John at myITforum.com

If your like me, lately I've been following the news on the tragedy unfolding in Indonesia.  I've been hearing lots of statistics, such as the US being the richest country in the world, and that 40% of all aid offered to the world comes from the US, and quite honestly, I was completely unaware of our generosity to our foreign neighbors.  The latest release from the US on the tsunami was a shocker.

The United States is pledging $350 million to help tsunami victims, a tenfold increase over its first wave of aid, President Bush announced Friday.  "Initial findings of American assessment teams on the ground indicate that the need for financial and other assistance will steadily increase in the days and weeks ahead," Bush said Friday in a statement released in Crawford, Texas, where he is staying at his ranch.  “Our contributions will continue to be revised as the full effects of this terrible tragedy become clearer," he said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by this epic disaster."

Bush also is sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to Indian Ocean coastal areas ravaged by earthquake and tsunami to assess what more the United States needs to do. The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, will travel with him.

Wow...does this bring back memories?  There's a new worm on the prowl that attempts to correct the exploits of the Santy worm.  Will this do more harm than good?

F-Secure said on Friday that it was aware of seven sites that had been defaced by the worm, which appears designed to combat the Santy worm. The anti-Santy worm searches Google for sites that use the PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB) software exploited by the earlier worm, infects the sites and attempts to make the sites more secure by installing a patch.

Mikko Hyppönen, director of antivirus research at F-Secure, said that although the worm may seem beneficial, in fact it is likely to cause problems for administrators who will have to handle the increase in traffic.

What to do with an extra few thousand dollars?

The BBC has reported that a 22-year-old gamer has spent $26,500 (£13,700) on an island that exists only in a computer role-playing game (RPG).   The Australian gamer, known only by his gaming moniker Deathifier, bought the island in an online auction.   The land exists within the game Project Entropia, an RPG which allows thousands of players to interact with each other.   Entropia allows gamers to buy and sell virtual items using real cash, while fans of other titles often use auction site eBay to sell their virtual wares.   Earlier this year economists calculated that these massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the African nation of Namibia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4104731.stm

What better way to catch music thieves?  Makes you wonder whether or not its deliberate.

PC World has learned that some Windows Media files on peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa contain code that can spawn a string of pop-up ads and install adware. They look just like regular songs or short videos in Windows Media format, but launch ads instead of media clips.

When we ran the files, we noted over half a dozen pop-ups, some attempts to download adware onto our test PC, and an attempt to hijack our browser's home page. However, you can take steps to guard your PC against this ad invasion.  

A reader initially alerted PC World to an ad-laden Windows Media Audio file, titled "Alicia Keys Fallin' Songs In A Minor 4.wma." We then found two other WMA files and two Windows Media Video files that had been similarly modified.

Using a packet analysis tool called Etherpeek, we determined that each media file loaded a page served by a company called Overpeer (owned by Loudeye). That page set off a chain of events that led to the creation of several Internet Explorer windows, each containing a different ad or adware.

Overpeer first made news mid-2002 by offering its services to record companies looking to stop P-to-P pirates. It creates fake audio files that purport to be popular songs but play only a short loop of the track or an antipiracy message; the file then pops up a window offering the downloader a chance to buy the song. By flooding file-sharing services with spoofed files, Overpeer makes finding real music files more difficult.

Marc Morgenstern, Loudeye vice president and general manager of digital media asset protection, says the files we found come from a different division of the company--one that targets users with promotions or ads based on the keywords those users search for on P-to-P networks or in other venues.

Though the two businesses differ, the result is likely the same--a further reduction in the effectiveness of popular P-to-P networks. Morgenstern characterized Overpeer's actions as just deserts for people who illegally trade copyrighted works for free. "Remember, the people who receive something like (the ad-laden media files), in some cases, were on P-to-P, and they were trying to get illicit files," he says.

Read the full article here: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119016,00.asp

Can Novell get their act together, or will they change tactics again?  I honestly don't think this will work for Novell.   The primary reason?  Who will they market their products to?  How many serious business applications run on the Linux platform?  How in the world can you convince major companies to switch if their applications won't run on it?  How will Novell convince developers that they need to make their apps work on the Linux, or open-source platform?  They've got a very tough hill to climb. 

