July
5, 2003
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- Tech
Talk Guest
- Dr.
George C. Blankenship. Jr.
- Adjunct
Faculty, Stratford University
- Telemarketing
Companies Eye Alternative Plans
- National
NoNotCall Registry will force a behavior change
- Those
who don't register are thought to be receptive to telemarketers
- More
SPAM e-mail, direct mail to the registered
- Who
Does DoNotCall Register Cover?
- Applies
to any campaign to sell through interstate phone calls.
- Includes
telemarketers who solicit consumers, often on behalf of third
party sellers.
- Includes
sellers who provide services to consumers in exchange for payment.
- Does
not limit calls by political organizations, charities or telephone
surveyors.
- Hostile
Takeover of Peoplesoft by Oracle Is Personal
- The
Players
- Craig
Conway
- Once
head of marketing and sales at Oracle
- Joined
PeopleSoft Inc. as chief executive in 1999
- Larry
Elison Co-founder of Oracle in 1977
- The
$5.1B Hostile Takeover
- Oracle's
surprise bid came, only days after PeopleSoft announced plans to
buy software maker JD Edwards & Co
- It
disrupted Conway's friendly merger plans and threatened PeopleSoft's
ability to sell software to new customers by creating tremendous
uncertainty.
- Some
think it is gamesmanship to disrupt software selling cycle
- Elison
may win the battle, but lose the war
- Hacker
Hoax or Serious Threat
- The
warnings center on the defacers-challenge.com Web site
- Touted
a contest to deface 6,000 Web sites in six hours this Sunday
- The
prize is Free Web site hosting and a domain name
- Sliding-scale
awards points for successful defacements based on OS
- HP-UX,
Apple, and IBM-AIX are worth more points
- Microsoft
and Linux-type are worth less
- Affinity
Internet of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., downed site last week
- Security
experts are taking the contest seriously
- Have
already seen some probing to identity vulnerable sites before Sunday
- Wi-Fi
Encryption Study
- Where:
802.11 Planet Expo Conference in Boston Last Week
- What:
A Wireless Network of 141 nodes provided for conference goers
- Tools:
AirDefense Guard sensors at opposite corners of conference center
- The
Findings: Users checking their e-mail through unencrypted POP connections
vastly outnumbered those using a VPN or another encrypted tunnel
- Only
three percent of e-mail downloads were encrypted
- 12
percent on the second day
- The
other 88% could easily be intercepted by eavesdroppers using
commonly-available tools, compromising both the e-mail and the
user's passwords.
- Additionally,
84 out of the 523 users monitored were configured to allow
ad hoc networking, and 74 were configured to automatically
connect to the access point with the strongest signal strength
-- a default mode that could leave a laptop prey to a rogue
access point.
- Music
Distribution History Repeats Itself
- Early
1900
- Records
replaced sheet music
- Telephones
allowed record to be distributed without royalties
- Tel-musici
Company sends songs over the phone line
- 3
cents per song with an annual guarantee of $18.
- At
the central office, the lines of musical subscribers are
tapped to a manual board attended by an operator.
- A
number of phonographs are available, and a representative
assortment of records kept on hand.
- Today
- MP3s
replaced CDs
- Internet
allows distribution of songs without royalties
- Napster,
Kazaa, I-Tunes, and PressPlay
- Telcos
Duke it out in Iraq
- Tecore
Wireless Systems, a private company in Columbia, Maryland, said
it would lay the groundwork for phone companies to offer wireless
in Iraq.
- Tecore
sells cellular infrastructure and software to carriers in Afghanistan,
the United Arab Emirates and other parts of the Middle East. It plans
to begin building a distribution center in Iraq by the end of summer,
the company said.
- US government
awarded WorldCom a $45 million contract to build a cell network in
Iraq
- Pentagon
also gave Motorola a $10 to $25 million contract -- depending on options
the company exercises -- to install radio communications for security
forces in Baghdad.
- Iraq
has never had a cell-phone system, but analysts say it would be easy
and cheap to install.
