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Lucent Technologies, creators of all good things, have announced that they will be rolling out a new fiber optic "pump" later this year. This wonderful bit o' technology will supposdly allow the fiber optic cable to be used 5x times as much--400 gigabits per second. Called Wave Star, it will be in beta testing 3Q of this year, and AT&T (surprise!) will be the first company to use it. AT&T, Lucent's parent, continues to benefit from one of the greatest research institutions ever, Bell Labs.

Apple, once upon a time the leading computer maker in the US, has admitted in it's annual filing with the SEC that it's market share is at 3.1%, a barebones remnant. Despite the hurrah over Apple posting a profit in the first time in over a year, Apple still has serious problems, given that it's market share was only 5.6 a year ago, and is 3.1 now.

Last semester in my interfaces class, my roomate and eye were large scale advocates of wearable computers. We were scoffed at loudly by everyone who told us that it was 20 years off, but check out this story over at wired that tells about LCD monitors that you can mount in glasses. It's coming fast guys... thanks to Dwarf for sending this our way.

In a challenge a little bit different for the normal programming challenges, the Computer Conservation Society is running a contest to celebrate the 50th annivesrary of Baby, the first strored memory machine. Baby was built at the University of Manchester, and has 1024 bits of cathode ray memory. The challene is to build "the best program possible" using the, shall we say, limited resources availible.

In an odd twist of fate, the looming Y2K problem, many older programmers from the 60s and 70s are being wooed back for their knowledge of legacy apps that many big banks etc run.

Galt writes " The main thrust of this article from Wired News seems to bring to light a very disturbing rumor that after acquiring internet technology companies (such as Hotmail, Inktomi, etc.) to bolster their online presence and content, Microsoft may be requiring these services to migrate their "highly-scalable Unix-based hardware and software" servers over to Windows NT and IIS."

Dan Marks sends us the followign:"DNS protocol is highly vulnerable to spoofing attacks, and Cylink and RSA may provide royalty-free (at least for a limited time) signature systems to prevent these attacks. The Internet Software Consortium is choosing a standard for DNS security. Read this article"

This story was sent to me by 11 people, but vertigo was the first. It has a lot more of the same information about the Bonk/Boink attack, but more importantly is the the comments at the end from Jiva DeVoe, the primary source for the article. His solution to the security hole is to run Linux. It then mentions how much better Free Software is for security. It gave me warm fuzzies.

The lesser know Smurf attack is getting attention again. Read this one from Derrick Webber for more information about yet another Denial of Service attack.

In more PalmPilot news, Wired News reports that 3Com may sue Microsoft over the use of the term "PalmPC", sighting its likeness to an upcoming PalmOS product. The article also states that 3Com may be bringing out a "Pilot Killer" of their own.

In perhaps more exciting news, the San Jose Mercury reports that the Federal Trade Comission may postpone or prevent the sale of Digital Equipment Corp.'s semiconductor operations, and it may do the same with Intel's already long postponed acquistion of Chips & Technologies.

Reuters reports that the Communications Workers of America is asking the FCC to block the proposed MCI/WorldCom merger. The union claims that the new company would own 63% of the US internet backbone, at would come at an expense of over 75,000 jobs over the next four years.
Will WorldCom become the Microsoft of [data] pipelines?

Wired is reporting that on Monday a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit can move forward against the PTO and a research company that won exclusive rights to human genes known to be useful in early detection of cancer. "[The lawsuit] claims that the patents violate free speech by restricting research. US District Judge Robert W. Sweet of New York, in ruling that the case may proceed to trial, noted that the litigation might open the door to challenges of a host of other patented genes. About one-fifth of the human genome is covered under patent applications and claims. ... The case against the patent office and patent-holder Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City is the first to challenge a patented gene under a civil rights allegation — in this case the First Amendment."