Slashdot Mirror

Cara_Latham writes "Mobile wallets are all the rage. But legitimate questions remain as to whether they will ever truly replace their leathery counterparts. Mobile wallets, which use NFC-based technology to allow customers to make contactless payments at the point of sale, already have begun to make their presence felt. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google launched a digital wallet this past fall. The search giant has agreements with Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover to make the Google Wallet available to the card companies' account holders, and there even are some NFC-enabled terminals in use across the U.S. that can accept it, including at many mass transit stations. And mobile wallet ventures are cropping up around the globe, as well. Telecom companies including Vodafone and Telefonica announced this year wallet initiatives in Africa and Latin America. But mobile wallets still face many hurdles before they can gain widespread adoption, experts say, including the rather difficult task of getting consumers to change long-held habits."

Cara_Latham writes "If you want to receive annoying robocalls from telemarketers you will have to opt in. Federal Communications Commission rules now require that telemarketers get your consent before dialing your number. Telemarketers will also have to obtain consent even if they had previously 'done business with' the consumer on the receiving end of a call."

First time accepted submitter Cara_Latham writes "Hoping to spur innovation and collaboration, Bloomberg LP is opening its market data interfaces to anyone, without cost or restriction. The market data provider's application programming interface (API), known as BLPAPI (Bloomberg LP API), is already used by Bloomberg, its clients and other technology providers to build connections between financial firms' applications and Bloomberg's market data and applications. Today any technology professional, or even students at a university, can access BLPAPI to quickly build connections to market data feeds. The BLPAPI interface works with a number of programming languages and operating systems, including Java, C, C++, .NET, COM and Perl."

lseltzer writes "The iPad has dominated the high-end tablet market so far, but that is about to change. At CES in Las Vegas in a couple weeks you will see tablets running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) everywhere and at prices that will make an iPad a lot harder to justify. The competition from the OEM model in the Android markets will massively shift market share away from Apple, just as it has done in the smart phone market."

ancientribe writes "Jeff Moss, aka 'The Dark Tangent,' and founder of the Black Hat security conference and DEFCON, the world's largest hacker conference, has been named VP and CSO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Moss will take on the position of Black Hat Conference Chair, where he will continue to play a key role in the development of conference and training content."

ancientribe writes "Those low-cost embedded tracking devices in your smartphone or those personal GPS devices that track the whereabouts of your children, your car, your pet, or a shipment can easily be intercepted by hackers, who can then pinpoint their whereabouts, impersonate them, and spoof their physical location. A researcher demonstrated at SOURCE Boston how he was able to hack Zoombak's popular personal tracking devices."

hapworth writes "The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has submitted a report on the top 40 countries guilty of piracy to The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), which is preparing for its annual 'Special 301' report. This report describes the adequacy and effectiveness of US trading partners' protection of intellectual property rights. Among the 40 countries suggested by the IIPA for the watch list, 13 were recommended for placement on the USTR's 'Priority Watch List.' These countries include Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Spain, Ukraine, and Vietnam. While previous reports have focused on physical piracy, this year's emphasizes cracking down on online piracy."

mimd writes "A researcher at North Carolina State University has discovered yet another Android Browser exploit that affects the new Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and previous versions. Slashdot recently covered a previous browser exploit that affected all versions of the Android Browser, but was patched in 2.3. Xuxian Jiang writes 'our finding here is that the patch contained in Android 2.3 is not an ultimate fix and can still be bypassed. We have a proof-of-concept exploit with a stock Nexus S phone and are able to successfully exploit the vulnerability to steal potentially personal information from the phone.' The exploit is capable of reading and writing files from an Android's sdcard or system partition as well as uploading user data over the internet."

An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the attack on Google, another company claims to be the victim of a similar attack. Gipson Hoffman & Pancione is a Los Angeles law firm whose client, CYBERsitter, is suing the government of China and several Chinese companies for using their intellectual property in the infamous Green Dam censorship filter. According to the firm, they have been targeted by a spear phishing attack from China." Relatedly, smartaleckkill writes with news that the US state department is to formally protest to China over the alleged cyber-attacks on Google, "likely early next week."

