Latest telecom threat: Red Sox fans
A few World Series tickets went on sale - by phone only - here in Boston exactly at 3 p.m.... October 22, 2004

Risk management and you
Mike Rowehl says a good computer-security professional eventually realizes that security just is not absolute - you have to assume... October 22, 2004

Don't do something you'll regret
When companies give silly names to products ... October 21, 2004

HELL FREEZES OVER
That's the headline on the back page of today's New York Daily News. It was no dream - I woke... October 21, 2004

Fun with electricity
If you aim a large enough charge of electricity at a quarter, you can make it shrink: Energy stored within... October 21, 2004

Why you should never tell anyone you know something about computers
Things are never as simple as they seem. October 20, 2004

If I don't post anything tomorrow
It's because I've either collapsed in exhaustion or I'm in the coronary unit. Boy, the Sox sure don't make it... October 20, 2004

Dear AT&T Universal Card
I've been a customer of yours for several years. I'm a big fan of your online account-management system. So it... October 20, 2004

Networking in time of war
You probably won't ever have to set up a wireless network while facing enemy fire, but a recent military exercise still offers some useful lessons. October 19, 2004

If Compendium feels sluggish today
You'll have to forgive me. I've had to stay up late the past two nights - I'm a Red Sox... October 19, 2004

Why is this still happening in the 21st century?
Arrigo notes that Italian police broke up a ring that was getting ready to divert funds from the Italian postal... October 19, 2004

We're all in the Matrix now
matrixdump is a utility that takes network data and displays it floating down the screen, just like in the movie:... October 18, 2004

The evolution of social software
Christopher Allen charts its course, from Vannevar Bush's 1945 Memex article to 1990's groupware to today's wikis and SocialText. Via... October 18, 2004

In a BIND
One of the people who built BIND takes exception to it being called a critical security problem. October 15, 2004

The great thing about standards ...
... Is how many of them there are. OK, somebody shoot me the next time I try that stupid crack.... October 15, 2004

Getting the dirt on Linksys routers
You would think a Linksys router box would have a router inside ... October 14, 2004

Firsthand view of eBay fraud
Terry Heaton discusses why, even on eBay, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. However, he... October 14, 2004

You can't pay for coverage like this
Not a good week for payment gateway - the companies that handle monetary transactions for Web sites, Netcraft reports: While... October 14, 2004

Spending more, getting more
In Technology Review, Eric Brown discusses Making Peace with the Phone Bill: Sure, long distance costs are way down, but... October 13, 2004

It's not a bug, it's a pigeon
Guy comes home to see pigeon feathers scattered about his apartment and his cats looking guilty. Then he hears scratching sounds from inside his server rack ... October 12, 2004

Registering 950,000 domain names at once
Netcraft reports on a controversy surrounding a company called Sipence that attempted to register some 950,000 .info domain names all... October 12, 2004

True confessions
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz is in Australia and confesses that not only did he try kangaroo meat, he found it... October 12, 2004

Murder, he wrote
We learn today that high tech is not just filled with boring, nose-to-grindstone nerds: A federal judge ruled Thursday that... October 08, 2004

Interesting anti-spoofing tool
SpoofGuard is an Internet Explorer plugin that tries to keep users from spilling their personal information to phish sites: SpoofGuard... October 08, 2004

Faxes? How quaint
Dennis Kennedy prepares an annual set of technology predictions for the legal community (the 2005 one will be published in... October 08, 2004

More to P2P than music downloads
Simson Garfinkel surveys the various ways peer to peer networks are being used these days, from IP telephony (think Skype)... October 07, 2004

Hack a day
Like to tinker? OK, silly question. Of course you do. Hack A Day promises a new hack, mod or DIY... October 07, 2004

How to speed adoption of collaboration software
Or as the kids today call it, "social software." Denise Howell reports from a Disney case study at the Web... October 07, 2004

What's the deal with comment spammers and Google?
The past couple of weeks, I've noticed a growing number of attempted comment spams (both here at Fusion and at... October 06, 2004

IBM's real software competition: eBay and Amazon.com
By rolling out Web services that people actually want, i.e., the ability to quickly buy books and, um, stuff, the two companies are positioning themselves to rule the roost of Web services in the future, David Longworth argues October 05, 2004

Torturing a server
The Server Load Test Page describes a couple of simple shell scripts you can use to ground a server down:... October 04, 2004

So your boss is a crook
Informit has posted a chapter from a forensics book on: The Role of Computer Forensics in Stopping Executive Fraud This... October 04, 2004

How software gets written
Or: Why threat modeling matters. October 01, 2004

When the inmates run the jail
Dave Piscitello cannot believe that a German firewall vendor has hired the author of the Sasser and Netsky worms: Everyone... October 01, 2004

The new cabal: bloggers
Iran claims bloggers are out to destroy the country. September 30, 2004

Occupational spam
Forget the phish. What about all your employees who hit "Reply to All" on every message? September 30, 2004

The bar is now open
Open Bar is a new organization for people concerned about the legal ramifications of open-source applications: Open Bar is a... September 30, 2004

Why banks shouldn't use frames on their Web pages
A couple months ago, I started getting phishy messages "warning" me about a problem with my SunTrust ATM card. Even... September 29, 2004

The newest threat: camera phones
Daniel Taylor discusses the implications of all those mobile devices with built-in cameras: ... As I talk to more and... September 29, 2004

A sad goodbye to dial-up
Martin Geddes discusses dial-up and his toddler: ... Last night the LED on my DSL modem stopped blinking and turned... September 28, 2004

Spyware as a money maker
A direct money-maker, that is. First, recall that Amazon.com and other online retailers have "affiliate" programs, in which other Web... September 28, 2004

Belated apologies
Last Friday, I posted a link to what was a mildly funny use of PowerPoint (guy using it to break... September 28, 2004

JPEG warning not a pretty picture
Tom Liston doesn't think much of Microsoft's recent JPEG-hole warning. September 27, 2004

A strong motivator for application development
LinuxQustions.org interviews Rob Flynn, one of the people behind the gaim open-source instant-messenger app. He discusses how he got involved... September 27, 2004

Backing up on storage
Bowulf describes his NetWare shop's transition from Tivoli Storage Manager to CommVault Galaxy 5.0. To put it kindly, the experience... September 24, 2004

Not a happy customer
David wanted to buy Microsoft Visual Studio, Enterprise Developer Edition. He really, really wanted to buy it. He describes how... September 24, 2004

Routing around censorship
The government of Iran wants to block access to Weblogs it doesn't like? The bloggers have ways around that. September 23, 2004

When the inkjet runs amok?
No, but it looks like that. Raymond Chen has kept every single piece of spam and virus-laden e-mail he's gotten... September 23, 2004

Does 3G really threaten Wi-Fi?
Some analyst firm says the European telcos are getting ready to use 3G to mop up the floor with Wi-Fi. Could it happen here? September 22, 2004

Does anybody know what time it is?
Brad Knowles discusses why it's important for a network to have the right time and why he has issues with... September 22, 2004

Real hacking for real sysadmins
He's got a lock to pick with you ... September 21, 2004

Yet Another Thing to Worry About
Pagejacking is when your evil archenemy puts up pages with meta refresh redirects to your pages, then hopes that Google,... September 21, 2004

The home computer of 2004
As envisioned in 1954 by the chrome-domes at the Rand Corp. September 20, 2004

That didn't take long
Last Tuesday, Microsoft warned us about a potential hole in Windows XP related to JPEG images. Two days later, BugTraq... September 20, 2004

Just the FAQs, ma'am
Eric Brill, a senior research at Microsoft, has been trying to figure out how to take search engines to the... September 17, 2004

Some new intrusion-detection resources
We've added several new tools to the Intrusion detection downloads page, including rootkit detectors and forensics tools. Check 'em out,... September 17, 2004

Category 4 panic
Run for cover! The JPEG hole from hell wil destroy all life as we know it! Ya think? September 16, 2004

PHP and Domino
PHP works well with MySQL. What about Domino data? September 16, 2004

SIP: Not just for VoIP anymore
EarthLink SIPshare is a protoype app showing how you can use SIP for peer-to-peer applications: The emerging ubiquity of SIP... September 16, 2004

VoIP security
A new guide from NIST discusses the unique issues involved in securing VoIP systems. September 15, 2004

Good summation of the comment-spam issue
OJR article: Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win? over at Online Journalism Review will tell you... September 15, 2004

That was no tree, that was my wife!
Fraud Frond.com is a site devoted to cell towers disguised as trees: There are 130,000 cel towers in the USA... September 15, 2004

Forget Wednesday's child
In Japan, every desktop operating system has its own big-eyed little girl to represent it. September 14, 2004

SP2: Making third-party vendors sweat and end users go crazy
Diego Duval installs Windows XP SP2 and learns three important things: He still hates McAfee VirusScan with the burning passion... September 14, 2004

Getting RSS overload under control
All that RSS traffic is beginning to cause bottlenecks. Would a P2P network be the answer? September 13, 2004

Hot or not?
Rate my network diagram starts out with a warning that it's not just a place to vote on how hot... September 13, 2004

Blog scaling
When everybody's blogging, how do you manage the massive blogflow - both from the enterprise side and from the perspective of the end user looking for interesting stuff? September 10, 2004

Should I be posting links to cracking tools?
You can count on JoatBlog to posts links to all sorts of interesting security resources; it helps me keep our... September 10, 2004

When CEOs blog
CEO Bloggers' Club is a blog about CEOs who blog.... September 10, 2004

The armies of the night
The Internet Storm Center reports that a Norwegian carrier discovered and shut down an IRC-controlled zombie army of 10,000 nodes.... September 09, 2004

The anti-pop-up backlash
Phil Wainewright discusses the dilemma of anti-pop-up tools such as the Google toolbar and Windows XP SP2: sure, they block... September 09, 2004

