The Newspaper Shop -- Friday & weekend edition

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You're not forgotten

Wireless offices — a hacker boon?
Corporations across America are opening their doors to hackers when they set up wireless networks -- or when their employees set them up behind their backs. "We came across a company with one of these networks. All their source code, everything was available," said Thubten Comberford of White Hat Technologies, a wireless security firm. "This network was beaconing, 'log onto me'...It basically had its Rolls-Royce parked in the driveway, engine running, with a sign saying 'steal me.'"
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-823253.html

Week in review: High-tech goes to court
No stranger to the courtroom, Microsoft found itself embroiled in a barrage of legal filings related to its antitrust woes, but that doesn't mean the software giant took it lying down. The first salvo was fired by Netscape Communications, which sued Microsoft, claiming that the software giant's business practices crushed the onetime upstart's Internet browser. The lawsuit is based on previous court findings that Microsoft's business practices amid the infamous browser wars of the 1990s violated two sections of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-823553.html

CERT reports ICQ security hole
A security hole that may allow an attacker to run malicious code on a victim's PC has been detected in AOL's ICQ chat program. All versions prior to AOL Mirabilis 2001B are vulnerable to the exploit, according to a report published on Thursday by the U.S.-based Internet security center CERT. Users who have the most recent build of the Mirabilis client are safe because vulnerable builds of the newest client will be automatically instructed by the server to disable the vulnerable plug-in. But all versions prior to 2001B do not have an external plug-in to disable, and so are vulnerable even after connecting to the server.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-823247.html

Siemens: Ask your machine what's wrong
Diagnosing faults in machinery may become as simple as talking to it, according to Siemens researchers at the company's Princeton, New Jersey labs -- and the same technology may extend to our daily lives. Using off-the-shelf technology, the company has combined wireless networking, voice recognition and Webcam-like devices to create a new way to integrate expert systems and human skills, and it could be in service in a few months' time.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-822963.html

Laid-off techies invoke old law
A relic of the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s may help the laid-off techies of today. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to give employees 60 days notice before mass layoffs or a plant closing, was originally intended to help blue-collar workers deal with plant shutdowns. Now, laid-off tech workers are finding out that it can apply to them as well, and they're taking action.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-822917.html

Will gamers pay to play online?
Preston, who would only give his first name, represents one side of the notoriously bipolar online gaming industry -- a market that must overcome some serious barriers to reach the billion-dollar revenue growth analysts expect over the next few years. On one side of the market are free, advertising-supported games such as "Jeopardy Online" and the myriad card and board games offered by sites such as Yahoo and Pogo.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-823522.html

Bidding for Olympic torches lights up eBay
Sports fans who want a piece of the Olympic flame are paying red-hot prices on eBay. In recent weeks, sellers on eBay have listed about 20 torches used in the Olympic relay heading toward Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Games. About eight of the auctions are still open, but fans should be prepared to pay a price for the memento: Bidding has routinely reached more than $2,000 a torch, and one bidder offered $6,100 in an auction for a torch and a souvenir jacket
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-823573.html

Hewlett takes merger fight to the Web
Walter Hewlett has launched a Web site. The site is the latest strategic step the dissident Hewlett-Packard board member has taken in his fight against the pending HP and Compaq Computer mega-merger. Taking Hewlett's cause to the masses, the site is designed to give shareholders and interested parties a blow-by-blow account of his efforts to stop the $24 billion merger--ranging from filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission to reports from his financial advisors.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-823402.html

Microsoft looks beyond the desktop
The technologies behind Microsoft's much mentioned .Net initiative are slowly being revealed as is the scale of the software giant's ambition for it. Microsoft is due to launch a key toolkit for .Net in February which it hopes will start to extend the company's reach far beyond its traditional stronghold of desktop computers. But as .Net becomes more concrete, it will throw Microsoft into fierce competition with some of its bitterest rivals, as well as pit it against an array of new opponents.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1779645.stm

IBM to sell Linux-only mainframe
A new Linux-only mainframe model that IBM will announce Friday is the strongest indication so far of the company's enthusiasm for uniting the comparatively new operating system with the decades-old business computer line. The refrigerator-sized machine running only Linux will be formally announced at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo show in New York next week and will begin shipping by the end of March, said Pete McCaffrey, director of IBM's zSeries mainframe group.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-822771.html?tag=cd_mh

EFF joins Sex.com case
A technology civil liberties group is jumping into a dispute between the owner of the Sex.com Web address and domain name provider VeriSign. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it filed a brief this week with a federal appeals court on behalf of Gary Kremen, the original owner of the Sex.com address. Kremen lost the domain name to another porn entrepreneur and then won it back after a protracted legal battle.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-823122.html?tag=cd_mh

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