NiK0laI writes "TechWeb has posted an article regarding Vista's new license and how it allows you to only move it to another device once. How will this work for people who build their PCs? I have no intention of purchasing a new license every time I swap out motherboards. 'The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device becomes the "licensed device," reads the license for Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Business. In other words, once a retail copy of Vista is installed on a PC, it can be moved to another system only once. ... Elsewhere in the license, Microsoft forbids users from installing Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium in a virtual machine. "You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system," the legal language reads. Vista Ultimate and Vista Business, however, can be installed within a VM.'" Overly Critical Guy points out more information about changes to Vista's EULA and the new usage restrictions. "For instance, Home Basic users can't copy ISOs to their hard drives, can't run in a virtualized environment, and can only share files and printers to a maximum of 5 network devices."

NiK0laI writes "TechWeb has posted an article regarding Vista's new license and how it allows you to only move it to another device once. How will this work for people who build their PCs? I have no intention of purchasing a new license every time I swap out motherboards. 'The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device becomes the "licensed device," reads the license for Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Business. In other words, once a retail copy of Vista is installed on a PC, it can be moved to another system only once. ... Elsewhere in the license, Microsoft forbids users from installing Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium in a virtual machine. "You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system," the legal language reads. Vista Ultimate and Vista Business, however, can be installed within a VM.'" Overly Critical Guy points out more information about changes to Vista's EULA and the new usage restrictions. "For instance, Home Basic users can't copy ISOs to their hard drives, can't run in a virtualized environment, and can only share files and printers to a maximum of 5 network devices."

ClausValca writes "Doing some late-night surfing last night and came across a post over at Cybernet News: Limited Time Only: Vista 5728 Available To The Public. Although apparently intended for the TAP and Technical Beta Testers....it is available for download to the public via this Microsoft public download page for Vista 5728. There is a link on that page as well for direct download of the latest 64-bit flavor of that version as well. An Ars Technica post also has some background info on the new release. Techweb is reporting that Microsoft is specifically asking for feedback on this release, so make sure and let them know what you think."

crashFaster writes to tell us TechWeb is reporting that in a recent deal AT&T has teamed up with Akimbo Systems to bring internet-based video-on-demand services to customers as early as this summer. From the article: "The AT&T Homezone service, being trialed within several states, integrates AT&T Yahoo! high-speed Internet and AT&T DISH Network programming. The service provides video on demand, digital video, and Internet content, such as photos and music through a set-top box." AT&T and Akimbo have also both issued press releases with a few more specifics.

QuietLagoon writes "The evolving Citibank PIN scandal is getting worse with each passing day. Gregg Keizer of TechWeb News writes: 'The unfolding debit card scam that rocked Citibank this week is far from over, an analyst said Thursday as she called this first-time-ever mass theft of PINs 'the worst consumer scam to date.' ... The problem...is that retailers improperly store PIN numbers after they've been entered, rather than erase them at the PIN-entering pad. Worse, the keys to decrypt the PIN blocks are often stored on the same network as the PINs themselves, making a single successful hack a potential goldmine for criminals: they get the PIN data and the key to read it.'"

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Record Label civil war, more big-business software getting tossed into open source, US Government says 2008 IPv6 still on track, EU Warned Microsoft source code not enough, RIM celebrates a victory in Germany, 10th planet a reality, and looking forward to the year 2001 -- Read on for details.

Record Label Supports Accused File-Sharer. arabagast writes "The Nettwerk Music Group has said it will pay for the defense of David Greubel. Greubel is the defendant in a complaint filed by the RIAA in a U.S. District Court in Fort Worth, Texas accusing him of having 600 illegally downloaded music files on his home computer."

Qluster's OpenQRM goes OSS. Decibel writes "While Microsoft, Oracle and now IBM have made news by releasing free versions of their databases, other companies have gone one better and released versions of their products as OSS. Qlusters is one example, in that they just released OpenQRM. The CTO's previous company (Symbiot) also made a similar play, releasing OpenSIMS. Could this be the start of a change to where commercial software starts melding more and more into OSS?"

US Government says 2008 IPv6 still on track. DrkShadow writes to tell us that the Government is holding fast to their 2008 IPv6 switch commitment. From the article: "The White House Office of Management and Budget said it would issue a policy memorandum dictating full federal 'IPv6' compliance in an effort to spur its deployment throughout government agencies."

EU Warned Microsoft source code not enough. Joe Barr writes "According to WindowsITPro, the Wall Street Journal has obtained a copy of a confidential memo sent from the EU to Microsoft last month which warned Microsoft that an offer of the source code would not be enough to satisfy the EU's requirements for interoperability. Open source advocates have blasted the offer because it lacks the knowledge required to interoperate with Windows behind its IP licensing, thus making it unusable."