Novell, the former undisputed leader in proprietary networking software, is banking on Linux and open source to rescue its business from years of decline. Where once it seemed fated for obscurity, Novell is determined to regain its former status by transforming itself into one of the industry's leading open source vendors. 

Novell first aligned itself with the open source community when it launched its collaborative development site, forge.novell.com, in early 2003. But it wasn't until Novell purchased open source desktop software vendor Ximian in August 2003 that the company's new direction began to solidify in the public eye. Then in January 2004, Novell acquired SuSE, the leading Linux vendor in Europe and the No. 2 player worldwide, after Red Hat.

But even though it seems to be holding all the right cards, Novell faces tough odds. In recent years, tough competition from Microsoft and dwindling support from third-party developers have caused Novell's once-loyal base to look elsewhere for infrastructure needs. Unless it can win back the loyalty of the industry, Novell's new, Linux-centric message could fall on deaf ears.

Read the full article here: http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;637146750;fp;16;fpid;0

I blogged eariler that I was having problems putting two and two together on AOL's reduction in SPAM, and CAN-SPAM not really working.  The news just gets better.  I stumbled over this one this morning.

The saga of the 24 year old West Virginian AOL staffer who stole over 30 million email addresses has taken another exciting twist.

The engineer, who pleaded guilty to appropriating email addresses and then selling them on to spammers, had his plea refused by the judge.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein, although admitting to a dislike of "spamsters" (sic), could not be convinced Jason Samthers had committed a crime under the CAN-SPAM Act. The judge said it was not clear the defendant had deceived anyone - a key requirement of the new law.

Smathers was caught in June this year and arrested along with accomplice Sean Dunaway, 21. Both Smathers and Dunaway face up to five years imprisonment and a fine of at least $250,000 if found guilty.

Smathers obtained the email addresses by using another employee's password to gain access to AOL's extensive databases. The list he acquired, later sold on to spammers for more than $100,000, contained email addresses, telephone numbers, zip codes and the type of credit card used by each member. The list did not contain actual credit card details.

According to prosecutors the list is still doing the rounds amongst the spamming fraternity.

The device, called LaserField, integrates data collection software from Vancouver-based Flowfinity Wireless Inc. and a bar-code reader from Infinite Peripherals, based in Irvine, Calif. Bar code-enabled BlackBerrys will help track inventory and will speed data entry, Flowfinity said in a statement.

Bar codes are used in less than 5 percent of hospitals to ensure that patients receive the right medications. But more than 35 percent of hospitals ranked as “most wired“ use some sort of electronic means to match patients with medications.

Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure has detected two new fast spreading variants of the Cabir virus that infects cell phones using the Symbian operating system.

The company said the new variants, Cabir.H and Cabir.I, have fixed a flaw that slowed the previous Cabir virus from spreading rapidly. The original Cabir, dubbed Cabir.A, moved only to one new phone with each reboot. But the latest versions do not have the same restrictions, and appear capable of spreading to an unlimited number of phones per reboot.

Once a phone is infected, it is is capable of searching for other vulnerable phones using its Bluetooth wireless connection and transmitting a file that contains the network worm, according to F-Secure.

"We are getting into an issue that it is now in the wild and users have told their phones to accept any Bluetooth applications," Travis Witteveen, vice president of Americas for F-Secure, told internetnews.com. Witteveen said the new wrinkle in the worm exploits the very nature of how cell phones are intended to be used.

"When the phones are mobile they constantly are seeing Bluetooth applications and attacking them," he said.

Computers running Microsoft's Windows XP are vulnerable to Trojan attacks capable of remotely controlling a user's system even when equipped with the latest Service Pack 2 (SP2) patch, security firm Symantec has warned.

The Trojan horse, called "Phel", is capable of corrupting computers visiting a malicious Web site through Internet Explorer's Help controls, according to Symantec.

