| Friday, 30 July 2004, 4:11 am Tags: |
We start shooting in five days!
I’m counting down the minutes until that autographed ZDTV t-shirt gets sold on eBay.
ENIAC, the world’s first all-electronic digital computer, was turned on on this day in 1947. So was Governor Schwarzenegger. Happy birthday Neville Longbottom, too.
- Francis Crick, discoverer of the structure of DNA, has died at the age of 88.
- Apple is calling Real Networks reverse engineering of the iTunes DRM “breaking and entering.” “We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA.” They also say that it’s highly unlikely that Real’s technology will work with future firmware updates.
- Microsoft demonstrated its “google killer” today, an all-in-one search that can find things on your hard drive as well as on the Internet. Maybe it can find the Longhorn engineers whose jobs are going to India.
- Intel has pushed the launch date for the 4GHz Pentium IV ahead to early 2005. Speculation is that CEO Craig Barrett was upset about missed deadlines for the Dothan and Prescott chips and wanted to make sure engineers set a date they could live with. Better to underpromise and overperform than vice versa. Meanwhile there are severe shortages for the 3.6GHz Prescott.
- Hackers are going after RFID tags. The tags which will be widely used in stores in place of the UPC codes, store information about the product and its price. Some experts think hackers will attempt to get better prices by modifying the tags.
- Get ready to spend some bucks. HardOCP’s Doom III hardware guide is out. If you want Heat Haze you’ll need a DirectX 9 capable card, otherwise a GeForce 4 MX-440 or better will do. Kyle and the gang say the game looks surprisingly good on even low-end equipment.
Listen in tomorrow at 8:35a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles.
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| Tuesday, 27 July 2004, 2:04 pm Tags: |
It’s 7/27 and I’m flying…
Maybe it’s because I have a Linux-based remote control.
The transatlantic telegraph cable was completed in Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, on this day in 1866. Bugs Bunny debuted in 1940. Insulin was first isolated at the University of Toronto in 1921. Radio Shack announced the Tandy 1000SL in 1988.
- A fast spreading variant of the MyDoom computer virus price range for its IPO Monday but the news was eclipsed by the virus story. The stock will sell for a whopping $108-$135 per share – the highest price ever for a US initial public offering.
- It’s probably just a coincidence, but Microsoft is launching a new news service to compete with Google today. Microsoft’s Newsbot will let users customize their news feeds. It’s part of the MSNBC web site.
- Speaking of computer viruses, hackers have been using some new social engineering techniques to infect systems with trojan horses. First the hackers posted messages on the newsgroups claiming to offer pictures of a dead Osama Bin Laden. Now they are sending out messages saying Governer Schwarzenegger is dead. In both cases clicking a link in the message takes you to a web site where you’re encouraged to download a phony screensaver which contains the trojan horse.
- Remember when Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser was rebuffed by Apple’s Steve Jobs last year when he proposed working together. Well Rob has taken matters into his own hands, reverse engineering the copy protection used by the Apple iPod and creating a way for iPod owners to use songs sold on Real’s music service. This is the first time iPod owners have been able to buy music from anywhere besides Apple’s own iTunes Music Store.
- Good timing, too, since digital music sales are expected to double this year to $270 million according to Jupiter Research. The company says digital sales will represent 12% of the market by 2009. I think it will grow much faster than that, but what do I know.
- Motorola announced a very interesting new phone Monday. The phone acts as a normal cell phone, unless it can join a nearby Wi-Fi network. If it can it switches to an Internet phone, using VoIP to save the user money. The phone should be available by this fall or early 2005.
- The company also announced a deal with Apple for a special version of the iTunes music store just for cell phones. The iTunes music player will become Motorola’s default application for playing music on its phones.
Listen in Tuesday at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.
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| Friday, 23 July 2004, 6:31 am Tags: |
Live from Toronto, it’s Thursday night!
From now on I’m drinking my Krispy Kremes.
- No go for SCO. A Michigan judge has tossed out most of the SCO suit against Chrysler for using Linux. SCO is “satisfied” with the judgment saying they got what they wanted all along: Chrysler’s compliance with the UNIX license. You mean you didn’t want a pile of money?
- Prices are dropping for plasma TVs and notebook computers according the the NPD Group. Prices of consumer electronics in general have dropped 17.4% over the last 12 months.
- A 45-year-old Florida hacker has been indicted on 144 counts for breaking
into marketing company Acxiom and stealing customer database records. - Microsoft’s earnings were up 82% in Q4, disappointing the financial markets who expected better. In the three month period ending June 30, Microsoft earned $2.69 billion. However do they survive? Microsoft investors will be paid out $75 billion over the next four years in dividends and stock buybacks. Gates will get $3.3 billion – which he’ll donate to his charitable foundation – Ballmer $1.2 billion, which he’ll use to buy Seattle.
- Verizon has joined Vonage, Lingo, and AT&T with their own Internet telephony or “VoIP” product. VoiceWing will work much like Vonage and cost $40/month.