RIM celebrates a victory in Germany. PDG writes "Looks like not everything is going bad for RIM as they have recently won another patent based lawsuit, but this time in Germany. At least they don't have all their legal eggs in one basket."

10th planet a reality. smooth wombat writes "After measuring twice and cutting once, a team of German astrophysicists at the University of Bonn led by Frank Bertoldi have concluded that the object located beyond the orbit of Pluto and named 2003 UB313, is 435 miles larger in diameter than Pluto. As a result, there will be increasing pressure on the IAU (International Astronomical Union) to classify this object as the 10th planet. From the article: '"It is now increasingly hard to justify calling Pluto a planet if UB313 is not also given this status," Bertoldi said.'"

Looking forward to the year 2001. ChristianNerds writes "Atari Magazine is serving up an article written in 1989 concerning what the next century would be like. From the article: 'A typical morning in the year 2001: You wake up, scan the custom newspaper that's spilling from your fax, walk into the living room. There you speak to a giant screen on the wall, part of which instantly becomes a high-quality TV monitor. When you leave for work, you carry a smart wallet, a computer the size of a credit card. When you come home, you slip on special eyeglasses and stroll through a completely artificial world.' They got a great deal right, like the spread of optical disk usage, the internet (ISDN), and parallel processing."

JamesAlfaro wrote to mention an article on the site TechWeb, which reports that Tivo has filed a patent for an RFID-based preferences schema. From the article: "The multimedia mobile personalization system would have a remote control that recognizes the viewer's RFID tag closest to the PVR. The remote control identifies and notifies the multimedia device through the RFID chip in the person's clothing or body to tailor the media content to their preferences. The remote control device would identify and link the viewer to the system using an 'RFID tag that is attached to a key ring, necklace, watch, in his wallet, or even a sub dermal tag inserted somewhere in the user's body.'"

It doesn't come easy wrote to mention the announcement that Madison, Wisconsin will soon be home to the newest Municipal Wi-Fi network. From the article: "'I made a commitment in 2004 to bring Wi-Fi to Madison,' said Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz in a statement. 'This is an important new service for Madison residents and businesses.' The Madison network will be rolled out at no cost to the city and the providers have secured initial funding from service agreements from ISPs. The initial phase of the Madison network will cover users in the downtown region of the city with plans to later cover the entire city." I love my town. Zombies and Wi-Fi. What more could you want?

nate.oo writes "If you think Apple Computer's Steve Jobs invented the technology behind the Apple iPod, don't bet your 60GB, 15,000-song model on it. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, patent applications that cover much of the technology associated with the iPod were submitted by Microsoft."

TolkiEinstein writes "Here's an interesting tidbit from the NY Times on Verizon's new EV-DO network they've dubbed simply, BroadbandAccess Plan. A mere $80/mo. gets you wireless access over Verizon's 3G network at "giddy" speeds of 400-700 kbps. True, that's not exactly breakneck, compared to my 2800-3400 kbps desktop connection. But, the fact that it's hotspot-free (tetherless) wireless access from major metropolitan areas should count for something. One negative is slow upload speeds of around 100 kbps."

maotx writes "IBM has developed an adjustible mouse adapter that compensates for the shakes of patients with hand tumors and other causes of uncontrollable shaking. According to the International Essential Tremor Foundation, in the US alone nearly 10 million people are affected by essential tremor, the most common form of hand tremors. This adapter will plug in between the mouse and computer and is compatible with existing mice. No word on which port is supported (ps/2, usb, etc). More info here, here, and here. It is expected that IBM will sell the adapter for under $100 USD."

chia_monkey writes "Here's an interesting little tidbit about the 'free' Internet. Seems Costa Rica may make it a crime to make Internet-based phone calls. It would be a shame if this sets a precedent of setting legistlation that would seriously stunt the growth of these emerging technologies that should be making communication cheaper and easier, not harder and illegal."

Mark Stone writes with a thoughtful look back at the year 2004 in open source, pointing out both major gains and inevitable uncertainties. He writes "2004 stands out as a year in which open source consolidated its position as a valuable and accepted approach to business and technology policy. A less obvious but significant trend underlies all of this: even as open source business models join the mainstream, the open source development model remains a mysterious process on which large technology companies struggle to capitalize. Key issues and developments have played out in four areas: legal, policy, business, and technology." Read on for the rest. Legal

The biggest non-story of the year was SCO's legal efforts. So far SCO has not been able to make substantial headway with a single one of its legal claims, and indeed has suffered a number of significant setbacks in court.