We're shocked, shocked
When the government didn't like a Web poll showing singer Tom Jones as a Welsh "hero," it ordered the results changed, a former IT manager claims. September 08, 2004

Are area codes irrelevant?
In an era of mobile phones and VoIP, codes tied to specific areas are fast losing their meaning. September 07, 2004

Well that didn't take long
Dave Winer reports his first pop-up since he installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 (you'll recall it includes a pop-up... September 07, 2004

Any OS/2 users out there?
Time to move. IBM has been posting articles on porting your OS/2 apps to Linux, which it says is "evolving as the predominant operating system of the new millennium." September 03, 2004

Don't you just hate it when that happens?
Mike McBride loves his end users, but sometimes ... ... One of our department heads had numerous conversations and meetings... September 03, 2004

Blocking my Chinese fraudster friend
I posted my weird HTTP-requests-from China query on a Drupal mailing list (since the queries were coming in through a... September 02, 2004

Weird Web hacking nonsense from China
When I go home at night, I usually spend some time working on a non-networking related Web site (so, yes,... September 01, 2004

When one isn't enough
A company called Orion Multisystems yesterday announced a desktop workstation stuffed with 96 processors. September 01, 2004

Sun's fulltime blogger
Sun has just given Dave Johnson a fulltime job developing and deploying its Roller blog aggregator. Johnson is also in... August 31, 2004

Gmail as file system
So what do you do with a gig of storage? If you're Richard Jones, you figure out how to use... August 31, 2004

Longhorn sounding like Cairo
David Card of Jupiter Research wins the award for best reaction to Microsoft's announcement that it is scaling back Longhorn:... August 31, 2004

Bloggy reaction to the Longhorn news
More comments than you can probably read in one sitting. August 30, 2004

Feelings, nothing more than feelings!
"Who should work with whom?" is an article that posits the notion that personality may be more important than technical skills in determining the success of large software-development efforts. August 30, 2004

Sound familar?
Bryce Yehl makes a trip over to OfficeMax to pick up some cheap shelving for the *five* more used servers... August 30, 2004

So the sky didn't fall yesterday
Vmyths explains how some comments at a press conference by a Russian anti-virus exec turned into a Death of Internet... August 27, 2004

The ultimate shoot-em-up game
You're In Control is a new interactive game developed at MIT that might just piss you off: The You’re In... August 26, 2004

Where's my heli-car?
Will Life Be Worth Living In 2,000AD? is a reproduction of a magazine article from 1961. Some of the predictions... August 26, 2004

The Google browser?
Take Mozilla, add some JavaScripty goodness (Gmail is built on it, at least on the client side) and voila: the... August 26, 2004

Not banking on it
Why aren't banks doing more to protect their customers from phish? August 25, 2004

His RSS reader saves him about 300 hours a week
Greg Hughes loves his RSS aggregator: ... Research that used to take hours and hours of searching and browsing now... August 25, 2004

Today's best waste of time
Crunch Time is the game to play when your co-workers are getting just a wee bit out of control: You... August 24, 2004

Why he didn't go to Microsoft
Werner Vogels is leaving the academic confines of Cornell for a new job building distributed applications at Amazon.com. He reports... August 24, 2004

Free Wi-Fi almost leads to arrest
It almost sounds like the start of a joke: So this guy's sitting outside a library with a laptop ... August 23, 2004

Not-so-SmartFilter?
Seth Finkelstein notes an interesting story out of Wales: County officials began getting complaints when users of the local libraries... August 23, 2004

The Spinning Cube of Potential Doom
Best Security Resource Ever - if only because of the name. August 20, 2004

And thank you for flying Python ...
Frequentis, a company that makes software for air traffic controllers, explains why it used Python for one of its suites... August 20, 2004

Tracking a report
VoweWiki: RadicatiGroup is an attempt to chronicle everything that happened after the Radicati Group issues a report comparing Microsoft's and... August 19, 2004

That's a lot of feeds
RSS can be a time saver - until the number of feeds in your aggregator starts climbing toward the millennium mark. August 18, 2004

Can you spot phish a mile away?
Prove it. Take MailFrontier's phishing IQ test (for the record, I got 90%, which sounds good, but given the damage... August 18, 2004

Not a capital idea from Wired News
Oh, ho, so Wired News will no longer use a capital I when referring to a certain globe-spanning computer network:... August 17, 2004

Phishing sites stay up long enough to do some damage
An AntiPhishing Working Group report shows that the average phishing site stays up for 54 hours before somebody shuts it... August 17, 2004

Programs that won't work with Windows XP SP2
Here's the official list from Microsoft, which also has some workarounds. Interesting that some of the programs are enterprise-level anti-virus... August 17, 2004

For you Scrooge McDuck fans
Is the Business Software Alliance's new anti-piracy mascot all it's quacked up to be? August 16, 2004

0, baby
Microsoft Windows: A lower Total Cost of 0wnership is the shocking title of a comparison of Windows and Linux. Well,... August 16, 2004

Searchstreams
John Batelle discusses searchstreams - those collection of search terms you use to triangulate yourself to information when your first... August 16, 2004

Today's most useful software
Light Speed! is a graphics application that simulates the appearance of objects as they approach the speed of light. Complete... August 13, 2004

Routing around a change in XP2
SilverStr discusses a change in nmap that will let it get around the way Windows XP service pack 2 tries... August 13, 2004

SP2 first impressions
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is linking to online comments about the XP service pack. Via Scripting News.... August 12, 2004

Perl as GUI builder?
Ayup! Check out Using advanced widgets in Perl/Tk: "Perl is one of the most popular languages out there, and is... August 12, 2004

New offshoring page
Our new Offshoring research center brings you the latest news on companies moving jobs overseas and legislative efforts related to... August 11, 2004

Knock, knock, knockin' ...
Why port knocking might not be all that. August 11, 2004

Keeping it simple
Adam Bosworth, late of BEA, now of Google, discusses why simple is often far better when it comes to things... August 10, 2004

Hacking RFID
RFDump is a Java tool for reading data off RFID chips (when connected to an RFID reader device). Its author... August 10, 2004

Surfing at work
Surf away, but cause any network problems and you'll have one angry network guy to deal with. August 09, 2004

Networking your IP phone
Omar Shahine provides instructions for connecting a Vonage VoIP system to a Windows home network. Via Greg Hughes, who adds... August 09, 2004

Duct!
Apparently, in Doom 3, you can either hold a flashlight or a heavy-duty gun, but not both. And even though... August 09, 2004

Two wheels are so redundant
What do you do after you've built a cheap knockoff of a Segway? Get rid of one of the wheels, of course. August 06, 2004

User to Microsoft: No thanks
Edward Mitchell reads a story in which Microsoft asks everybody to turn on Windows XP automatic updating for the upcoming... August 06, 2004

Know your enemy
Read up on a plan for bypassing all those pesky firewalls, proxies and content filters you're so busy running. August 05, 2004

Yogurt lids and inner tubes
Trygve Lode describes how he set up a data center with ordinary household items, including yogurt lids and inner tubes... August 05, 2004

So, should Sun buy Novell?
One observer wonders if Sun might not better use its cash reserves to shore itself up first. August 04, 2004

The PC-Bake Oven
ThinkGeek strikes again, this time with the PC EZ-Bake Oven: "Now the computer savvy among us can relive the fun... August 04, 2004

Taking Notes
At last: Web-services and Notes programmers find peace, love and harmony. Or something. August 03, 2004

Now that's support!
Mike Pope gets his home broadband from Comcast. He reports Comcast POP server was down for 48 hours" "... I... August 03, 2004

Stanford University and Weblog spam
Maybe they should call it the Spamford University Center for Internet and Society. August 02, 2004

Blog spammers find yet another technique
Those clever spammers have found an indirect way to boost their Google rankings. July 30, 2004

Have you hugged your system administrator today?
Or at the least, given him/her a peck on the cheek? July 30, 2004

Clear plastic raincoats
Jeremy Zawodny reports from an eBay techie user meeting: "The eBay API BoF tonight was dominated by a guy who... July 30, 2004

Power to the people
Jeff Schneider, CEO of Momentum Software, likes service-oriented architecture. And yet, he argues that large enterprises that want to quickly... July 29, 2004

Wireless at the Democratic convention
Ninja Stu has been chronicling his efforts to make sure that bloggers and other wireless users can go online at... July 28, 2004

Wi-Fi's cookin' now!
Pringles Can antennas are so last week. From New Zealand comes the $5 Chinese cookware parabolic antenna. July 28, 2004

Making RSS scale
RSS is great for users, but possibly not so great for sites that suddenly find themselves barraged with endless feed... July 27, 2004

Pining for IE (sorta)
Scott Mace installed his first Firefox browser patch: "I missed Windows Update! The Mozilla/Firefox patch mechanism essentially requires users to... July 27, 2004

SSH brute-force password attempts
Martin McKeay reads a SANS advisory about possible SSH crack attempts and comments: "I'm waiting to see more specific information,... July 26, 2004

Who designed this thing?
Last week, I wanted to find a press release from New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. So I headed... July 26, 2004

If Google had been around in the '60s
See what its search page would have looked like. July 23, 2004

Auto-validation of XHTML pages
Fiddle around a lot with XHTML and want to make sure your pages are still valid, but you can never... July 23, 2004

The IE blog
Microsoft's Internet Explorer development team has a blog.... July 23, 2004

Where is Steve?
Where is Steve? gives you more information than you probably need to know about just where Steve is at the moment (well, more specifically, his cell phone) July 22, 2004

Cisco volunteers
Cisco has set up an online tool for non-profit groups that could use a hand with networking: "As an Internet... July 22, 2004

Open source BPM
Open source workflow and the BPM-market: "This article gives a compact overview of the open source projects, standards and commercial... July 22, 2004

The Pringles can comes of age
No grease and you get radical Wi-Fi performance. July 21, 2004