The program exploits a vulnerability within Internet Explorer and SP2 that engages help files from Web pages. The vulnerability was discovered in October.

An attacker first must entice a user to visit a malicious Web site before placing the Trojan on his machine. If the Trojan is successfully launched, the malicious software could be downloaded and run on the victim's system, according to Microsoft.

A spokeswoman for the Redmond, Wash., software giant said programmers were working to correct the vulnerability and will release the security update when the development and testing process is complete. She could not provide a definitive time table as to when a patch might be issued.

"Microsoft is working to forensically analyze the malicious code in Phel and will work with law enforcement to identify and bring to justice those responsible for this malicious activity," she said.

The flaw is unrelated to the three vulnerabilities in Windows reported last week by Chinese security group Xfocus.  Microsoft officials were angered when the group released proof-of-concept code before sharing the information's with security vendors.

iMate has finally released a complete ROM upgrade for the iMate PDA2k (also known as O2 Xda III/IIs and T-Mobile MDA III).  According to i-mate, this ROM build provides significant improvements in radio, audio, Bluetooth and operating functionality.

http://www.clubimate.com/index.asp?PageAction=DEVICE_PDA2K_BT3

CNET has posted the cell phone year in review.  Global cellular markets boomed. U.S. data services went through the roof. And handsets literally blew up.

http://news.com.com/Year+in+Review+Cell+phones+explode/2009-1039_3-5498620.html

Check out Master VISUALLY Windows Mobile 2003.

"One picture is worth a thousand words." If you prefer instructions that show you how rather than tell you why, then this comprehensive reference is for you. Hundreds of succinctly captioned, step-by-step screen shots reveal how to accomplish more than 170 Windows Mobile 2003 tasks, including:

• Syncing your PDA with your desktop
• Customizing menus, sounds, and screens
• Enjoying multimedia with Media Player 9
• Managing Bluetooth communications
• Working with Pocket Excel and Pocket Word
• Setting up network connections
• Sending voice and e-mail messages

Master It

• "Master It" sidebars answer questions and present shortcuts
• High-resolution screen shots demonstrate each task
• Succinct explanations walk you through step by step
• Two-page lessons break big topics into bite-sized modules

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764558897/qid=1104497204/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-2616005-6035346?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Netcraft has released an Internet Explorer plug-in that could help people avoid becoming victims of online fraud.

The Internet security company heralded the plug-in toolbar, which displays information about the Web sites a surfer is visiting, as a strong weapon against phishing attacks.

The company, best known for providing statistics on what software Web sites are running, stated in a posting: "The Netcraft Toolbar provides you with constantly updated information about the sites you visit as well as blocking dangerous sites. This information will help you make an informed choice about the integrity of those sites."

The toolbar displays information about the popularity of a site, the country in which the site is hosted and the Internet address of the site. It also indicates whether other toolbar users have flagged the site as a possible phishing scam. Phishers use fake Web sites that look like they belong to a trusted provider, such as a bank, to fool people into handing over sensitive personal information.

You can find the toolbar here: http://toolbar.netcraft.com/

Adobe has upgraded the reader to version 7.0.  I installed it a few days ago and made it my default reader.  Appears a bit faster than the 6.0 version. 

Adobe® Reader® 7.0 is free software that enables business professionals and home users to reliably share information using intelligent PDF files. With Adobe Reader 7.0, you can easily view, print, and search PDF files using a variety of platforms and devices.

Download 7.0 here: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

"It's incredibly annoying," said Ellen Hobbs of Austin, Tex., whose frustration has led her to publish Amazon.com's customer support number at her own Web site (clicheideas.com/amazon.htm). "They haven't invested the kind of money in helping you solve problems as they have in selling you things." In December alone, some 1,100 people visited Ms. Hobbs's site.

Indeed, in the pursuit of customer service, the Sisyphean challenge of making contact with a human defines the automated age, and can sometimes feel like a full-time job.

"It's almost as if we're dealing with this ghostly machine," said Lauren Weinstein, a telecommunications consultant in Los Angeles who has made an avocation of studying customer service. "You assume there are people back there somewhere, but it's as if the whole purpose of these systems isn't to provide customer service but to keep the customer at arm's length."