This is certainly good news for Linux and open source. Going back five or six years, clearly one of the major obstacles to widespread adoption of open source software was the uncertain legal status of both the software and the licenses. While this aspect of open source is still an unfinished saga -- more on that shortly -- the inability of SCO, through either legal or PR channels, to undermine Linux gives reason for confidence about the future.

The real story about SCO in 2004 has in fact been the telling of that story. While mainstream media coverage of SCO has varied widely -- sometimes accurate, sometimes resembling coverage of the OJ Simpson trial -- Groklaw has emerged as a steady voice of reason and objectivity adeptly defusing all attempts at "FUD" PR around the case.

2004 has been, especially as an election year, a controversial year for the phenomenon of blogging. Whether blogging will provide a sustainable alternate voice in journalism is very much an open question. A few blog sites, however, have shown what a handful of dedicated individuals can do in the face of much larger, and better funded PR machines. Groklaw is an outstanding example of the positive journalism effect that blogging can have.

The legal front brought other good news for the open source community. Norway's Supreme Court acquitted Jon Johansen, and the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit opted not to appeal the decision. In the United States the Digital Millenium Copyright Act still remains the law of the land, but the Recording Industry Association of America has made little progress in forcing ISPs to disclose the identities of alleged file swappers.

A more troubling legal trend is the shift in debate about the intellectual property status of open source software. The principles behind the "copyleft" approach have gained continued acceptance, and have even been leveraged as an integral part of some business models. The debate now, however, centers more around patents that copyright.

IBM has been out in front of the patent issue. Their open source license was the first to explicitly address patent licensing as an issue above and beyond copyright, and they've taken steps, even recent steps, to see that open source development is unencumbered by patent concerns. IBM is not the only company putting patents in the open source domain. Sun Microsystems recently announced they will make patents available under their recently approved Common Development and Distribution open source license (CDDL).

All of this would seem to be good news for the open source community, especially given that Poland's objections have put a temporary halt to the Europan Union software patent initiative. Appearances can be deceiving, however. IBM is a supporter of software patents. Sun's gesture is in fact intended to create a competitive advantage for OpenSolaris over Linux, since the patent protection Sun offers applies only to work licensed under the CDDL -- in other words, not Linux. In a recent News.com commentary, Bruce Parens said, "So while claiming to make the patents available to open-source developers, Sun can sue folks who work on Linux rather than Solaris."

The biggest patent concern comes from Microsoft. In a speech in Australia, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed that Linux violated more than 200 patents. While this may be more hype -- or hope -- than fact, it does tip Microsoft's hand in terms of what tactics they are willing to use to meet the Linux competitive threat.

Policy

All other things being equal, customers prefer an open system to a closed one, and vendor choice over vendor lock-in. In the IT world in general, and between Windows and Linux in particular, all other things are not equal, which makes platform choice complicated. More and more, however, organizations are seeing Linux as a viable platform choice that

• Lowers up-front licensing fees
• Has the support and backing of significant technology vendors, whether small, medium (Red Hat), or large (IBM, Novell)
• Avoids vendor lock-in at both the platform and application level

These claims are independent of the more controversial claims about improving security and lowering total cost of ownership. 2004 has added an interesting additional element to the mix: the desire of government organizations outside the United States to not be dependent on a large, American technology company whose revenues exceed the gross national product of most nations.

This software declaration of independence has taken several forms. Sometimes it seems simply to be a negotiating tactic to force Microsoft to lower prices. India may be an example.

Sometimes, however, price is not the issue. Munich, for example, committed to making the switch to Linux despite direct lobbying efforts by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. In the case of a high tech country like Germany, this decision is probably influenced by the reluctance to be dependent on an American company guilty of monopoly practices.

The situation in the developing world is somewhat different. Unshackled by significant requirements of backward compatibility, emerging economies like Venezuela's have a chance to make a clean start and avoid what they perceive as the pitfalls and inefficiencies in older IT infrastructures.

The policy approach in China is even more alarming to traditional technology vendors. China clearly does not want to build an economy dependent on outside production or services, whether it's factories or satellite launches. In the software world China has made it clear that it can and will build its own platform and application stack leveraging open source components, if that is what it has to do to maintain control of its software destiny.