Making the switch
Switching to Linux is an effort to create a comprehensive guide to everything you'd need to know and do to... July 21, 2004

Public and private bugs
Microsoft has set up a bug-tracking system for Visual Studio. Scott Mace notes an interview on the Microsoft developer site... July 21, 2004

Extreme networking
Strong Angel II is a DARPA-funded effort to develop network technologies that can survive the roughest conditions (yeah, yeah, we... July 20, 2004

Review of "I, Robot"
Jeremy Wright counts himself as an Asimov fan, so he found himself pleasantly surprised by the movie: "All in all,... July 20, 2004

Computers that feel your pain
Rather than trying to figure out how to make software more reliable, a Taiwanese researcher has studied ways to reduce the odds that frustrated users will simply toss their PCs out the window. July 19, 2004

Really into your Nokia phone?
The Nokia Content Syndication Program lets you create RSS feeds to keep up with the latest comments from the Nokia... July 19, 2004

Back!
That's right, I didn't really drop off the face of the earth! Apologies to those of you still reading for... July 19, 2004

How Microsoft could beat Linux
Free and low-cost tools could be its newest weapon against the Linux onslaught. July 01, 2004

Nerds hate change
Bowulf has a new boss: "I am currently in an adjustment period with a new boss, which is always tough.... July 01, 2004

Wait'll the spammers figure out VoIP
Spam is just packets. So is VoIP. Welcome to the brave new world. June 30, 2004

Some new Fusion resources
New for your drill-down enjoyment: Research centers on CRM, ERP and networking standards. All three feature the latest news and... June 30, 2004

Apple as predatory as Microsoft?
That's what Om Malik says about a proposed Mac OS add-on that pretty much copies an existing third-party app called... June 30, 2004

The Heisenberg-uncertainty database
The Justice Department says one of its databases would be destroyed it if tried to make a copy of it. June 29, 2004

Telcos and fiber to the home
Jim Stewart discusses fiber to the home and wonders if, in a few years, LECs will know what hit them. June 29, 2004

Take two Tablets and call him in the morning
Greg Hughes points to an interesting article on how Microsoft field-tested its Tablet PCs before their launch - in trials... June 29, 2004

The real reason Comdex died
Was it the Internet? The economy? Nah. June 28, 2004

Social networking? Who cares?
Never waste time at a conference session on social networking again. Just read David Hornik's transcription of one such discussion.... June 28, 2004

Help route around censorship
Adam Morris lives in Tianjin, China. He reports that China is stepping up its 'Net censorship: "We are in throes... June 28, 2004

Escaping this mortal coil
Bob Bemer, the father of ASCII and the escape key died earlier this week.... June 25, 2004

Wireless disintermediation
Martin discusses some innovative ways people are beginning to get around restrictions placed on them by cellular carriers - some... June 25, 2004

DNA in XML
Just when I think I might be getting over my fixation with people applying biological techniques to computing (viral immunity,... June 25, 2004

Suggestions on comment spam?
Our Weblogs run on Movable Type, and over the past few months, MT-Blacklist has proven an invaluable tool for combatting... June 25, 2004

Does anybody actually read e-mail from IS?
Or: How many times does he have to tell you about viruses? June 24, 2004

It's not dead. It's resting
News that Comdex has been cancelled this year but might return reminds one of an old Monty Python sketch: Customer:... June 24, 2004

Just-in-time network upgrades
Riedesg works at a university, where major system upgrades have to be planned around the academic calendar (i.e., they can... June 24, 2004

Microsoft owns you
Microsoft has just won a patent for using the human body to transmit power and data: "Abstract:Methods and apparatus for... June 23, 2004

New convergence pages
File this under "drilling down." We've set up a bunch of new research centers under Convergence for folks who really want to get the latest on certain specific areas. June 23, 2004

Spam hip hop
Get your Flash client ready and your sound turned up and then go to U Got Spam for the best... June 23, 2004

The problem with end users
Douglas Chick discusses why phishing works: Because users keep responding to the e-mails, no matter how many times you tell them not to June 22, 2004

The phishers get smarter
One of the "problems" faced by phishers in trying to suck out your bank-account info is that their URLs, should... June 21, 2004

Ancient Irish hacking
Sean McGrath presents evidence that the Irish have been hacking for at least 6,000 years. Via Diego Doval.... June 21, 2004

Finally, working servers?
Bowolf has been chronicling his woes with some IBM xSeries 345 servers (as in: they don't work). He now reports... June 21, 2004

How to fry an egg in a PC
How to fry an egg on an XP delivers what it promises: A photo-essay on how to use your computer... June 17, 2004

The no-points-of-failure myth
Diego Doval wonders: Sure, the routers will stay up, but what about the services? June 16, 2004

Imagining DDos on a VoIP net
Arrigo reads that BT plans to go all IP by 2009 and isn't happy: "People expect a phone to work... June 16, 2004

Zap: There goes a little piece of the Web
Back in days of yore, Dave Winer's UserLand Software let people set up free Weblogs on its weblogs.com site. On... June 15, 2004

Iranian encryption
Bruce Schneier has some interesting speculation about the Ahmad Chalabi telling the Iranians we'd broken their codes story: "Whatever the... June 15, 2004

SOA Editor
Cape Science has released a free SOA Editor "which enables programmers to rapidly create, view and edit Services using Web... June 15, 2004

Paying for RSS
Is advertising the end of RSS as we know it? June 14, 2004

A tempermental beast
Bill Manning was working until 11 p.m. this past Saturday. He explains why on Sunday: "... WebShere is such a... June 14, 2004

Findory Blogory
With a name like Findory Blogory, you know it has to be good. Findory Blogory is an interesting effort to... June 14, 2004

Convincing your boss you need to test your security
A paper could help convince C-level types why you need to go to all the bother. June 11, 2004

Desperate measures for desperate times
So what do you do when you're on the road and your laptop fan dies? If you're Steve Taylor, you... June 11, 2004

Flock this
Remember flashmobs? Yeah, they sure were fun for, oh, ten minutes or so. Get ready for the wireless version: flocking. June 10, 2004

It was a dark and stormy net
Darknet is a project to help you monitor malicious traffic on your network: "A Darknet is a portion of routed,... June 10, 2004

Scamming an eBay scammer
The Powerbook (P-P-P-Powerbook) is a long, funny discussion of how one guy managed to put one over on a foreign... June 10, 2004

Not happy with IBM xSeries servers
Guess we won't be seeing Bowulf in any of those snazzy IBM TV ads. He continues to chronicle his problems... June 09, 2004

Not happy with HP support
Mike Gunderloy has an old HP Jornada PDA. The battery leaked, basically welding itself to the inside of the unit,... June 09, 2004

The right tool for the job
Stonyfield Farms, a New Hampshire yogurt maker, has started a barnyard of blogs on yogurt-related topics. One guess which blogging tool they're using. June 08, 2004

Fluid information architectures
Mike Rowehl writes that Web services and service-oriented architectures sound cool, but they do them little good when he can't... June 08, 2004

Desperate for Gmail
Why are people so anxious to get an account? June 07, 2004

Sun, the universe and everything
Blogs for Sun is an aggregator that will show you postings from every blog written by a Sun employee: "This... June 07, 2004

Open source won't save e-voting
Eric Rescorla explains why he doesn't think open-source systems are necessarily better than proprietary ones for ensuring electronic voting systems... June 07, 2004

Never cross somebody in IT
Unless you've never visited a porn site, that is. June 03, 2004

Wireless Unleashed
Wireless Unleashed is a group Weblog (by "Stupid Networks" guru David Isenberg, wireless doyen Kevin Werbach, former AT&T Labs... June 03, 2004

Possible Google time saver
Lushe.net is a JavaScript "bookmarklet" for IE and Mozilla that lets you search multiple sites at once via Google. What... June 02, 2004

Death of 'Net predicted
Film at 11? "People For Internet Responsibility (PFIR) is pleased to announce an 'emergency' conference aimed at preventing the 'meltdown'... June 02, 2004

Password issues
So you think you have problems convincing your users to use hard-to-crack passwords? Bruce Blair recounts what happened when then... June 02, 2004

Liquid computing
No, it's not computing underwater. Nor is it using flasks of liquid to do computations. It's BEA's new service-oriented architecture strategy. June 01, 2004

Microsoft Office Solution Accelerator for Sarbanes-Oxley
Microsoft has released a set of Office add-ons for managing all the work related to this corporate governance law. Greg... June 01, 2004

Linksys is good again
A few days ago, Tim complained about Linksys customer service. The post got action - in a follow-up, he writes... June 01, 2004

Linksys routers as disruptive technology
How a $70 device could be the undoing of the local telephone companies. May 28, 2004

Yakking it up over Wi-Fi
Earlier this week, the BBC had an interesting story about a wireless network in Nepal that is helping remote yak... May 28, 2004

Not happy with Linksys
Tim A. chronicles a fruitless, month-long attempt to get help from Linksys with a product problem: "... April 29 -... May 27, 2004

Finally, a reason to switch to Mozilla
Pornzilla is a suite of tools for users of the Firefox variant of Mozilla: "These bookmarklets and extensions makes it... May 27, 2004

XP security better, but not good enough
Preston Gralla says that while Microsoft's impending XP Service Pack 2 does have some security enhancements, Zone Alarm far outpaces them. May 26, 2004

Protesting oneself
Following up on yesterday's posting about the anti-Semite using a legitimate site to build up his Google page rank, Seth... May 26, 2004

Security testing exercises
Jeremy Wright is writing a proposed set of security excercises to help a company test its defenses. He's looking for... May 26, 2004

What the homefolks are looking for
An IT pro notes a change in the advice requests he gets from users. May 25, 2004

The problem with anonymous comments?
Seth Finklestein notes the latest wrinkle in the Google "Jew" controversy: Seems another Jew hater, possibly jealous at all the... May 25, 2004

