2003 January

“Thieves stole computer chips worth more than $11 million CDN yesterday from a truck near London’s Heathrow Airport, police said. The Pentium 4 chips had been flown to Britain from Miami, Fla., en route to an unknown destination, police said. The consignment was inside an unattended American Airlines truck at a trading estate near the [...]

SANS (Sysadmin, Audit and Network Security) Institute, in combination with the NIPC (Nation Infrastructure Protection Center), released a Top 10 list two years ago. The following year it was expanded to a Top 20. Now, working in concert with the FBI, they updated that Top 20 list. Actually the page has a lot more than [...]

I have read several of Microsoft’s new SPOT (an acronym for Smart-Personal-Objects-Technology). In this particular incarnation, it takes the form of a watch. However, instead of just telling time, it would also be be linked to the ‘net. So you could receive alerts about e-mail or news, synchronize it with the atomic clock, etc. The [...]

A class action lawsuit against Microsoft alleged that Californians over paid for software because of MS’s monopolistic practices. Actually the $1.1 billion dollar figure is fairly deceptive, most of that money is made up of vouchers that people will receive in compensation. These vouchers will only be good for purchasing computer hardware and software (not [...]

Actually these disc, on a technical level, are nothing at all like CDs. They measure about an inch across and will be able to hold about 4gigs of data. I have heard of attempts to introduce mini-discs before, but so far all attempts have been unsuccessful (for one reason or another). In many ways, CDs [...]

“The Transdermal Nutrient Delivery System (TDNDS) is a nutrition patch that will transmit vitamins and other micronutrients or nutraceuticals to the warfighters and sustain their physical and mental performance.”
I’ve never heard of a nutraceutical before.

“The U.S. military and other U.S. government agencies have begun a surreptitious e-mail campaign inside Iraq, CNN has learned, in an effort to get some Iraqis to defy President Saddam Hussein.”
I think this would make it rather difficult to pass a federal law banning spam, wouldn’t it?

“A Los Angeles federal judge has ruled that record companies and movie studios can proceed with a lawsuit against the parent company of Kazaa–the most popular online file-swapping service–in the United States.”I wonder who the RIAA’s next lawsuit will be against?

“It looks like computer users are in for a tough year. Malicious code writers have already released several serious threats on the Internet. Antivirus software maker F-Secure on Friday rated four new Windows worms as Level-2 threats.”
Great. I just updated my definitions. Guess I better do it again!

“The purpose of this article is to explain how Warchalking has become obsolete. It is being replaced by Wi-Fi Zones that are being fueled by home networks, corporate networks, and even payphones. The internet will be all around you in all places but you won’t ever need to care about Warchalking. Let’s bury the idea [...]

Coming soon to an inkjet printer near you: The ability to print hardware. Scientists are developing special inkjet cartridges with the ability to hold different types of polymers, the idea being that you will be able to actually print 3D objects. It doesn’t stop there though, as the printer will be able to print electronic [...]

Satellite communications company KVH Industries hopes to put an end to back-seat bickering among grumpy siblings during long family car trips. The Middletown-based company will introduce a satellite TV antenna that transmits movies, sports and news programming to sport utility vehicles (SUV), minivans, and luxury automobiles equipped with backseat entertainment systems.
Finally erase ‘Are we [...]

It was the dream of many a dead dot-com: build a virtual universe where people can socialize without the confusion of chat rooms or the awkwardness and emotional investment of physical face-to-face encounters. Backed by serious venture capital and sophisticated software, There Inc. is hoping to offer just that, and is betting that people will [...]

“An ordinary office building on Route 1 in Alexandria offers a rare window into the Internet hacker wars and a few clues to why Uncle Sam wants more monitoring capabilities in cyberspace. ”
Yeah, baby!

From Lockergnomie David Bott: “Hi Chris,
I’m not sure if I’m the first to discover this (or maybe see the potential
for some easy digital espionage), but there is an EXTREMELY easy way to
bypass the security of the NTFS file system.
A few weeks ago on TechTV, I saw Chris DiBona featuring Knoppix and thought
that I’d give it [...]

This is a little more personal than the stories I usually write, but I figured this might make a few of you smile (it certain worked for me). Getting to the point, last night I had a conversation with my wife regarding a plasma TV that she (alright, both of us) have been drooling over. [...]

EBay Inc. began making health insurance available to individuals who buy and sell goods full time over its Web site. Medical, catastrophic care, dental and other insurance will be available through a Marsh & McLennan Cos. unit to "power sellers," or the more than 30,000 people who are EBay’s most active merchants, the firm said. [...]

In a move to prevent some children from being ridiculed in a school cafeteria, a new high school in the U.K. will use a retina scanning device to charge students for lunch.
Dr. Ed Yates, headmaster of the Venerable Bede school, said the advanced eye-recognition software will be in place when the institution opens its doors [...]

The above is a link to a preview of Microsoft’s .Net Server 2003. But wait there’s more… Here is link to MS’s Exchange Server 2003, formerly known by the code name “Titanium”. And here is a link to a variety of Microsoft servers including Application Center, BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, etc. All of [...]

That is, it cheats when loading web pages from IIS servers. In order speed load times, IE ignores certain conventions regarding browser-server interaction. The article linked to from Slashdot goes into considerably more depth, but is very understandable; even if you aren’t familiar with the level of technical material being discussed. I think it also [...]