Business

The North American market for computer technology has, in many ways, reached the saturation point. A Pentium 4, to say nothing of a 64-bit processor, is already overkill for most office desktop applications. Older versions of the Microsoft Office suite, and older versions of Microsoft Windows, are often quite adequate for business productivity needs. The problem for traditional technology vendors is aggravated by the fact that Linux, Open Office, and other open source software may now be good enough.

On the one hand this accounts for why policy issues and the international technology market have become so important: this is where technology vendors see the biggest opportunity to grow new business. On the other hand, open source is forcing some significant changes in the software market domestically.

The most visible effect of open source has been the commoditization effect. Microsoft, as we've seen, has been forced to acknowledge the competitive impact Linux is having, and to cut prices overseas in response to this competition. Yet even companies like BEA acknowledge that open source will have an increasing commoditizing effect, meaning that they will cede lower levels of the application stack to freely available open source software and seek to add value further up the stack.

The most dramatic concession to commoditization in 2004 has been the announcement that Sun is open sourcing Solaris. Said one Sun executive who asked to remain anonymous, "Do you think we'd be open sourcing Solaris if we had any other way to compete with Linux on price? Of course not."

If anything, the opening of Solaris reinforces that Sun has been unable to find a business model built around Linux. Given that competitors like IBM and HP have, with varying degrees of success, been able to integrate Linux into their business models, one suspects that there are deeper problems at Sun than the opening of Solaris can solve.

The bottom line is that Sun is still trying to compete with, rather than embrace Linux. The CDDL doesn't extend patent protection to anyone working under a different open source License, and the CDDL is incompatible with the GPL, meaning none of the Solaris code can be used to benefit Linux.

This move, of using a license as a competitive tool, is one of the more subtle but more important business trends to emerge from open source in 2004.

The most common approach is a dual-licensing scheme, utilized by Trolltech (for Qt), Sleepycat (for Berkeley DB), MySQL, and newcomer db4objects, among others.

In each case the company makes its core product available under the GPL, or else under a similar viral-type license. Since each of these software products is intended to be embedded within or combined with other software to create a derivative product, companies are forced to make their own product available as open source, or to approach the originating company about separate licensing under proprietary terms.

The result is a very low-cost distribution mechanism for the open source companies, as well as a cheap in-bound sales channel of pre-qualified leads.

Of course, to be able to dual-license, you must have created all the code in question, or have full rights granted to you for all the code in question. Thus this very successful open source business model is incompatible with the open source development model; each of the companies using the dual-license approach does all, or nearly all of their software development in-house.

Technology

What then of the open source development model? Has it enjoyed the growth and widespread acceptance that open source business models have?

Certainly 2004 saw a number of significant releases for open source projects. GIMP 2.0 was finally released, as was Gnome 2.6. Large companies as well as individual projects made strides. IBM announced the release of its Java database, Cloudscape, as open source. Novell released SUSE Enterprise Server 9.

The year's most significant releases were the 2.6 series of Linux kernels, and the 1.0 release of Mono. With 2.6, Linux now has many of the features needed to compete as an enterprise-class server: better multiprocessor support, failover and hot-swap support, better journaling file system support.

Mono is absolutely critical if the open source community is to compete in the application development market. C# and .Net will be important application building blocks for the forseeable future, and Linux and open source need to be viable approaches.

The Debian Project has undergone an interesting evolution in the last year. Long-time Debian users have often complained about the slow pace at which Debian moves, favoring security and stability over feature growth. The result is a very solid server system, but one that, for the end user, often lacks support for advanced hardware.

The solution, which seems so obvious now, is independent distributions that leverage Debian as a base but target the end user with ease-of-use features and hardware-support features that have yet to make it into Debian. Two successful projects heading down this path are Ubuntu, which follows the Gnome approach to usability, and Mepis, which follows the KDE approach to usability. Either distribution will give you an easy install, access to Debian packages and apt-based network updates, but with more advanced hardware support and an improved UI over stock Debian.

By far the biggest development story of the year, however, has been Firefox, the browser component of the Mozilla project.

Timing is everything. Security, privacy, and spyware have become major concerns in 2004. Microsoft has refused to significantly update Internet Explorer (IE) until Longhorn is released, which could be in 2006 (as in "Santa Claus could be real"). The Mozilla Foundation capitalized on this opportunity with a major fundraising blitz for the foundation and PR blitz around Firefox; this included a full-page New York Times ad.