Exchange clustering
Running a big Exchange installation? Evan's WebLog, by Microsoftie Evan Dodd, is all about Exchange clustering. Via Paul Robichaux's Exchange... May 25, 2004

Remember when the Web was new?
Ed Costello was IBM's first Webmaster, and he recalls ibm.com's launch ten year's ago: "... This was actually the subject... May 24, 2004

Building up your immunity
So we have researchers using the models of disease epidemics to make large-scale database systems more efficient. Why not study... May 24, 2004

The impending end of big telcos?
Martin discusses the commodification of telecom services: "Perhaps we're heading towards a future where instead of a dozen large vertically-organized... May 24, 2004

So who wrote Minix?
Andrew Tannenbaum wrote Minix, a Unix-like OS that came before Linux. In this essay he shows how Linus Torvalds wrote... May 21, 2004

SIP interoperability
Joel Snyder helped put together the SIP interoperabilty testing at the recent NetWorld+Interop. In this audio interview, he discusses SIP.... May 21, 2004

Technology as the death of us all
A chance encounter with a colleague whose DVD burner has, well, burned out, gets Greg to thinking about the impact... May 20, 2004

Best headline ever
I would RTFM if there was an FM to FR - in which the author decries the sad state of... May 20, 2004

And Henry Ford didn't start Ford?
GrokLaw notes an interesting story: The Alexis de Tocqueville Insitution says Linus Torvalds didn't invent Linux. As GrokLaw notes, the... May 19, 2004

Oopsies: Dual-booting Linux and Windows XP
In a word: Don't even think of it with certain versions of Mandrake and Fedora. May 18, 2004

Honeypot on a disk
Honeywall CDROM is a bootable honeypot that lets you see what would-be intruders are up to: "You simply boot off... May 18, 2004

BitTorrent: Akamai for the masses?
Linux Magazine has a BitTorrent overview that explains how this many-to-many ad-hoc network could change the way large files (yeah, video, but also things such as Linux distributions) are distributed May 17, 2004

Low IQ?
Bruce Schneier says he's a bit wary of IQ Networks - a European security concern: "... IQ Networks claims to... May 17, 2004

Visio stencils
If you're a Visio user, here's a site for sore eyes. May 14, 2004

Movable Type and eating
So yesterday I grumped about the cost of new licenses for Six Apart's Movable Type tool. Timothy Appnel says buck... May 14, 2004

The cost of blogging
Six Apart has come out with the pricing for Ver. 3.0 of its Movable Type blogging tool (sorry, for their "publishing system"). Ouch. May 13, 2004

Get ready to rumble on the 'Net
A couple of gangs used the 'Net to arrange a fight. May 13, 2004

Live comment spammers
Scott Johnson, CEO of Feedster, has a blog, but he's using blogging software that doesn't have a way to automatically... May 13, 2004

An enterprise-networking aggregator
Welcome to Feeds, our new RSS aggregator and search engine. May 12, 2004

Web-enabled garage-door opener
Mr. Blog explains the usefulness of being able to control his garage door from the comfy confines of his house. May 12, 2004

Dear Paypal phishers
If you're going to try to scam me out of my account information, couldn't you come up with a better... May 12, 2004

Bloggers to Google: We're watching you
So Google now has its own blog. On Monday, it had an item about how Google's hiring. So? The original... May 12, 2004

The Fusion OPML file
Get your Network World Fusion OPML hot from the oven. May 11, 2004

Don't blame the worm
Add Greg Hughes to the list of people who think there was no excuse for companies to be shut down... May 11, 2004

He won't allow RealPlayer on his network
Why one network administrator puts it on his list of banned applications May 07, 2004

Remember the giblets!
Larry Osterman reports on a talk by Michael Howard, the author of Writing Secure Code. Howard, Osterman says, left his... May 07, 2004

Hiring as information warfare
Can who you hire be as effective as corporate espionage in learning what your competitors are up to? May 06, 2004

Fixing a wireless problem
The continued growth of wireless use means more interference, because few people bother (or know how to) change the channels... May 06, 2004

Incompetence at the higher levels
How could a bank let Sasser get into its network? Sheer incompetence, perhaps? May 05, 2004

Latest trend in Indian outsourcing
They click and the click and then they click some more. They are India's secret army of online ad clickers. May 04, 2004

Anti-censor tool winds up censoring
So last fall, the U.S. government's International Broadcasting Bureau (think Voice of America and Radio Free Europe), signed a deal... May 04, 2004

Fire in the hole!
Alexander Scoble has been documenting his progress in buying a fire-suppression system for his server room. May 03, 2004

Wi-Fi as a GPS replacement
Mark Frauenfelder, discusses Quarterscope, a company that says it has a way to use wireless access points to see where... May 03, 2004

The Google IPO
Notes from all over on the Google IPO. April 30, 2004

Rule Britannia
The BBC reports the arrest of some geek for phishing: "Police have said a 21-year-old man is the first in... April 30, 2004

Best use of Linux, bar none
Bar Monkey is a home bar set up that uses Linux to help mix and pour drinks for you. April 29, 2004

A couple of interesting security links
Both via joat, who does an excellent job of collecting such things: WormRadar is an effort to build a distributed... April 29, 2004

Epidemic networking
We've already adopted the "virus" paradigm from the biologists, so why not use other natural phenomenon to describe - and improve - networking? April 28, 2004

Questions that defy answers
But Mike McBride asks them anyway. April 27, 2004

Social networks: The Next Big Thing?
It's a long essay (I'm about halfway through it myself), but Smarter, Simpler Social provides a good overview of efforts... April 27, 2004

When routers go bad
His router is now all shot to hell. April 26, 2004

Anti-phishing tool for IE
SpoofStick, a browser plug-in that prominently displays the real URL of any site, is now available for Internet Explorer (previously,... April 26, 2004

Don't let perfectionism ruin your life
Joel Spolsky, professional coder, discusses the insanity of perfectionism. April 23, 2004

Wireless Braille
The normally sober BBC breathlessly reports on an effort by some German researchers to translate wireless text mssages into tactile... April 23, 2004

A dead process
Just when you think the InterWeb can't possibly get any more useful, along comes something like Died Online. April 22, 2004

Time for Time Warner to cut AOL loose
John Battelle says Time Warner is screwing itself when it comes to AOL and needs to just spin it off:... April 22, 2004

JavaScript and us
About those JavaScript errors you might be getting on our pages. April 21, 2004

RSS in ten words or less
RSS is one of those "standards" (Mark Pilgrim has identified at least nine different variants) that nobody seems to be... April 21, 2004

Knock it off
Jeremy Zawodny likes how people use instant-message software to let people know if they're available. However, he cannot stand people... April 21, 2004

Being one with the access point
Instead of hunting for wireless access points, why not just wear one on your back? April 20, 2004

Why national ID cards won't work
Cryptography expert Bruce Schneier wonders why we want to spend billions on a security program that won't work. He notes... April 20, 2004

Charles Colson on technology in the church
Nowadays, he's a born-again Christian who ministers to the prison set - which includes writing a regular column for Prison Fellowship. His most recent column addresses the consequences of over-ambitious, over-budget technology spending. April 16, 2004

Fiber to the home
Jim Stewart's been thinking about fiber to the home - he looks at why we'll need it and who should... April 16, 2004

Gaming your life
Intel's IT Manager Game is what The Sims would be like if all the Sims worked as IT managers in shops full of sluggish, annoying end users whose productivity will collapse unless you upgrade their desktops and network gear ... April 15, 2004

Amazon's new search engine
Well, make that: Amazon's sorta new search engine. A9, unwrapped in beta yesterday, basically consists of Google's database and algorithms... April 15, 2004

Clueless California lawmakers
So Google gets all this attention for its beta GMail, which the company plans to pay for by incorporating ads... April 15, 2004

Warts and all
If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of HTML editors, would they eventually create pages with... April 14, 2004

IE to get makeover?
IE 6.x was supposed to be the end of the IE line. But Microsoft is hiring developers ... April 13, 2004

Cut Google some slack
Diego Duval wonders if the complaints about privacy in Google's GMail miss the point. Sure, Google isn't guaranteeing 100% privacy:... April 13, 2004

The cable companies must love it
One observer says Verizon is playing chicken with its future by threatening to cancel a major fiber project. April 12, 2004

On the Cisco LEAP hacking tool
Mike Rowehl reacts to the news that somebody's released a tool for automating attacks against Cisco's LEAP wireless encryption: "...... April 12, 2004

Wi-Fly: Faster than DSL
Ami Ben-Bassat reports: "On Friday, March 12, 2004, a group of several dozen Internet addicts from Israel and abroad, gathered... April 09, 2004

The exciting world of computer security
Ejovi Nuwere, a security researcher (and co-founder of InfoSec Daily), brings his kid brother into the office: "... Unfortunately computer... April 09, 2004

Catching a scammer red handed
So this scammer walks into an Internet cafe ... April 08, 2004

Small-town wireless giveaway
Wheat Wireless is giving away $100,000 in wireless gear to a small town: "The town selected for this grant will... April 08, 2004

Now cut that out!
Why people should stop citing stupid queries as proof that Google is dying. April 07, 2004

Smacking spoofers
Phil Libin has posted a cool little widget for reducing your odds of being phished. His SpoofStick is a free... April 07, 2004

Why he's not a lawyer
The vice president of legislative affairs at Mike McBride's company asks him for a consult on a proposed anti-spam law... April 06, 2004

Online payment insanity
Jeremy Zawodny rants about certain online payment schemes: "You know, I really can't wait until all these stupid little on-line... April 06, 2004

GMail review and notes
As with everything else Google, people are talking about its new GMail Web-based messaging service. April 05, 2004

It's one thing to stay up all night for a good cause ...
But to learn that staying up to oversee the migration of data into an upgraded app was a waste of... April 05, 2004

Evil conspiracy theory, Java editon
Clemens Vasters speculates on the real reason IBM wants to make Java open source. April 02, 2004

