Act. The bill would put the Department of Justice in the position of the RIAA, letting Federal officials file civil suits against copyright violators with potential fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Naturally the RIAA is foursquare behind the proposal. Senator Orrin Hatch says only the US government has the resources and moral authority to go after file swappers. Forget the war on drugs, we’ve got the war on Kazaa. And I’m sure it will be just as effective.
- California state legislator, Liz Figueroa, has toned down her anti-Gmail bill. Instead of requiring informed consent from people sending mail to Gmail customers - a provision impossible to implement - the law would require stronger privacy protections of the service.
- Another proposed California law would require companies to notify employees when they monitor email and online use. State Senator Debra Bowen has proposed this law three times before but it has been vetoed each time. The State Senate passed the bill 23-11 and sent it to the Assembly.
- We now know why there was a delay in shipping Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. Security code in the update breaks 64-bit processors. Microsoft says it has licked the problem and expects to ship Release Candidate 2 this week with release to manufacture in late July. That should get it out to users by September. Sp-2 adds much needed security to XP and will be a must have download once it ships.
- Microsoft cares. They’ve extended the support life cycle for most of their products from 7 to ten years. That means Windows 98 and Me will continue to be supported until 2008 and beyond. Oh joy.
- Comcast has agreed to put Microsoft TV in five million set-top boxes. The software enables Tivo-like functionality and interactivity, but your set-top box has to have sufficient processing power to use it. Most don’t.
- Linux inventor Linus Torvalds is responding to the accusations made by SCO by requiring all future contributions to the operating system by signed by the developer who must also vouch for its origin. Bill Claybrook, writing in Linuxworld, says this would have been required anyway by corporations trusting their critical operations to the open-source OS.
- Are video games becoming too complex? Nintendo’s president thinks so. Satoru Iwata says the industry is risking alienating customers by making consoles too powerful. He says unless things change, people will “get tired of games.”
- Not this game. A new Xbox title under development called Yourself!Fitness puts a personal trainer in your living room who guides you through a personalized diet and workout program. Look for it this fall, followed by a PS2 version. Next year, an Xbox Live version will allow you to talk with other dieters while “playing.” I’m sticking with Dance Dance Revolution.
- It didn’t work. A patch to Mac OS X pushed through Software Update by Apple last Friday did not fix a vulnerability that would allow a malicious web page access to your system. Unsanity is offering a program called Paranoid Android that fixes the problem. Read their white paper to understand why it’s so difficult to solve.
- Pick me! Pick me! According to The New Yorker, an agent at ICM is scanning blogs looking for new book authors. And there are at least a dozen books by bloggers in the works. Uh oh.
Call for Help Newsletter Madness
May 26, 2004
First a disclaimer, I no longer work for G4/TechTV and have nothing to do with the newsletter and have no inside information, however…
I am getting numerous emails from former subscribers to the Call for Help newsletter who are suddenly being flooded with email. I think what’s happened is that Tom Merritt, the outgoing web producer, changed the newsletter from a daily email sent out to viewers, into a mailing list where everything that is sent to the list is broadcast out to each subscriber. Naturally this is a confusing change, and with a list this large it can generate an overwhelming amount of mail.
Do NOT send an unsubscribe message to the list - that will just be sent out to all subscribers and exacerbate the problem. Instead, follow the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of the message.
[UPDATE: I have learned that this is not the MAIN Call for Help newsletter. That's no longer going out. This is a Yahoo! Groups newsletter that was created a couple of years ago when we changed newsletter providers. Fortunately all Yahoo! Groups emails have an unsubscribe link at the bottom.]
Don’t Whine, Don’t Moan
May 25, 2004
A number of people have asked me for the tag line I closed every Call for Help with. Here are a couple of versions for you.
Call for Help close out #1 - 157K MP3
Call for Help close out #2 - 163K MP3
Don’t whine, don’t moan, don’t yelp… Just Call for Help!
Monday’s Mouth Breather
May 25, 2004
The news is strong in this one.
Bob Dylan was born on this day in 1941, but sad to say, Andy Kaufman is still dead.
Star Wars was released on this day in 1977. I still remember standing in line to see it.