In November, Firefox 1.0 was released, and to date downloads exceed 10 million. Mozilla has raised over $250,000 in its fundraising campaign. While IE's market share still hovers around 90%, Firefox has rapidly grown to 5% market share, and put a dent in IE's market share for the first time in years. Industry analyst Gartner Group has looked at the results of 2004 and declared the browser war open again.

Looking ahead to 2005, it's interesting to ponder the tech sector's differing response to open source business and open source development models. The business models are reasonably well understood and generally accepted now. Not everyone is leveraging open source as a business play, but everyone understands it is one viable strategy to pursue.

On the development side, however, the results of open source continue to confound the establishment. Why did no one see the Firefox phenomenon coming? Equally important, why isn't anyone (AOL) attempting to leverage Firefox's market success and technology advantages?

With Solaris, it's interesting to note that even supporters of OpenSolaris admit it sees no real development savings to opening Solaris; the benefits are all on the marketing side. Ben Rockwood blogs "It's going to take Sun more work to maintain it open source than it will to just leave it closed."

Yes, open source has become mainstream. But that mainstream presence needs to be more than a commodity benefit to companies willing to leverage the results of open source. Will mainstream technology companies figure out how to anticipate and collaborate with open source development as a deep part of their technology strategy? That's a big question that 2005 may answer.

Mark Stone is an open source consultant and freelance writer living in the Sierra Nevada region of Northern California. He can be reached at mark.stone@gmail.com.

Kip Winger writes "Mike Nash, Microsoft's Chief Security Executive, has made claims that Windows is more secure than Linux. In a recent online chat, he staunchly defended Microsoft's record on security, basing part of his argument on how Windows Server 2003's 15 patches in the past year are far less than what RedHat or SuSE have had to endure." He also mentioned the recent purchase of Sybari and their Antivirus product.

Allnighterking writes "The Honeypot project Honeynet.org has released their study on the expected lifetime of an unpatched default Linux install. If some of you remember AvanteGarde recently did a study of its own with several versions of Windows products and found that the average lifetime was about four minutes. Internet Week has an article on the study and the PDF with the full details of the study is available on Honeynet.org. Needless to say, from my viewpoint this is a good reason to limit Windows installations in IT that any PHB and/or Smiling Man can understand. Have them put into a spreadsheet and see what this kind of security means to their bottom line."

mithridate writes "Microsoft has posted the Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate. eWeek has a short review of the service pack. My favorite quote from the article is, 'The company argues that the improvements are important enough that applications should be changed to accommodate them.' I know I still have not installed SP2 because of the problems it causes with SQL Server, I can't wait to see what kind of havoc it causes on the servers..."

TheSync writes "The Register is reporting that Toshiba is recalling notebook RAM blaiming third-party DIMMs. This follows on HP's bad notebook RAM in June. Which raises the question, is there a vast sea of bad DIMMs out there?"

elfarto writes "Techweb is reporting that a new worm that spreads via Microsoft's instant messaging client began badgering users Monday, several security firms said. Dubbed Funner, the worm propagates by sending itself to all the contacts listed in the user's copy of MSN Messenger, Microsoft's IM client. There is an analysis on Symantec Security Response Site; apparently the worm tries to download stuff from www.78p.com and adds entries to the hosts file pointing to more that 400 Chinese porn sites. The worm also sends itself to the whole contact list as funny.exe so it requires the user interaction to actually execute it. "

J ROC writes "Techweb has a story about the German city of Munich's Windows-to-Linux migration. It appears the move to replace 14,000 Windows desktops with Linux has hit a bump. Green Party alderman Jens Muehlhaus, who is a supporter of open-source software, has petitioned the mayor to examine the status of software patents in the European Community. The issue involves a proposed directive on software patents that is being considered by various European governments. Muehlhaus fears that a patent owner could issue a cease-and-desist order against Munich, thus hurting the operation of various city departments."

evilninja writes "Techweb is reporting on the sale of 10MHz worth of bandwidth to Nextel by the FCC. One term of the agreement will solve a problem that has been frustrating the FCC for some time. Nextel will return some of their bandwidth to the public domain, since it has been interfering with local emergency channels in some areas."