Google: The comment spammer's friend
Well, in one small way, at any rate. Every morning for the past couple of weeks, I've opened up my... April 02, 2004

Standards Watch
The great thing about standards is that there are so many of them (did I just hear a snare drum out there?). April 01, 2004

New RFC aims to combat piracy
Our very own Scott Bradner has just released RFC 3751 - the Omniscience Protocol, whose goal is to figure out... April 01, 2004

Diebold gets a new CSO
Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins researcher who keeps punching holes in electronic-voting systems, today writes he is taking a job... April 01, 2004

Catching insiders
It's one thing to snare the outside script kiddies. But what about security violations by your own people? March 31, 2004

The problem with Java
Russell Beatie says the problem with Java isn't the language itself but the too-clever computer-science majors making it too complex. March 31, 2004

What's it called?
An IM situation that happens to me far too often must have a name ... March 30, 2004

Candygrams?
Lookee here: Not only can you still send a Western Union telegram, you can order one online. The obvious question,... March 30, 2004

Virtual reality for cancer patients
A study at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center showed that some breast-cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy experienced less fatique and fewer side effects when hooked up to virtual-reality systems during treatments. March 30, 2004

Computers suck
It's one thing for your computer to crash when you're sitting at your desk. It's quite another to have it crash when you're 45 feet under water. March 29, 2004

Webcams work!
Why you should install a Webcam in your house right this second. March 29, 2004

Mongrel Web services spec
Phil Wainewright discusses why he thinks a new Web services spec from IBM and BEA is a dog. March 26, 2004

Ultimate Boot CD
The Ultimate Boot CD is a project to cram as many (open source) diagnostic and recovery tools as possible onto... March 26, 2004

Why you shouldn't steal from bloggers
If you're going to crash a party and steal stuff try to make sure it's not a house full of... March 26, 2004

IM policies for the enterprise
David Marshak of the Seybold Group writes about "Instant Messaging at Work" - and provides some guidance on establishing IM policies: March 25, 2004

An indexing index
Jeremy Wagstaff provides a handy listing of desktop indexing applications, i.e., apps that will help you keep track of all... March 25, 2004

What's old is new again
The Speak & Spell Emulator is exactly what it sounds like. ... March 25, 2004

A handy household tool
And you thought Python was only a Web scripting language!. Andrew Koenig writes on how Python helped him design his new kitchen. March 24, 2004

Upgrading to Windows XP Service Pack 2 RC 1
Kayode Okeyode provides lots of links to people who have detailed their experiences upgrading to Windows XP Service Pack 2... March 24, 2004

Fiber-seeking cable operators
We all know about the disruptions caused by fiber-seeking backhoes. Al Bonnyman writes about an equally bad above-ground problem. March 23, 2004

Ow, my head
I spent a good part of yesterday working on an events calendar module for our upcoming community platform (more on... March 23, 2004

Bill Gates snares free-software biggie
From Slashdot comes the news that Free Software Foundation founder Richard M. Stallman today moves his office into the new... March 22, 2004

You ever notice ...?
If Andy Rooney covered outsourcing. March 22, 2004

Centralized identity for the blogosphere
Six Apart, the company behind Movable Type, plans a centralized identity management system called TypeKey. Users of the planned Movable... March 22, 2004

Spam: What goes around comes around?
Seems that China has become the world's second largest recipient of spam: "The Internet Society of China (ISC) said that... March 19, 2004

Sex addicted IT director sent to jail
The former IT director for the town of Leesburg, Va., will be spending the next four months in jail for... March 19, 2004

Physical security
From aerogels to questionnaires, some things to think about for your data center. March 18, 2004

The real threat
Viruses and worms get all the pubilcity, but IT needs to start spending a log more time worrying about security... March 18, 2004

Beating up the hackers
Security vendor says it's time to take the intrusion wars into the hackers' homes. March 15, 2004

You'll eat it and you'll LIKE it
Bob Congdon digs into the origins of the phrase eating their own dogfood and discovers it's more than just a... March 15, 2004

When variables go bad
Bad Variable Names is a fun discussion about programmers who use, well, bad variable names: "On an old VB project,... March 12, 2004

Infinite loop
When I pick up food at our local Chinese take-out place, my daughter likes coming along because the places has... March 12, 2004

When India calls
Michael Broschat gets two calls from an Indian call center to try to sell him AT&T service: "What's a kick... March 11, 2004

Oh, those script kiddies
What they're up to and how to stop them. March 10, 2004

Newbies and support forums
Why do some people like to harass the newbies? March 10, 2004

The Great Firewall of China
Chinese Internet users could outnumber American users by 2006. March 09, 2004

Can a company blog be too open?
It's Lotus vs. Microsoft in a mini blog war. March 09, 2004

How to crack code
Michael Giagnocavo has started a series of articles on cracking .Net code, in an effort to show how crackers think... March 08, 2004

Becoming one with the users
Anil John says he runs his Windows XP Pro machine as a non-Administrator: "... In developing as a non-administrator, I... March 08, 2004

Learning my way around Drupal
Still playing with Drupal as a possible community platform. It's pretty cool, and so I'm starting a series of notes... March 08, 2004

Putting locks on bagles
Is Bagle the future of worms? Don't count on it, one security pro says. March 05, 2004

Unix as flowchart
The Unix history chart shows the interconnections between every last one of the Unices. Via Kayode Okeyode... March 05, 2004

Needed: IQ test for e-mail users
Brandon Fuller works at a large company. He reports on the fun related to the most recent spate of virus-infested e-mail. March 04, 2004

Web services as disruptive technology
Phil Wainewright notes a report that a London brokerage has downgraded SAP's stock rating because of the potential impact of... March 04, 2004

Googling as a Supreme Court argument
US Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson claims he found more than 6.2 million free-porn links when he Googled "free porn"... March 03, 2004

Exploding money
You can hardly bump into a Weblog this week without reading something about $20 bills exploding in microwaves because of... March 03, 2004

Hey, Microsoft, protect this!
Bowulf helps his aunt remove tons of spyware from her Windows XP PC and in the process finds the spyware... March 02, 2004

Unit of measurement serves as head of standards body
One of the (many) quirky things about Boston is how the Harvard Bridge (which crosses the Charles River and leads,... March 01, 2004

Every language war ever
Bill Stilwell deftly summarizes every debate you've ever had about computer languages. Sample: Idiot 1: Your Favorite Language is bad... March 01, 2004

Offshoring debate
There's an interesting discussion about application-development offshoring at Ask Joel.... March 01, 2004

Wireless as the death of us all
One of the Scripting Guys at Microsoft discusess that now common phenomenon: people working on their wireless-connected laptops during meetings.... February 27, 2004

I hear you knocking ...
Port Knocking is a site devoted to an interesting way of securing a network: An outside node seeking access to... February 26, 2004

The latest academic discipline
Ludology - the study and theory of videogames. No, really, could I make something like that up? Take one entry:... February 26, 2004

Microsoft's embedded anti-virus service
Mixed feelings out there on the news that Microsoft is looking to incorporate anti-virus technology into the next Windows XP... February 25, 2004

Take care in reporting security holes
So a guy walks into a bar. No, wait a sec. So a guy wants to talk to somebody in... February 24, 2004

Elephants with cell phones
The Kenyan government is using GSM technology to try to preserve the country's elephants. The Nation, a Kenyan newspaper reports... February 24, 2004

Forum RSS feeds
I've set up an RSS feed for our forums. Right now, it's not terribly sophisticated - it's RSS 0.91 and... February 23, 2004

Spam from MIT
A friend, let's call him Deep Packet, is not surprised that he's gotten spam relayed from an MIT server. Hey,... February 23, 2004

Building a community platform on Fusion
We know we have to do better; now the search is on for the tools to support us (and you). February 20, 2004

Finally: Proof Macs are the work of the devil
Richard Paley, who, among other things, teaches "theobiology," writes that Mac OS X is the work of godless evolutionists: "The... February 20, 2004

The new Yahoo
Do a search on Yahoo today and the results come from its own search engine, rather than Google. Diego Doval... February 19, 2004

What a mess
A site called bash.org is holding a competition to find the messiest computer work area. Via /usr/bin/girl.... February 19, 2004

The end of your server-monitoring woes
All it takes is a couple of used AA batteries. February 18, 2004

Not a smooth upgrade
Last Thursday, Bill Manning bit the bullet and began upgrading his Cisco call-center software from Windows NT to Windows 2000.... February 18, 2004

When a geek tells you something, pay attention
Dave was not a happy camper yesterday. While the rest of the US took the day off, he was in... February 17, 2004

Spim attack
Was it only a couple of weeks ago that we were writing about the impending flood of spim - spam... February 17, 2004

Log analysis
LogAnalysis.org is a site entirely about, surprise, firewall log analysis: "Log Analysis is one of the great overlooked aspects of... February 12, 2004

What's that smell?
Bowulf learns the importances of properly securing processors in blade servers: "... I turned on the 6 servers, which were... February 10, 2004

FrankenPIX
Want a challenge? Why not build build a clone of a Cisco PIX device? That's what Bill Bradford just did:... February 09, 2004

Smile, you're on riot camera!
You may have heard that Boston had a little of the old ultra-v following the Patriots' Super Bowl win last... February 09, 2004

You canning spam?
The CAN-SPAM law has been in effect for about a month now. Noticed a dramatic reduction in incoming spam? Noticed any reduction? February 06, 2004

Yo mamma
Top 11 Yo Momma Insults for Coders, including: "Yo momma's so stupid, she leaves possible buffer overruns in a 'Hello... February 06, 2004

The lab vs. the real world
Web-site redesigns are always so much fun. And the absolute bestest part is when you go live and all that cool new code that looks great behind the firewall slooooows your site to a crawl. February 05, 2004

Internet Worm Crossing - Next 5 Miles
Microsoft security posters you can download and print off. Via Mike McBride... February 05, 2004