Check out the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/technology/circuits/30serv.html?th=&adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1104494985-cfyIAo1i7/Yxg81vyfMMNA

Don't know how I missed this one.  Novell is suing Microsoft for sinking Word Perfect?  I don't understand this, and don't think I ever will.  Why do companies sue Microsoft when their products fail to keep up and stop selling?  There are several companies I can give examples too that when attacked by a seeming “Goliath”, become a young David and look for a sling and a rock.  They certainly didn't sue for causing their products to stop selling.  I'm sure if you think about it, you can think of several companies that appear to dominate in their respective industries just by their size.  P&G immediately comes to mind.  But,  I don't see other companies running away screaming about lawsuits every time P&G enters the market.

So, why does Novell keep suing Microsoft for not “being fair”?  I knew a lot of those kind of folks growing up...screaming “that's not fair” every chance they got.  Well, I have a newsflash for you.  LIFE is not fair.  Get over it, find what you are exceptionally good at, and focus.  If you have a product people want, you won't have a problem.  Quite honestly, I see a ship without a compass, and am wondering who is at the wheel and how in the world they know where to go.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513-5450285.html

If you can't make it to Times Square for the famed locale's 100th New Year's Eve celebration, you can watch it from start to finish online. Microsoft's MSN portal said Tuesday it will provide an online broadcast of the historic party. The Webcast starts at 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time when event organizers plan to raise their trademark crystal ball and runs until 9:15 p.m. PST after the ball's drop. Visitors to the MSN Video site will be able to follow the action in New York City via three live streams.

http://video.msn.com/video/p.htm?p=Special_New%20Years&m=Specials&mi=New%20Year%20Coverage&rf=http://news.zdnet.com/2110-9588_22-5505382.html

At about the same time that the US is setting records for the country with the most SPAM, AOL is reporting that the nasty stuff to AOL inboxes is down (although the release said they still get 1.6 BILLION PER MONTH, down from 2.1 BILLION per month).  According to the release, “AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham attributed the drop largely to spammers moving on after realizing that many of their messages won't get through AOL's anti-spam filters or that they might get sued for trying.“  Really?  Is THAT why you still have 1.6 BILLION messages in a single month? 

The latest news on the CAN-SPAM front?  It's not working.  A year after the U.S. Congress passed the first federal antispam law, observers see no evidence that it has cut the amount of unwanted commercial e-mail arriving in people's in-boxes.  Most vendors of antispam products have charted an increase in the amount of spam since the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, or CAN-SPAM, went into effect on Jan. 1.  Antispam activists assert that the law has aided spammers because CAN-SPAM requires recipients to opt out of unwanted commercial e-mail by contacting each sender, instead of forcing senders to get opt-in permission. The federal law also hurt spam-fighting efforts by preempting parts of some tougher state laws, including a California opt-in requirement, said Laura Atkins, president of the SpamCon Foundation.  CAN-SPAM also prohibits private citizens from suing spammers, instead allowing only state attorneys general or Internet service providers to file civil suits. People who operate their own mail servers and receive thousands of spam e-mail, have no recourse against spammers under CAN-SPAM.

So, what's going on with AOL?  Is it something else rather than a “reduction“ in the amount of SPAM?  What I find interesting is the conflicting data coming out at the same time.  Time will tell...but I think there is something else going on over at AOL.

Wow, I didn't think it would happen as soon as it did.  To be honest, I haven't even kept up with the Novell OS changes since the Netware 4.0 days.  But, I just read that Novell gave its first public debut of the “new” Novell OS over the Christmas break, which is now a combination of Linux and Netware.  Buried in the article is a comment that Novell is “not giving up Netware, they are adding Linux” and “you can't buy Netware as a standalone product anymore”.  I think its only a matter of time before current Novell users will be forced to upgrade to the new “combo“.  And quite honestly, I think the writing has been on the wall for awhile.  Novell is a dying product, leadership just won't admit it.  I don't think they know what to do with it.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1745822,00.asp

What is happening overseas is truly a tragedy. 