evilninja writes "Techweb is reporting on the sale of 10MHz worth of bandwidth to Nextel by the FCC. One term of the agreement will solve a problem that has been frustrating the FCC for some time. Nextel will return some of their bandwidth to the public domain, since it has been interfering with local emergency channels in some areas."

mindless4210 writes "The 1394 Trade Association has approved a specification for the development of wireless FireWire applications, which will let 1394-enabled devices, both wired and unwired, to connect with each other. The new spec will enable communication between a variety of devices, such as set-top boxes, HDTVs, tuners, and DVD players, all of which will be able to interoperate in home networks. Officials speculated that in the future there could be plug-in cards for set-top boxes enabling wireless connection to DVD players and hard-disk drives. The trade association also said it will work with the WiMedia Alliance to jointly develop collaborative products."

rbrandis writes "Dealing with widespread worms like Sasser raises the cost of using Windows, a research analyst said Wednesday. "This is part of the carrying cost of using Windows," said Mark Nicolett, research director at Gartner. "The cost of a Windows environment has gone up because enterprises have to install security patches very rapidly, deal with outages caused by secondary problems with these patches, and deploy additional layers of security technology." "The Sasser worm attacks confirm our prediction that mass worm attacks against the multiple vulnerabilities disclosed by Microsoft on April 13 were likely," said Nicolett and his Gartner colleague, John Pescatore, in an alert posted on the Gartner site."

weekendwarrior1980 writes "Microsoft warned that three 'critical'-rated flaws in the Windows operating system and other programs could allow hackers to sneak into personal computers and snoop on sensitive data. The flaws could allow attackers to break into PCs running Windows in several ways and then use the system to run malicious programs and steal or delete key data. These latest security flaws affect the latest versions of Windows, including Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 2000 , Windows XP, as well as software for networked computers such as Windows NT Server and Windows Server 2003." Their bulletins are available for these vulnerabilities. Techweb has a pretty good summary.

LoadWB writes "TechWeb has an article about Bell Labs' new liquid cooling technology for mobile processors. The tech, called 'nanograss' is described as 'tiny tubes that spray liquid on chip hot spots.' The use of this cooling technology reduces the power required to actively remove heat from mobile processors. Other applications are possible, but it seems it was primarily developed for use with mobile CPUs."

LoadWB writes "TechWeb has an article about Bell Labs' new liquid cooling technology for mobile processors. The tech, called 'nanograss' is described as 'tiny tubes that spray liquid on chip hot spots.' The use of this cooling technology reduces the power required to actively remove heat from mobile processors. Other applications are possible, but it seems it was primarily developed for use with mobile CPUs."

sp00 writes "A disposable paperboard computer has been developed and is already in use in Sweden. Developed by Cypak AB, the paperboard computer can collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data, the company says." Pretty impressive, given that they say it has a mere 32K of memory.

herrvinny writes "As proprietor of SCO Countdown, I just wanted to remind people that today is the deadline for SCO to sue a Linux user. As everyone should know, SCO, 3 months ago, promised to sue a Linux user within three months. Well, that day has come. Who is SCO going to sue, if it is even going to sue?"

Klatoo55 writes "According to an article by Techweb, Red Hat will release Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0, which includes support for Security-Enhanced Linux, in 2005. Red Hat has been running this system with a published IP address asking for hackers to try to break the security. The last version was defeated within 45 seconds, but this new version (apparently to be the policy for the next Fedora) has yet to be cracked."

securitas writes "Techweb reports that IT admins can now track and physically locate 802.11x WLAN users within a few feet using the new Wi-Fi Tracker hardware from National Scientific, based on its DarkStar wireless product. NSC's site says it will also produce tracking-only 'tag or badge' formats so admins are not limited to tracking active WLAN users and equipment. The company is now shipping development kits to its first customers and a technical specs PDF is available. The product incorporates Ekahau triangulation software. This is reminiscent of an earlier Slashdot story about office surveillance using 802.11b triangulation to track and determine the location of wireless network users."

securitas writes "Techweb reports that IT admins can now track and physically locate 802.11x WLAN users within a few feet using the new Wi-Fi Tracker hardware from National Scientific, based on its DarkStar wireless product. NSC's site says it will also produce tracking-only 'tag or badge' formats so admins are not limited to tracking active WLAN users and equipment. The company is now shipping development kits to its first customers and a technical specs PDF is available. The product incorporates Ekahau triangulation software. This is reminiscent of an earlier Slashdot story about office surveillance using 802.11b triangulation to track and determine the location of wireless network users."