Buffer overflow for beginners
See what you're up against. Via RootPrompt.... February 05, 2004

Don't click that link!
In which a geek descends into computer hell with just one click. February 04, 2004

A broadband plan that stinks?
The New Orleans water and sewer board figured that when it upgrades downtown sewers soon, it could make some money... February 04, 2004

Mouse clicks are so 2002
Microsoft's latest advice on avoiding malicious URLs - type in URLs yourself. February 03, 2004

Kid 2.0
A guy in Michigan somehow convinced his wife give their new son a version number: "Jon Blake Cusack talked his... February 02, 2004

Collateral damage in the war on spam
Kasia discusses what happens when innocent people get caught in the spam war, i.e., folks who suddenly find their e-mail... January 30, 2004

Why I love Movable Type, redux
As mentioned earlier, we're going live with a redesigned Fusion on Monday. We use Movable Type for both traditional Weblogs... January 29, 2004

MyDoom counts
First, let's get this out of the way: Whenever I see a mention of the virus, I think of Victor... January 28, 2004

Electrocuted TV news crews
File this under "who knew?" Ed Mitchell discovers a common workplace hazard among TV news crews: electrocution when their mobile... January 28, 2004

Designing a new Fusion
It's coming Monday to a Web site near you! Better research centers, easier navigation and a cool new Weblog called... January 27, 2004

Yo, anti-virus vendors
You're making me get all Travis Bickle - yes, I'm tawkin' to YOU! Could you kindly shut off the "feature"... January 27, 2004

BEA and APIs
In this article, BEA deputy CTO Benjamin Renaud is quoted as saying that Microsoft must adhere to industry standards, but... January 26, 2004

Weblog DDoS
Bloggers are now unfortunately very familiar with comment spam - in which spammers try to bolster their search-engine rankings by... January 23, 2004

Where have I heard that scream before?
Listening to some of the Howard Dean remixes (yes, of course people have put his speech to music), something about... January 22, 2004

Novel methods for defeating viruses, porn
Proof that high tech pervades everything, including religion: First, a photo, showing Japanese businessmen holding "a service aimed at fending... January 22, 2004

Stop the madness
Raymond Chen says doesn't want phone books - he looks numbers up online. But Qwest keeps delivering them - he... January 21, 2004

From the romance help desk
Desperate writes the help desk: " Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct... January 21, 2004

Collaborative software that saves lives
Michael Helfrich spent a month in Iraq last fall and writes about the value of a collaborative GIS app (based... January 20, 2004

My first LinkedIn spam
A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for LinkedIn mainly just to see how this Friendster for the corporate... January 20, 2004

Cisco bloggers
When it comes to some companies, you can hardly toss a dead cat without hitting bloggers who write about them... January 16, 2004

Celebrating today
Why? Because today is officially Personal Firewall Day: "If you are a computer expert, share your knowledge with those around... January 15, 2004

Curses, foiled again
When Chris Kirk's friends wanted to pull a prank on him, they did it in style - over five days,... January 15, 2004

Thanks for writing
A few months ago, I complained about a p.r. company spamming an off-hours forum I run. Naturally, I took the... January 15, 2004

Take a SIP
SIPIntro is "An Introduction to the SIP Protocol for the Impatient Technologist" and is an overview of how to use... January 14, 2004

Why is Palm bad at networking?
Mike Rowehl says he doesn't understand why Palm seems to make it so hard to network its devices: " ...... January 14, 2004

Sanity checks
Jeremy Zawodny was trying to help a co-worker with a database problem - the server kept running out of steam... January 13, 2004

OSI must die
David Chappell is getting really tired of the seven-layer model: "Reviewing a manuscript for a book on service-oriented architecture (SOA)... January 13, 2004

Another Movable Type intranet
Last year, we re-built our corporate Intranet using Movable Type, which is best known as a blogging tool, but which... January 12, 2004

Fixing a problem with Norton anti-virus software
A reader reports some problems with Norton anti-virus updates from Jan. 7 and 8 - they froze up his Word... January 12, 2004

More on the Say Hey Kid
The father of the kid suspended for using DOS's NET SEND command to send the word "Hey" to all the... January 12, 2004

Hey, kid learns a lesson
A middle-school student in Richland Hills, Texas, was suspended for three days last month when he dropped into DOS and... January 09, 2004

My contribution to the presidential campaign
If it's not already taken, the Bush campaign should grab w.com (I don't get anything when I go there, but... January 09, 2004

My new year's resolution
Yeah, I'm late with it, but here goes: For 2004, I resolve that if I create any date-specific settings for... January 09, 2004

Pre-made blog lists
Dave Winer has built an interesting site, feeds.scripting.com, that lets people share their blogrolls or RSS-aggregator reading lists. Once you... January 08, 2004

Hotmail better?
Mike Pope says Hotmail seems to be catching more spam: "... I won't got so far as to say that... January 08, 2004

How secure are your proxy servers?
Adventures of an Open Proxy Server discusses how hackers are exploiting proxy servers: "Web traffic has grown at a phenomenal... January 07, 2004

CSI: Data center
So, did you happen to catch "CSI: Miami" the other night? The one that involved a rogue wireless access point... January 07, 2004

Semantic hacking
As information continues up the OSI stack (Layer 3 switches? How quaint. This year, I want IS to buy me... January 06, 2004

Why can't IT emulate the medical profession?
Jim Stewart delves into a leading principal in medicine: "Learn One, Do One, Teach One," which, basically, means doctors should... January 06, 2004

DNS just wants to be free
Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of DNS, says he designed the system to be flexible enough to carry almost any sort... January 06, 2004

Social beings
Are services such as LinkedIn and Friendster the beginnings of the next tech tsunami or just interesting niche products destined... January 05, 2004

2004 Predictions
SlashNot foretells the coming year, including: "Anti-spam software will finally become useful, allowing you to blame it for not getting... January 05, 2004

Anatomy of a DDoS attack
Sean Conner describes trying to combat a DDoS attack: "... Doing it by hand, I see that the web server... December 19, 2003

Abusing technology
Edward Mitchell discusses a new service that uses GPS to find hikers and mountain climbers in distress. Last month, the... December 18, 2003

When free isn't free
Linux.com has an interesting article about how the IEEE rejected free Microsoft networking software and gear for its conferences in... December 18, 2003

He doesn't like IT people
Rob Reed has a bone to pick with many IT people: "They have a distinct gate when they walk. If... December 17, 2003

Biculturalism
Joel Spolsky discusses the cultural differences between Unix and Windows developers: "There are many details and subtleties, but for the... December 16, 2003

Sneak peak at the future?
Living in the mobile information society, Japan-style is a preview of an upcoming ITU case study on the use of... December 16, 2003

Saddam and the geek image
Joey DeVilla notes a disturbing similarity between photos of post-capture Saddam Hussein and certain well known geeks. "Really, my fellow... December 15, 2003

Wi-Fi in a can
OverclockersClub has a review of two Wi-Fi antennas made from long metal tubes, you know, like Pringles cans. Sure, you... December 15, 2003

Them's big databases
Winter Corp. has released a list of humongous databases. Top honors go to France Telecom for a 29-terabyte datadbase running... December 12, 2003

SSID broadcasts not so bad
Almost every guide to wireless security says one of the first things you should do is to get your router... December 12, 2003

Linux now more expensive than Windows?
No, I'm not reading some Microsoft press release. Instead, I'm looking at Enterprise Linux, a draft paper by open-source maven... December 11, 2003

Movable Type and Oracle
Back in July, I discussed how we'd settled on Movable Type as the platform for the Network World intranet. Unfortunately,... December 10, 2003

Why gadget geeks love winter
Dennis must be a northerner: "Anyway, d'ya know why I like winter? Really the only reason why except for seeing... December 10, 2003

Real luxury
Jim discusses real luxury in today's fast-paced IT world. Ironically, what's luxury today was once considered a sign of backwardness,... December 10, 2003

Finally: A glowing USB duck
The iDuck USB Storage Device stores up to 16M-bytes of stuff. But who cares? If you're going to buy it,... December 09, 2003

Why not outsource the CFO?
With companies busy sending IT jobs overseas, Jeremy wonders, why stop there? "[W]hy don't we see Big Companies outsourcing their... December 09, 2003

Get ready for bluejacking
Forget wardriving; it's so impersonal. From the U.K., comes bluejacking: "Welcome to BlueJackers - dedicated to the latest fun (and... December 08, 2003

Budget troubles
Jeremy Wright discusses the perils of changing direction in a large organization at budget time: "So, when I'm having to... December 08, 2003

Just stick your finger there ...
Sam Ruby works for a certain TLA, but not in the hardware division: When his kids' PC started making funny... December 05, 2003

Mac Eye for the Windows Guy
The next breakthrough TV series? "You're kidding me ... Beige? Hello! The '80s called, they want their computer back!" Via... December 05, 2003

Ron Nutter is in the house
Ron is our long-time Help Desk editor, writing a weekly column to answer reader questions. Starting this week, though, you'll... December 04, 2003

How not to do e-commerce
Mike tries to buy something from the This American Life Web site, but only gets a mess of VBScript errors.... December 04, 2003

And the problem here is?
Yesterday, I got a press release from a company called Topcall, bringing my attention to what it considers a shocking,... December 03, 2003

RSS's bandwidth problem
Gary Murphy discusses RSS's dirty little secret: it's a bandwidth hog. Sure, RSS files are smaller than their HTML counterparts.... December 03, 2003

A higher purpose for embedded Linux
Hacking Big Mouth Billy Bass in Linux gives step-by-step directions for turing that silly singing fish on a plaque into... December 02, 2003

What if the Victorians had invented the Internet?
Check out the Victorian Internet by contributors to B3ta. Via blog.org.... December 02, 2003