- John Kerry is being Google-bombed, but the campaign is fighting back. Conservative bloggers are acting in concert to make sure a search for the word “waffles” on Google turns up John Kerry. The Kerry Campaign says it will respond by buying advertising for the “waffle” keyword that points users to George W. Bush’s waffles. Politics in the 21st century.
- Comcast has finally admitted that its cable modem users infected with Trojan Horse viruses are one of the worst sources of spam emails. They’re even thinking about doing something about the problem. Comcast’s own mail servers send 100 million email messages a day, but its cable modem customers are relaying an additional 700 million spam messages per day thanks to viruses like Bagle. With six million high-speed customers, Comcast customers unintentionally send more spam than Road Runner and Yahoo users combined. Comcast could block port 25 to prevent its users from running rogue mail servers - that’s what Earthlink and Cox Cable do - but the company refuses to because it says it would cost an estimated $58 million in tech support calls. They’re trying a different tack: quietly reconfiguring infected computers.
- Last year the company that produces the Opera browser accused Microsoft of crafting pages on MSN that make Opera look bad. According to CNET Microsoft has quietly paid Opera off to the tune of $12.75 million to head off a lawsuit.
- Four Alaskans are suing to stop CAPPS II, the Federal airline passenger profiling system that combines credit scores and other personal information to seek potential hijackers.
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has banned camera phones from US bases in Iraq. Apparently some of the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison were taken with camera phones.
- As the smoke settles from the closing of Wi-Fi hotspot vendor Cometa, it’s beginning to look like hotspots aren’t the hot business investors thought it was. AT&T pulled out of Cometa in March. IBM and Intel were still partners. Cometa executives say losing the McDonald’s deal to Wayport had nothing to do with the sudden decision to shutter the business. Verizon is scaling back on its plans to wire NYC, too. Apparently the proliferation of free hotspots is making it difficult to charge for service.
- Symantec has purchased anti-spam company BrightMail for $370 million US. That’s a lot of money, and a demonstration that anti-spam might be the next big market. BrightMail was on the verge of an IPO.
- Meanwhile, Microsoft, which is widely expected to enter the anti-spam business itself, is looking to reconcile its CallerID for Email proposal with the SPF, Sender Policy Framework. Both are email authentication schemes which could go a long way toward ending spam.
- The US Federal Bureau of Investigation says it will be targeting 50 major spammers. This in response to a Congressional committee investigation the success of the US CAN-SPAM act which went into effect in January. Senator John McCain: “the volume of spam received by American consumers has risen unabatedly” since the law was first considered.
- Microsoft has angered some employees by cutting perks. The company announced it’s cutting prescription-drug benefits, tightening parental-leave policies and making it more expensive for employees to buy stock. It also will decrease the vacation time given to future employees. The free Mountain Dew is still flowing, however. The belt-tightening is expected to save Bill Gates $80 million a year.
- Privacy advocates may hate it, but netizens are doing anything they can to snag a coveted invitation to the Gmail beta test. Google’s free email service won’t go public until the end of the summer. I have an account and can talk about it.
- Apple has reorg-ed, splitting off its iPod bidness into a separate division. Apple sells more iPods than computers these days. Which division would you want to be in?
- Mac Users are a little less smug this week as the first real Mac virus in three years was discovered. One hole in OS X could allow a hacker to get into your system when you visit a malicious web site. Apple has patched the flaws, but has been less than forthright about what the patches are for.
- A small Toronto computer company filed suit against Intel for (insert Dr. Evil voice here) half a billion dollars US on Thursday, alleging the chip maker violated its patents in the Pentium.
- Forget receipts. A new email service called DidTheyReadIt uses techniques learned from spammers to let you check if your email was read, for how long, and where the recipient is, even what browser he’s using. This invasion of privacy is made possible by HTML-based email. That’s why I only use plain text email programs and recommend you do the same.
Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.
Last Call
May 20, 2004
Yesterday was one of the saddest days of my life. We put Call for Help to bed Wednesday. You’ll see the last episode on Friday, but for those of us who have been making the show for six years a huge and important chunk of our lives is over.