- Americans
For Dean Website Taps Grassroots Support
- Americans
for Dean is a Distributed System to Raise Money for Dean
- "It's
an autonomous, self-organizing, grassroots campaign network,"
said Zack Rosen, the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign computer science student who cooked up the
idea. "We're giving people a Web tool to organize the campaign
network. We want to help get this man elected."
- Rosen
said about 15 developers are working to get the tools up and running
in the next few weeks, but anyone is welcome to contribute.
- They're
building on Drupal,
an open-source content-management system, for the project.
- Uses
RSS [Rich Site Summary] Feed
- A
format designed for sharing web content [articles, blogs, calendar
info, etc.].
- Think
of it as a way to distribute "What's New."
- Originated
by UserLand in 1997, and subsequently used by Netscape
- RSS
has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between
sites [including the BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley
Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, ZDNet and more].
- Microsoft
Admits Passport Security Flaw
- Patch
was posted last week after learned about the vulnerability after
Victor Manuel Alvarez Castro of Mexico published details to an Internet
discussion list
- Microsoft
does not believe any accounts were compromised
- In
May, a Pakistani computer researcher determined that by typing a
specific Web address that included the phrase "emailpwdreset,"
he could seize any Passport account.
- I
keep no critical information in a Passport account
- Spying
on the Government
- Researchers
at the MIT Media Lab unveiled the Government Information Awareness
or GIA, website Friday.
- The
GIA mission is:
- To
empower citizens by providing a single, comprehensive, easy-to-use
repository of information on individuals, organizations, and
corporations related to the government of the United States
of America.
- To
allow citizens to submit intelligence about government-related
issues, while maintaining their anonymity. To allow members
of the government a chance to participate in the process.
- Using
applications developed at the Media Lab, GIA collects and collates
information about government programs, plans and
- Currently
the database contains information on more than 3,000 public figures.
- GIA
was inspired by the federal government's Terrorist
Information Awareness, or TIA, program.
- eBay’s
User Convention Held Last Week in Orlando
- 4,000
members of eBay's elite power-seller corps attended "EBay Live"
convention
- EBay
estimates that about 150,000 people earn their living on the site
- About
90,000 dealers are in its power-seller group
- To
receive an invitation, dealers must sell more than $1,000 worth
of merchandise each month for three months and maintain a stellar
feedback rating from customers
- The
power-seller club has five levels -- bronze, silver, gold, platinum
and titanium -- based on sales volume. Titanium sellers move more
than $150,000 in merchandise on eBay a month.
- eBay’s
Sellers Central
- Give
tips to those wanting to sell on eBay
- Designed
for both new and experienced sellers
- New
Software Paradym According to Tim O'Reilly
- Keynote
Address at Open Source Convention
- There
is a new model being developed around Open Source and the Internt
- The
current model is flawed
- Open
source alone does not work
- Licensing
does not work
- Internet
platforms are central to the new model
- His
prediction that someday eBay may buy Oracle
- ICANN
Relinquishes Power Under Pressure
- Country
domains now under the control of each country instead of under the
control of ICANN
- Great
Britain controls uk; France controls fr; etc.
- After
an all-night session on Wednesday night, the Country Code Names
Supporting Organization (ccNSO) was finally formed
- ICANN
under new president/CEO Paul Twomey behaved pragmatically and conceded
all control save over IANA and global interoperability
- MS
Worker Software Racket
- A
Microsoft worker has been charged with stealing $17 million of software
from Microsoft's internal store in the second case of its type in
recent months
- Richard
Gregg, 43, and a Windows program coordinator, has pleaded not guilty
to 62 counts of mail and computer fraud, Gregg, who denies the charges,
has been released on bail.
- From
January to October 2002, Gregg allegedly ordered 5,436 copies of
software such as Windows XP, SQL Server, Exchange and Office with
retail prices over $17 million which he subsequently resold.
- Stratford
University News
- Corporate
Training
- Masters
Programs
- Undergrad
Program
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