World peace through collaborative software
A project to try to bring peace to war-torn Sri Lanka is using collaborative software from Groove Networks: "Info-Share has... December 01, 2003

Collaboration blueprint
Communication Trends and the On-Demand Organization is an IBM paper on the company's Lotus Workplace strategy, but it has some... December 01, 2003

All hell breaking loose on Google
Well, it is for the sort of company that exists solely to increase clients' weighting in Google searches, that is.... November 26, 2003

Utility computing as loss leader
Doug Kaye isn't buying the mantra that utility computing is cheaper. In fact, he thinks they might just be an... November 26, 2003

RFIDs get easier to swallow
The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog reports on a tasty use of RFID technology: "Pintokona, a Sushi restaurant in... November 25, 2003

Cracked: Case of the weird search queries
Last week, I marveled at some of the queries entered into our search box - why would somebody be searching... November 25, 2003

Weblogs on the hockey-stick curve
Dave Sifry started Technorati last year to see which Weblogs were linking to which sites. Of late, the site's been... November 24, 2003

Searches, we get searches
For the past couple of days, I've been analyzing the search queries input into Fusion's search engine to see if... November 21, 2003

The Case of the Drive-By Spammer
What if Dashiell Hammett had known about 802.11? The result might be something like Case of the Drive-By Spammer, a... November 20, 2003

Getting support
When I called my ISP's customer-support number the other day, I got through to a live person in roughly a... November 20, 2003

Stopping spam at home
Sure, at work, you probably have some enterprise kinda spam filter. But what do you use for your computers at... November 19, 2003

The state of identity management
Bowulf says identity management remains immature - there just are not enough people trained in how to use these products... November 18, 2003

So who's lying?
Last month, the New York Times wrote that Microsoft was considering buying Google. This week, Bill Gates denies any such... November 18, 2003

Is the comment-spam war already lost?
Webloggers are getting irate about comment spam, even to the point of issuing manifestoes. Weblogger Mark Pilgrim says been there,... November 17, 2003

Dumb defaults
David Newman, a member of our Global Test Alliance challenges vendors to stop shipping products with easily exploitable default settings.... November 17, 2003

Amazing IT Title Generator
The Amazing IT Title Generator will generate a random IT title (well, duh!) to add to your business card: "Some... November 14, 2003

Commodore-64 Web server
Why? Why not? "The Web server doesn't seem too stable. Twice I've left the box running in the basement only... November 14, 2003

Search-engine update
Those revised Python search-engine templates are now live on Fusion. One of the templates is a footer for the results... November 13, 2003

Couple of interesting little bookmarklets
OK, so "little bookmarklet" might be redundant, since a bookmarklet is just a tiny snippet of JavaScript that can do... November 13, 2003

My computer was so small ...
And what was your first computer?... November 13, 2003

Weblog spam wars
Adam Kalsey reports he got an ISP to kick off a Weblog spammer - and now the spammer is threatening... November 12, 2003

Why I've been messing with Python
Last week, I complained that Python is fussy. You can see why I've been messing with it by using this... November 12, 2003

Paying for Web services
Ronald Schmelzer of ZapThink, has posted an interesting paper on Web services pricing for companies that buy into the whole... November 07, 2003

Fussy, fussy, fussy
I am not a programmer, so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt, but: Python is... November 07, 2003

Telepocalypse now
Martin Geddes is "a humble functionary lost in the bowels of a huge midwestern telecommunications company," who likes to ponder... November 06, 2003

Why XSLT hasn't caught on
Paul Ford really likes XSLT. He ponders why XSLT is not more popular: "... I think XSLT suffers in particular... November 06, 2003

Googling chat sessions
OK, you can't do it yet, but some Internet Rely Chat users have been noticing an interesting visitor of late... November 05, 2003

ASCII art generator
You old-timers will remember when DEC was still around and "chads" referred only to the little tear-offy things on the... November 05, 2003

Going phishing
Just in case you haven't heard the term, "phishing" is a bit of the old social engineering done via e-mail... November 04, 2003

Saving American IT jobs
Outsourcing is all the rage among the corporate set these days. Should the government do more (anything?) to protect U.S.... November 04, 2003

How truly useful Excel is
Numbers are so boring. Sure, you can sort them, and graph them and even pivot them, but Lord, pity the... November 03, 2003

Ex-Microsoft guy talks
BetaNews interviews the Microsoft employee who was fired last week for posting a photo on his Weblog of some Apple... November 03, 2003

Fat hacking
Forget extreme programming. The hot new thing among programmers is Atkins diets. Dave Sifry, one of the programmers quoted in... October 31, 2003

Assisted computing facility for the infirm
Silicon Pines: "For family members, it is often the most difficult and Painful decision they will face: to accept that... October 31, 2003

Where's the Any Key?
From the official Compaq support database: Where do I find the "Any" key on my keyboard? Via Beth Mazur.... October 30, 2003

Helping out in San Diego
Bob Therieau usually does tech support for the IT department of a San Diego charitable group. In recent days, however,... October 29, 2003

Talk about your parallel processing
Roland Piquepaille' discusses Sandia Laboratories' Thor's Hammer supercluster. It initially consists of 10,368 2.0-MHz AMD Opteron processors (with a collective... October 29, 2003

All Microsoft developers, all the time
Feedster, a Weblog search engine, has a Microsoft Professional Developers Conference feed, so you can read pretty much every last... October 29, 2003

When you know more than tech support
Joat buys IP services from a certain large national cable provider. He discusses trying to report a severe ARP storm... October 28, 2003

White House fun with robots.txt?
Dan Gillmor picks up on a Democratic posting about the whitehouse.gov robots.txt file - which is a file that tells... October 28, 2003

File tokens
Can I let you in on a Network World secret? Yeah, gather 'round everybody and shut the door. OK, here... October 24, 2003

Proof that pop-under ads don't work?
X10, the company that launched a gazillion pop-under ads, has filed for bankruptcy. The filing comes right after the company... October 23, 2003

Remember the script kiddies
You can talk up your fancy-shmancy security systems all you want, but until you do the basics first, your network... October 23, 2003

When time travelers forge e-mail headers
You may have gotten one of those spam messages from a guy seeking parts for a "dimensional warp generator" -... October 22, 2003

Taking out the trash
Checking my mail this morning, I saw a response to an old Compendium posting that was obviously comment spam -... October 22, 2003

Wireless nirvana via open source
Tim O'Reilly says we're on the verge of a mobile information revolution, but only if the wireless providers open themselves... October 21, 2003

Gartner has nice clip art
Jeff Schneider analyzes a recent Gartner report on Web services: "Despite the amazing lack of substance, Whit managed to find... October 20, 2003

The world's most widely used OS
No, it's not Windows. It's TRON, a real-time kernel for small embedded systems, such as mobile phones and digital cameras.... October 20, 2003

Troubleshooting the troubleshooting
Bowulf was watching an online Microsoft session about troubleshooting Windows Server 2003 problems when the server started failing in unexpected... October 17, 2003

A framework for exploits
There are frameworks for network protection, so, sure, why not a framework for network intrusion? "This is the MetaSploit Project.... October 17, 2003

Debbie Does P2P
Tim Bray figures he should check out BitTorrent, the latest and greatest in peer-to-peer networks, which works by splitting up... October 17, 2003

Excuse me if I seem a bit depressed today
I'm from Boston, you see.... October 17, 2003

The spammers are gaining again
Bayesian filtering has become the hot new thing in fighting spam. But as Glenn Fleishman writes, the spammers are adapting:... October 16, 2003

Everything in Moderation
Everything in Moderation is a new site to discuss moderation in online forums - from the reasons why some forums... October 16, 2003

What next for EMC?
It doesn't take too much thinking to decide that EMC's acquisition of Documentum makes sense. EMC products store tons of... October 15, 2003

A dangerous idea for government info
The government wants to keep tabs on us? Fine, we'll keep tabs on the government. That's the basic premise behind... October 15, 2003

LAN-based attack monkeys
This article describes an experiment in which monkeys with an electrode implanted in their brains were able to manipulate a... October 14, 2003

Weblog spam-b-gone?
Just installed Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist, a plug-in for Movable Type, the Weblogging tool we use here at Fusion. If it... October 14, 2003

RSS is cruisin' now
Chris Pirillo reports the possibility of an RSS ocean cruise - all RSS, all the time, aboard a liner.... October 14, 2003

Death of the 'Net predicted
Michael Copps is an FCC commissioner. And he's worried about what's happening to the Internet, enough to predict in a... October 13, 2003

Comment spam, redux
As noted previously, a growing problem for people who run Weblogs that allow user comments is comment spam - short... October 13, 2003

Plaxo annoys me
Over the last few months, I've gotten a small, but annoyingly steady, stream of messages from alleged users of Plaxo... October 10, 2003

Untraceable spam sites
Great, just what we need: Wired reports that Polish hackers have apparently come up with a way to create untraceable... October 10, 2003

Build your own Segway
Using off-the-shelf technology, Trevor Blackwell went and built himself a discount Segway-like scooter - for about half the price of... October 09, 2003

Painful Wi-Fi
WiFi - SM: "You have the impression that the disasters of the world do not touch you anymore? You feel... October 09, 2003

China hates Site Finder
Technical Responses to Unilateral Internet Authority is a paper on VeriSign's Site Finder "service" by a couple of researchers at... October 08, 2003

Hold off the VeriSign cheering for now
Sure, VeriSign said Friday (under threat of suit, well, another suit) that it would suspend that SiteFinder redirect "service." Dana... October 07, 2003

The Yankees are going down
In six games. Sorry, I'm from Boston. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Compendium, already in progress.... October 07, 2003

Which storage group is right for you?
Last week brought news of two new organizations for storage professionals - the Association of Storage Networking Professionals and StorageNetworking.org.... October 06, 2003

Time to set Java free?
Some developers have started a campaign to convince Sun to spin off Java: "Spinning off Java as part of a... October 03, 2003