Tsunamis aren't unique to Asia. Every day, scientists from Hawaii to California are on guard, watching for giant waves that could swamp U.S. shores.  The monitoring system is complex, drawing upon seismic stations, deep-ocean detectors, sea surface buoys, satellites and onshore sea-level gauges. But if a tsunami is detected, the advice is simple: Get to higher ground as fast as you can.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6759190/

What is Craigslist you ask?  Well, obviously Ebay that it important enough to buy a 25% stake in the company.  Craigslist, launched in 1995, is a bare-bones classifieds site for people looking for almost anything, such as apartments, dates or baseball tickets, in 45 cities. The site has since created a flourishing network of online buyers and sellers while maintaining a simple look and feel free from banner ads.

Craigslist, which generates more than 1 billion page-views each month, also has cost the newspapers millions more in merchandise and real estate advertising, and has damaged other traditional classified advertising businesses, according to a report published by Classified Intelligence.

So, whether you're looking for dogs, bunnies, or the latest William Shatner record, check out Craigslist first.

http://www.craigslist.org/

For vivid reporting from the enormous zone of tsunami disaster, it was hard to beat the blogs.

The so-called blogosphere, with its personal journals published on the Web, has become best known as a forum for bruising political discussion and media criticism. But the technology proved a ready medium for instant news of the tsunami disaster and for collaboration over ways to help.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5505092.html

At its height, the company said it had been logging orders for 32 items per second worldwide.

The company attributed much of the increased trade to rampant demand for Apple computers and iPod music players.

The news sent Amazon's shares up by almost 9%, as traders seized on good news on an otherwise lacklustre day's trading on Wall Street.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4129077.stm

Welcome to the #1 website dedicated to helping you protect yourself from clever scams -- online and offline! You'll find lots of great resources on how to avoid the most popular scams, viruses and urban legends making the rounds.  Plus, we have Resource Centers filled with suggestions for reducing spam, useful consumer tips, and our Scam Check Station....you'll find a convenient list of links to all our most popular articles.   But first, sign up for your FREE subscription to Internet ScamBusters....

http://www.scambusters.org/

The news is now reporting that the earthquake that hit over the weekend in Indonesia was 9.0 on the richter scale and the death toll is now slightly under 20,000 people. 

I found this article and am now wondering what else is in store.

Mysterious tremors deep beneath the San Andreas Fault near the quake- prone town of Parkfield are shaking the earth's brittle crust, far below the region where earthquakes normally strike -- and scientists say they can't understand what's happening or what the motions mean.

Seismic researchers are monitoring the strange vibrations closely. But whether the faint underground tremors -- termed "chatter" by some seismologists -- portend an increased likelihood of a major quake in the area is an unsolved puzzle.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/10/MNGJRA9UQA1.DTL

From another article:

“The underwater earthquake, which the US Geological Survey put at magnitude 9.0, is the biggest since 1964, when a 9.2-magnitude temblor struck Alaska.  "All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute.  He likened its power to a million atomic bombs the size of those dropped on Japan in World War II, and said the shaking was so powerful it even disturbed the Earth's rotation.”

Blogging is gaining momentum.  Everyone seems to be doing it these days.  How about you?  Are you blogging yet?  Well, if you do, here's a blog no-no.  Don't EVER blog about your job.

http://news.com.com/2061-1038-5502176.html?tag=xtra.ml

Decrease is the first since group began its survey in 1972.

U.S. IT and electrotechnology professionals saw a 1.5 percent decrease in their salaries in 2003, the first decrease since the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA) began surveying members in 1972, the group announced this week.

Now we can only guess what happens in 2004 and beyond. 

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119036,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp

Researchers at security software company Sophos found that 42 percent of all spam sent this year came from the United States, based on a scan by its researchers of a global network of honey pots--computers designed to attract spam e-mails and viruses.

Sophos said this is evidence that America's antispam legislation simply isn't working.  The US is in a “league of its own“.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5503344.html