The Napsterite News - Tuesday May 15

[TankGirl]

The Napsterite News
"The Sun Never Sets on the Napsterite Empire..."
Tuesday May 15

Spyware Piggybacks on Napster Rivals

As online file traders stream to Napster alternatives, many find their computers saddled with unwanted piggyback software that tracks their online movements and feeds them unwanted advertising. In efforts to locate revenues from their free services, companies that create popular programs, including BearShare, Audio Galaxy Satellite and iMesh, are adding outside pieces of software that have nothing to do with file trading.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5921593.html?tag=tp_pr


Playstation 2 Gains AOL for Net Access


Internet giant America Online and Sony Computer Entertainment on Tuesday teamed up to bring the Internet to Sony's popular PlayStation 2 game console. Under the agreement, AOL and Sony will work together to combine AOL Internet features such as instant messaging, chat and e-mail with PlayStation. Sony will provide the network adapter for PlayStation that will let consumers access AOL Internet features and play Net-enabled games.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-5928280.html?tag=mn_hd


Building a Better Backbone


Surging Internet growth has put pressure on telecom networks to keep up. Their most advanced R&D is going toward expanding the capacity of the long-haul cables that cross continents and dive under oceans.
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/jun01/savage.asp


Distance Isn't What It Used To Be


The Internet is a global laboratory, allowing individuals as well as the marketing departments of multinationals and academics in top universities to pioneer uses for communications technology. All sorts of experiments, carried out on the Internet, will feed through into other media, changing and developing them. The Internet thus functions as both a prototype and a testing ground for the future of communications. Watching its evolution, we can catch a glimpse of what lies ahead.
http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/pubcontent/feature_content_2.jhtml?i=2234&x=11&t=ecommerce


Monitoring The Emotional State

It was only a matter of time before the advocates of employee monitoring upped the ante on how they used technology to keep tabs on workers. Until now, the main way of doing this was by monitoring 'raw activity'. Now there's at least one company exploring the idea of using new algorithms to track the psychological state of employees based on language found within e-mail.
http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/14/0514dvorak.html


Fake virus warning carries worm

Computer worms have tried all sorts of ploys for tricking users into activating them, but the latest is particularly sneaky - it masquerades as a virus warning from Symantec, a well-known anti-virus firm. Symantec has confirmed the existence of the worm, known as VBS.Hard.A@mm, VBS/Hard-A, or VBS/Hard@mm, and created software to detect it. So far, the virus has a low geographical distribution and has infected a small number of sites, according to a Symantec report published earlier this week. The worm distributes itself--like several in the past, including Love Letter Homepage -as an attachment to an e-mail message. The message is called "FW: Symantec Anti-Virus Warning," and claims to contain a description of a non-existent worm in an attached file.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2760467,00.html


MS Gets Privacy-Happy With New IE

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6, due to roll out this fall with the Windows XP operating system, will provide users with new tools to protect their privacy. Using a new standard protocol called the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), the browser will automatically be able to read the privacy policies associated with cookies, which will be blocked or allowed through settings that users select.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,43686,00.html


Congress has hard time stomaching e-mail spam

The U.S. government has been expected to crack down this year on spam -unsolicited commercial e-mail. But a tough anti-spam bill is faltering in the House and even a milder Senate version faces plenty of opposition.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/05/14/spam.wars/index.html


So long, Douglas Adams, and thanks for all the fun


The author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was a geek's geek. As soon as the news began to spread that author Douglas Adams had died Friday from a sudden heart attack at age 49, tributes to the science fiction humorist began to blossom all across the Internet. There has always been a strong correlation between computer geekdom and science fiction, so it's not that big of a surprise that Adams would be remembered fondly online. The Net will miss him.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/05/15/douglas_adams/index.html

- tg