- After receiving word that a CD of U2’s new album, Vertigo, had been stolen during a photo shoot, the group has decided to rush release it to the iTunes Music Store if copies show up on Kazaa. Bono told the London Daily Telegraph, “If it is on the Internet this week, we will release it immediately as a legal download. Once it’s out, it’s out.
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| Tuesday, 20 July 2004, 3:01 pm Tags: Television |
We’re ready to start taping our first Call for Help 2.0 episodes in Toronto August 3-6.
How would you like to be part of these historic first episodes? We need callers! And you don’t have to be from Canada. Go to the new Call for Help web site and ask your question. We’ll be choosing callers this week and Jenny or Meetu will be getting back to you by the end of this week or early next week.
Thanks for your help!
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| Tuesday, 20 July 2004, 12:34 pm Tags: |
The news is different in Canada.
On this day in 1969, Neil Armstrong took one small step for (a) man, one giant step for mankind.
- The new iPods are here! The new iPods are here! They’re $100 cheaper, feature an iPod-like mini user interface, 12-hour battery life, and a new front page shuffle command. But where are the 60GB editions?
- Google should reveal the opening price in its Initial Public Offering (IPO) this week. The stock will be sold in an unusual dutch auction format which will give all investors a shot at owning the hottest new issue since Netscape.
- British Telecom is blocking child porn. BT claims their filter is stopping 23,000 clicks a day in the UK. (!)
- Free music downloads via Napster are back in some colleges. Only this time they’re legal. In an effort to fight illegal downloads, and to keep from being sued by the RIAA, George Washington University and others are licensing Napster for the entire student body. But Duke tops them all. The entire incoming freshman class will receive iPods. What’s next, free toasters for signing up for freshman English? Maybe they’ll use the iPods to keep track of free wireless hotspots.
- The Chicago Tribune, which hasn’t missed an issue since the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, crashed yesterday. A software glitch left 40% of subscribers newspaperless. The rest got truncated editions with weird page numbering and washed out colors. The publisher says it will cost “under $1 million” to fix the problem.
- According to the LA Times, students are turning away from computer science classes just when the Labor Department says job opportunities are exploding. Student enrollment is down 41% at UC Berkeley, for instance, while the Labor Department predicts a 46% increase in jobs over the next eight years.
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| Friday, 16 July 2004, 1:43 pm Tags: |
A few more stories to round out the week.
Today is Trinity. The first atomic bomb was successfully exploded in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on this day in 1945. Apollo 11 lifted off from the Earth on its way to the moon in 1969.
- Google has bought Picasa and is giving the application away now. Picasa is essentially iPhoto for Windows, and one of my all time favorite apps. Picasa’s photo sharing program, Hello, is still free. Hello has hooks to another Google acquisition, Blogger.
- Good news, the US Government is rethinking CAPPS II. The program to screen airline passengers using information like credit reports was supposed to begin this summer, but the Transportation Security Administration has halted the program citing privacy and technical concerns. The TSA, which spent $120 million on the project, will now focus on a registered traveler program for frequent fliers – essentially a voluntary CAPPS II.
- Apple is reporting a more than 300% jump in net income for this quarter, thanks to booming iPod sales and strong performance from the Apple Stores. Mac sales are also up. Apple also confirmed that the G5 iMac will ship in September. According to ThinkSecret, that’s when the new, smaller, more colorful iPods will arrive, too.
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| Friday, 16 July 2004, 6:07 am Tags: |
Black holes no longer suck but Windows still does. Have you downloaded your patch of the month yet?
Meanwhile, Mono 1.0 is out. Can you say dot-net for Linux and OS X? CNET has a good interview with Miguel de Icaza.
- Michael Dell is stepping down as CEO of Dell Computers. President and COO, Kevin Rollins, will take charge Friday. Dell will remain company chairman.
- President Bush signed a new law Thursday which adds two years to the prison sentence of anyone convicted in federal court of identity theft. The law also calls for mandatory prison sentences for employees who steal data that is then used in identity theft crimes. The FTC logged 214,905 cases of identity theft in 2003, up 33% from 2002.
- A Seattle judge has struck down a state law forbidding the sale of violent video games to minors, saying the law violated the first amendment.
- Microsoft has won a $4 million judgment against a Canoga Park, CA spammer who used MSN and Hotmail to promote a bogus security toolbar.
- Ebay is launching into the music market. A number of pre-approved sellers, including a record label and music distributor, will be allowed to sell songs for download. The six month trial will begin soon. Buyers will not be allowed to resell the music on eBay.
- That’s one small step for Microsoft, one giant leap for IM. Microsoft has announced a partnership with AOL and Yahoo to create a cross-platform business IM network. Office Live Communications Server 2005 will let users talk with MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and AIM users transparently. Look for it in the 4th quarter. Or you can just use AIM like everyone else.
- Xbox Live has reached one million users in record time.
- I missed it last week but Yahoo Mail bought Oddpost – one of the best web based email programs out there. Oddpost uses DHTML to create a very rich client, like a streamlined Outlook. It’s Windows IE only, unfortunately. But combine that with the 2GB of storage Yahoo Mail is offering paid customers and you have a very compelling offering. No word on when the second generation Mail will debut.