G4 is shopping the show and it’s possible another network will pick it up. I pray someone does. I’ll keep doing it if I have to fly to Sandusky twice a week. Somehow, somewhere, Call for Help has to live on, if only for the folks who have come to depend on the show for their computer help. I know so many moms and grandfathers and kids and just plain folks for whom Call for Help was an introduction to technology. The show helped get so many people on track, and I feel like we’re letting many more down by not doing it any more. Cross your fingers that some network executive somewhere is willing to take a chance on a funky little show that makes such a big difference in people’s lives.
Meanwhile G4 has asked me to keep doing the daily 90-second pre-taped tips on The Screen Savers indefinitely. I said yes, of course. It’s better than nothing, and it will leave me lots of free time to try to find somewhere else to do what I do. Vinnie Longobardo, the VP Programming for G4, also asked me to ask you to stop filling his inbox with mail. I appreciate your efforts but at this point it’s probably useless to keep harassing the poor guy. G4 is going for a different audience and my work is not really part of those plans. I understand that - I even agree with them. It’s time for all of us to move on.
Mostly I’m going to miss the people I work with. It’s going to be so hard to get up in the morning and not see their faces. You never met a nicer, harder working, more committed bunch of people. We loved what we did. And we hate not getting to do it any more.
Some will continue on with G4. I think Roger, Cat, and Ian will move to LA. George is getting his real estate license. Dan will be bagging groceries at the local Stop ‘n’ Shop. I’m not sure what Fawn’s plans are. The studio crew will continue working until July 2 when 535 York gets shut down for good. Then they’ll all go on to other jobs. They’re the best in the business and won’t have any trouble finding work.
We had six good years. That’s more than most TV shows get. And we are very proud of what we did. It’s just hard to let go, especially when the show was starting to click. We’d had our highest ratings ever in March - 500% growth over the same time last year. The December Call-For-Help-a-thon earned us a big article in the New York Times. We had finally made it back into prime time. So close. So close.
I’m not complaining. I have my family, my radio show, and my memories of an amazing little channel where I got to do pretty much whatever I wanted for way too long. I am just so grateful to have had that chance. And I’m even more grateful that so many of you seemed to actually like my work. I’m not giving up. I’m just going to take some time off to say a private good-bye. Then it’s on to the next thing. I’m sure it will be wonderful and fun and all that. But there will never be another TechTV. For all its flaws, it was pretty great, wasn’t it?
Monday at Midnight
May 18, 2004
News never sleeps. And neither do I lately.
Mount St. Helens erupted on this day in 1980.
- Intel is admitting it has “hit a brick wall” and will radically rethink its chip design strategies. Apparently the latest Pentium IV chips run so hot they’re slowing down.
- Passengers flying Lufthansa from Munich to LA today were the first to use sky high Wi-Fi. For $30/flight or $10 per half hour passengers with Wi-Fi enabled laptops could surf the net and send email via a satellite connection to the Internet. Five Lufthansa planes have been fitted with the service and all 80 planes should offer Wi-Fi within two years. Other airlines are also considering the service. The FAA has approved its use at cruising altitude only.
- Vonage has cut its Voice over IP (VoIP) service by $5 a month. The company is trying to build its customer-base quickly to stave off competition.
- Microsoft shills the Alexis de Toqueville Institution are try to spread a little FUD by claiming Linus Torvalds didn’t write Linux. Linus admits it - he says he was just covering for Santa and the Tooth Fairy. It’s one thing to blame terrorism on Open Source, but this is really going too far.
Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.
Friday Night Lights
May 14, 2004
Headed home in a little bit. But there’s still time for a news update.
Skylab was launched on this day in 1973. Gabriel Farenheit was born in 1686. Happy 60th Birthday George Lucas.
- The German police continue to diss Sven J, the author of the Sasser worm and 18 Netsky variants. Now they’re calling him a “script kiddy.” (I’d love to know the German for that.) Sven says he originally wrote Netsky as an anti-virus (true - it removes Bagle). Apparently his poor programming skills created a monster instead. He will be tried as a juvenile and will likely avoid jail time.