WillOutPower writes "Sun is inviting Cray (of supercomputer fame) and IBM (needs no introduction...) to join and create a new intermediate run-time language for high-performance computing. Java's bytecode, Java Grande, and Microsoft's IL language for the Common Language Runtime, it seems a natural progression. I wonder if the format will be in XML? Does this mean ubiquitous grid computing? Maybe now I won't have to write my neural network in C for performance :-)"

Saint Aardvark writes "SecurityFocus has published an excellent column detailing how spammers r00ted an Apache server, and used it to send spam. The tool they used is (I hate to admit it) pretty sophisticated: it has macro capabilities, picks up email addresses from and reports success or failure to the master server. It's a very frightening read...and so is this: Message Labs reports that they now intercept 27 spam emails per second, up from 2 per second this time last year. Virus-created proxies are mainly to blame."

securitas writes "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will hold its first hearings on Internet telephony and VoIP regulation on Dec. 1 and plans to regulate VoIP by late 2004. A public comment period will follow the Dec. 1 meeting. Some say that it is overly ambitious to regulate VoIP by 2004, especially since FCC Commissioner Michael Powell does not have a strong reputation for clarifying complex issues - instead he has a reputation for confounding them. More at Internet.com and InternetWeek . FCC press release (PDF1|DOC1) and attached letter (PDF2|DOC2) to VoIP proponent Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee."

theodp writes "Defending its decision to concoct recommendations to steer customers to buy items at Amazon's new Apparel Store, a spokeswoman said Amazon "felt it would be evident to people that since the store was so new, we wouldn't have the transaction history to create database similarities." But in this just-published patent applicaton, Amazon earlier told the USPTO it's able to use product viewing histories to determine the similarity or relatedness between products for which little or no purchase history data exists. So which claim should you believe?"

Embedded Geek asks: "There's an interesting opinion piece at Embedded Systems Magazine about [embedded] programming being a dead end job. The author cites burnout ('Pushing ones and zeroes around doesn't sound like a lot of work, but getting each and every one of a hundred million perfect is tremendously difficult.'), prestige, and skill obsolescence as big reasons for programmers to quit or to go 'over to the dark side' and join management or marketing positions. While the piece primarily addresses embedded programmers, the issue is rising for IT workers and other tech workers. When the age issue is combined with the export of jobs offshore, it makes me nervous just to be pushing 35..." Even though the market is going thru a rough patch, and the number of detrimental aspects to programming are increasing (ageism and so forth), I still do not feel that programming is a dead end job. Computers are going nowhere folks, and as long as they are around, programmers will be necessary. People who are in this career for the money or the prestige may not like it after a while, but the people who are in this for something else will tolerate quite a bit before deciding to opt out. The simple measure here: "as long as you love doing it, you'll keep doing it." Isn't this true for any career?

tuiterwyk writes: "There's an article here on Techweb about manufacturers plans to give pacemakers and defibrillation devices internet capabilities. BSOD takes on a whole new meaning...." And so does 'denial of service attack'.

tuiterwyk writes: "There's an article here on Techweb about manufacturers plans to give pacemakers and defibrillation devices internet capabilities. BSOD takes on a whole new meaning...." And so does 'denial of service attack'.

duplicate-nickname writes "Finally some good news on the patent font. A US district court tossed out most of Rambus' patent infingement claims against Infineon. The judge also states that even if Infineon has infringed on the remaining patents, they didn't do so willfully."

Bonker writes: "I shook my head sadly when I saw this article on Techweb. It's about a company in the U.K. called Envisional, who monitors intellectual property violations. It seems that they believe that each Ringtone download is worth 7.5 c. The 'monitoring startup calls the downloading of musical ring tones "another Napster in the making" and says the industry may be losing more than $1 million a day in related royalties.' Sad sad sad." If it was April Fool's this would go down much easier.

grub points to this TechWeb story about a software tool (NetRecall) from a company called Athentica which they claim can selectively allow viewing, copying, and forwarding of online materials. The idea is to maintain control of content on a per-person or per-category basis -- something which could have good or bad applications, but which sounds difficult to implement effectively no matter what use it's put to. (Will the required plug-on also block all screenshot utilities? If not, exactly who is it intended to stop?) Of course, since circumventing even simple methods used to "protect" copyrighted materials is illegal under the DMCA, perhaps that doesn't much matter.