- Europe’s OD2 music service, co-founded by Peter Gabriel, says it will have 1.3 million tracks online by year’s end, almost twice that of the iTunes Music Store and Napster. OD2 was purchased by Loudeye a few months ago provides service for MTV, Virgin, and other online music stores.
- There’s a new Bagle variant out, and it’s spreading fast. Say it with me folks, what should you do with attachments?
- Speaking of which, think VERY carefully before you click on those email links. I got an extremely sophisticated and well designed scam email today claiming to be from eBay. Clicking on the link in the email – which appears to be a legitimate secure Ebay link – takes you to a hacker’s server in Japan. Fortunately the server is down, but I bet this fooled a lot of people. It’s times like this I wish Call for Help were still on the air.
I will talk about this, and malware in general, tomorrow at 8:35a Pacific in my weekly news commentary on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles.
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| Tuesday, 13 July 2004, 1:20 am Tags: |
It’s the evening news today.
What if they held a MacWorld Expo and Apple didn’t come?
Inventor of the Kodak camera, George Eastman was born on this day in 1854. Botanist George Washington Carver was born in 1864. Bucky Fuller in 1895. The first free flight test of the Space Shuttle Enterprise occurred in 1977.
- Microsoft says Service Pack 2 – the long awaited security update to Windows XP – won’t go to manufacture until August.
- According to Infoworld, Microsoft’s MSN Messenger and Word are also vulnerable to the shell: exploit that bit Mozilla last week.
- Apple broke 100,000,000 songs sold on its iTunes Music Store at 10:26p Pacific on Sunday night. The 100 millionth customer was Kevin Britten, 20, of Hays, Kansas. He downloaded the 100-millionth song Sunday “Somersault (Dangermouse remix)” by Zero7. He gets a Powerbook, an iPod, and 10,000 more songs. Nice.
- Two California citizens are suing Diebold asking for the state’s money back for faulty electronic voting machines. The machines have been barred from future state elections, but there’s some concern about tampering in the spring primary. If they win the suit, the pair stand to collect 30% under California’s whistle blower law.
- Google is going on NASDAQ. No word on a ticker symbol yet; Gillette has G but GOO is still available.
- So the question is, was the Microsoft employee who hacked into AltaVista to steal their spidering code free-lancing or following orders from Redmond? As usual, the Chairman disavows any knowledge of his actions.
Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.
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| Friday, 9 July 2004, 6:49 pm Tags: |
It’s all true.
The hackers are converging today on the Hotel Pennsylvania in NYC for the 5th Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) Conference.
The corncob pipe was patented on this day in 1878. The Enigma key was broken in 1941. The first commercial helicopter passenger service was inaugurated in NYC in 1953.
Happy birthday, Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, 1819. Tom Hanks is 48. Fred Savage is 28.
- If you switched to Mozilla or Firefox for better security, not so fast. The Mozilla Foundation has confirmed that there’s a bug in the programs that allows sites to execute arbitrary code in Windows without user intervention. There is a patch for “shell:” exploit – download it now. Mac and Linux users are unaffected.
- The Motion Picture Association of America continues to pump the hysteria, claiming that one in four Internet users has downloaded a pirated movie. Of those, 17% are spending less time at the theater. And in South Korea where broadband is nearly universal, 58% of users are downloading movies. According to the MPAA this “growing global epidemic” is costing the industry $3 billion a year.
- Amazon is taking orders for the first Portable Media Center devices now, even though they won’t ship for another month or two. The Creative Zen is $499 for 20GB of storage and will be available in August. The Samsung Yepp YH-999, with similar specs, ships in September.
Tune in tomorrow at 7:40a 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.
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| Thursday, 8 July 2004, 8:18 pm Tags: |
I got your tech news right here.
Happy birthday Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin born this day in 1838. The Wall St. Journal began publishing in 1889.
It’s Liberty Bell Day.
- According to an IDC survey, 36% of all software installed worldwide last year was pirated. The number is 27% in the US.
- Verizon is accusing the FCC of a “multi-billion dollar giveaway” in the spectrum swap being offered Nextel. The FCC agreed today to give Nextel 10 megahertz of new spectrum at 1.9G hz. Nextel will turnover frequencies it’s currently using in the 800 Mhz band. Verizon plans to contest the swap in court, and Members of Congress are also thinking of blocking the deal. Nextel says the frequency change will cost it billions in new equipment. The FCC approved the swap to eliminate interference with public safety communications in the 800 mhz band.
- The Los Angeles city council is cracking down on Internet cafés in the wake of several shootings in the San Fernando Valley. The new regulations require cafes with at least five computers to eliminate closed booths, install security cameras and bar minors during school hours to prevent truancy.
- Yahoo announced its fifth straight wildly profitable quarter yesterday, but the stock went down because the company didn’t exceed analysts expectations. The Internet company showed a profit of $112.5 million on $832.3 million in revenue, twice the profits from this time last year.
Listen in tomorrow at 8:35a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles.
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