- And now there’s a new worm that attacks Sasser infected computers. Dabber uses the FTP server installed by Sasser to install itself. Once embedded, Dabber allows backdoor access to the compromised system.
- Yahoo is taking on Google on the email front. Yahoo Mail has announced it’s going to up it’s free storage from 6 to 100 megabytes. Paid users will get virtually unlimited storage.
- CNN has switched from Google to Yahoo for it’s on-site search tool.
- Yahoo and Google agree on one thing: not listing WhenU. The adware company was removed from both search engines when it was accused of manipulating search results using a technique called “cloaking.” WhenU said cloaking was used by an outside contractor and they’ve stopped doing it.
- 2.6 million Americans have taken advantage of cell phone number portability to switch providers since the new rules went into effect in November.
Tune in tomorrow at 7:40a Eastern for my weekly visit with John Donabie on 1010 CFRB Toronto. And, of course, every Saturday and Sunday, noon to 3p Pacific on KFI 640 AM, Los Angeles.
Thursday Throwdown
May 13, 2004
All the week’s news in one convenient package - cuz I’ve been too lazy to do the news all week.
It’s Towel Day. Douglas Adams passed away on this day three years ago.
- eEye is at it again. April 19 the firm discovered four serious flaws that occur in almost all Symantec security products. Symantec is offering a comprehensive patch and strongly encouraging its customers to update immediately (in most cases running Live Update is sufficient). It typically takes less than a day for worm authors to capitalize on such holes once publicized. The holes, which occur in the symdns driver, allow ring 0 access to code, even when all firewall ports are filtered and all intrusion rules are set (thanks to a separate bug there).
- Google’sAdSense will offer banner ads for those that want them. I’m sticking with the plain old text version. Still no graphics on the main Google site, however. The company has also launched the second beta of its Google Groups site.
- There have been five more Sasser arrests this week, but the German police say it’s not a gang, just a loosely knit collection of teens and 20-somethings who share code with each other. Meanwhile they’re calling the original suspect, 18-year-old Sven J., a “bottom-feeding hacker” who is responsible for all 28 strains of Sasser and Netsky. In his confession Sven said he originally intended to create an anti-virus worm but something went wrong.
- The US House of Representatives is considering modifications to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) but the movie industry is crying foul. Republican Representative John Doolittle waved his iPod around and said he didn’t understand when he sponsored the DMCA that it would limit what he could do with his music. “We went way overboard,” he said. “It needs to be corrected.”
- The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill Wednesday that would outlaw “upskirt” pictures. The Video Voyeurism Prevention Act would prohibit taking covert pictures in any place where people had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Senate passed the bill last year.
- A Salinas, California High School has banned camera phones from classes after catching a student using one to cheat on a math exam. Last year, six University of Maryland students admitted to cheating on an accounting exam by using SMS messaging to get the answers from their friends.
- Wi-Fi is susceptible to a denial-of-service attack according to AUSCERT at the University of Queensland in Australia. A vulnerability in the 802.11 spec could allow someone with a PDA to disrupt an entire wireless network. No patch is possible because the problem lies in the fundamental spec for 802.11.
- Spammer OptInRealBig won a temporary injunction Monday against SpamCop, prohibiting the spam fighting site from reporting spammers to ISPs. The judgement was issued ex parte because SpamCop had not yet files a response. Once the court heard from SpamCop’s parent IronPort it rescinded the order.
- Intel released the 90 nanometer version of the Pentium M this week, code named Dothan, a year late. The small die should further improve the M’s already excellent power usage. Its 2 meg L2 cache should speed it up condsiderably. Reviews available at Tom’s Hardware and elsewhere.
Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.
-
Radio Leo (press play)- Jumping Monkeys 45: Dr. Ruthann Russo
- Windows Weekly 58: Mission Accomplished
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 453
- Daily Giz Wiz 565: Snappy Video Snapshot
- Security Now 143: YubiKey - Sponsored by Astaro Corp.
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 452
- Daily Giz Wiz 564: The Socket Pocket
- MacBreak Weekly 88: Drobotized
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 451
- Daily Giz Wiz 563: SanDisk Cruzer Titanium Plus
Flickr Photos
-
Swag