A C-64 on your cellphone
I knew there was a reason to get a Nokia phone: The Commodore 64 Emulator for Nokia 3650 is just... October 03, 2003

Best. Error Message. Ever.
Alexander Payne does the screen capture.... October 03, 2003

RSS for data-centric applications
RSS has taken off in the Weblog world (and is even gaining traction among us news types). A key factor... October 02, 2003

Binary XML: Threat or menace?
One of the problems with XML is its shear bulk: XML's basically just text and all that text takes so... October 02, 2003

Speeding up your wireless
You need WiFi Speed Spray: "The patented formula in WiFi Speed Spray is the result of years of scientific research... October 01, 2003

He's talkin' to you, Scott
Dana Blankenhorn doesn't think much of Sun's latest financial results, more specifically, CEO Scott McNealy's performance: "Scott? I'm talking to... October 01, 2003

Don't push this button
David posts proof that even engineers can be idiots who can take an entire network down: "I start going cube... September 30, 2003

For shame
I went to the Web site of the US District Court in Colorado last week in search of a copy... September 30, 2003

Another Web services blog to digest
Something about Web services seems to attract Webloggers in a way that, say, routers, do not. A new Weblog... September 29, 2003

A nice simple polling script
What's a Web site without polls? We recently decided we just had to have polls for our intranet - with... September 29, 2003

Switches built out of DNA?
Nature reports on work to build microscopic nets out of DNA molecules that can be made to expand and contract:... September 26, 2003

Next up: Routers made from acorns
The Mainichi Daily News reports on CDs made from corncobs: "Officials of Sanyo Mavic Media Co., a subsidiary of electronics... September 26, 2003

Breaking up the IM way
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on a cad who broke up with his girlfriend via instant messenger: " 'I am breaking... September 25, 2003

Metadata makes him shudder
David Weinberger ponders why people are so reluctant to apply metadata to documents: "Why don't people enter metadata? It's not... September 25, 2003

I'll buy a country code, Alex
Last week, we had VeriSign hijacking wildcarding non-existent domain names. Now comes ISO, the international standards body, which wants to... September 24, 2003

Ego-Googling
So by now you've lost track of how many people you've Googled. You realize, of course, this means people have... September 24, 2003

Our programmers are geniuses
Philip Greenspun teaches 6.171 - Software Engineering for Internet Applications at MIT. It's an upper-level course that requires students to... September 23, 2003

Tabula rascal
Peter uses a Tablet PC. The other day, he accompanied his girlfriend to the mall and brought his Tablet PC... September 23, 2003

Anatomy of an FTP hole
Lawrence Baldwin describes how a hacker, using little more than the online equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife (and maybe... September 22, 2003

The killer intranet app: Forms
Our intranet is now up and running. Yay, us. Last week, though, I discovered what's really going to bring people... September 22, 2003

Increasing e-mail productivity
An English company has banned employees from sending each other e-mail: "The tycoon - who does not use e-mail -... September 19, 2003

A security alert network
Lions and tigers and worms, oh my. With networks coming under attack faster and faster, it's becoming harder for everybody... September 19, 2003

The open-source political site
DeanSpace, based on Drupal, is an activist site in a can: "These communities provide their users with completly customizable websites... September 18, 2003

Die, phone, die!
Christopher Kenton discovers why you shouldn't buy a wireless phone that has every last feature, such as a low-battery warning... September 18, 2003

VeriSign, Google and bogus domain names
Jeremy Zawodny (among others) notes the news that VeriSign has added a wildcard record to its .com and .net zones,... September 17, 2003

Living buyer's guides
Ever since Fusion started, we've put a lot of energy into searchable buyer's guides - in-depth databases of vendor specs... September 16, 2003

VoIP as a business tool
No, not just as a replacement for POTS. Mitch Ratcliffe ponders linking blogs with VoIP - through a service such... September 16, 2003

Top ten bloggers
In case you haven't guessed from my posts, one of the things I spend a fair amount of time on... September 15, 2003

Learning about CDMA
Russell Beatie reads a story about Verizon buying $1 billion worth of Nortel CDMA wireless gear (not, sniff, sniff, this... September 12, 2003

J2EE causes colon cancer
At least, according to this posting: :A Forrester research project, funded by Microsoft inc., has determined that developing software using... September 12, 2003

A slow but reliable Web server
Mac Plus Web Server is exactly what it sounds like: A Web server running on a Mac Plus, specifically, one... September 11, 2003

This wireless phone points the way
LG Electronics has come out with an Moslem wireless phone - it can show the user which way Mecca is... September 10, 2003

Honeypot detectors
File this under "Know Your Enemy:" Generic attacks against a honeypot: Blind your enemy is written by someone who wants... September 09, 2003

Best patent ever
BBspot reports: "Dell announced that they had been granted a patent for the 'reboot and see if that fixes it'... September 09, 2003

Google has peaked
As more people try to game Google to get their sites higher up on results pages, Google begins to become... September 05, 2003

Fighting comment spam
Yesterday, I mentioned Adam Kalsey's thoughts on keeping spammers from despoiling Weblog comments. Simon Willison has started a comment spammer... September 05, 2003

Why RSS might not replace e-mail just yet
Like many Webloggers, Adam Kalsey lets readers comment on his posts. And like a growing number of Webloggers who allow... September 04, 2003

Why he hates Microsoft, part 1
Phil Karn can't stand all the Windows-spawned viruses he gets. So? What makes him so special? He co-wrote some error-correction... September 04, 2003

When wireless kills
Gizmodo translates a report out of France about a woman who plowed into a police car at 100 m.p.h. while... September 03, 2003

Voice over IP over wireless
Phil Windley is experimenting with voice over IP over wireless, via Vonage on one phone line and service from a... September 03, 2003

Dude, you're getting a contract
Ian and Kat buy a Dell laptop, but are stymied by a startup screen that says they have to agree... September 02, 2003

Why you should never go on vacation
Delmer Wells was late in entering our Sobig Somouse pad competition. But his story is so pitiful I have to... September 02, 2003

And the winner is ...
Everybody! It's mousepads all around for the Soannoying Somousepad competition. No, I'm not copping out or just trying to clear... August 28, 2003

IT vs. security
Troy Jessup writes that too many IT pros might have a false sense of (network) security, just because they've taken... August 28, 2003

Don't mess with Mitch Kapor
Kapor writes a Weblog about his work with the Open Software Applications Foundation and its efforts to build a new... August 27, 2003

Getting hammered
David Ring offers proof that sometimes, doing the right thing turns out to be the wrong thing, in his entry... August 27, 2003

First profitable use of grid computing?
Phil Wainewriight says that could be the Sobig worm, which some accounts say may have been posted as an attempt... August 27, 2003

Laptops on vacation
"Memo to all staff: If you take your laptop on vacation and use it to go online but don't connect... August 26, 2003

Why some people shouldn't be allowed near computers
In one of the latest entries in the Somousepad competition, Brian Poirier recounts this tale from his small network: We... August 26, 2003

Better feedback on Fusion resources
The software we use to build our pages of resource links has an interesting little feature: it lets users comment... August 25, 2003

Alternatives to SMTP?
Events of the last week show what can happen as long as Outlook continues to infest desktops everywhere. The World,... August 25, 2003

SoEntries
So many virus messages, so little time ... The first day of our SoMousepad Competition (complete rules) ended with a... August 22, 2003

SoMousepad: The Sobig competition
As Melissa and I watched our inboxes fill up yesterday with stupid "you're a virus-sending poopyhead" messages from clueless virus-scanning... August 21, 2003

Monitoring e-mail use in the name of science
The cost of e-mail interruption is an interesting paper that attempts to gauge the imact of answering e-mail on worker... August 21, 2003

Soannoying
OK, here at Network World, we practice what we preach when it comes to security - so I wasn't too... August 20, 2003

Migrating from IE to Firebird the EZ way
Firebird is the lightweight version of the Mozilla browser (i.e., you won't have to buy a new desk to support... August 19, 2003

An open-source search engine
Nutch is a nascent, open-source effort to keep Google and other commercial search engines honest. "Nutch provides a transparent alternative... August 19, 2003

Blaster slows spammers
Troy Jessup finds the silver lining in the whole Blaster mess: To try to stop Blaster, ISPs have been blocking... August 18, 2003

Restating the obvious
Jakob Nielsen, the Web-usability guy, recently put out an alert: "Excessive word count and worthless details are making it harder... August 18, 2003

Oh, those wacky porn sites
A few months back, I cited a report on how porn sites would send traffic to Weblogs in an attempt... August 13, 2003

E-mail for the easily amused
Karl rants about all the dumb e-mail he gets. No, not spam, but endless streams of bad jokes and stupid... August 13, 2003

Spam calculator
We've just put up a spam calculator that lets you plug in various assumptions (for example, your average employee salary... August 12, 2003

When the connection dies
Jeremy writes that while editing a file on his home computer remotely from work, the connections suddenly died (he has... August 11, 2003

The Babel Paradox
Phil Wainewright surveys the RSS food fight and says it highlights a key conundrum of XML: "The Babel paradox is... August 11, 2003

Time for another line of work?
A reader going by the nom de Web of Gilty, doesn't take kindly to this plea for respect for end... August 08, 2003

Intranet progress
Our Movable Type-based intranet is getting closer to a launch date (smart us: We didn't set a specific date, though).... August 08, 2003

Making a monkey out of programmers
Primate Programming: Can Primate Programmers work at my location? We do not recommend it unless you provide a separate work... August 07, 2003

Spam out his ears
Did I call Steven the spam king? Spam emperor is more like it. He writes: Guinness turned me down for... August 07, 2003

The Internet candidate
San Jose Mercury News technology columnist Dan Gillmor spends time at Howard Dean's headquarters and comes away impressed: "These folks... August 06, 2003

They got the power
One guess what PowerOverEthernet.com is about. The newly revamped site offers PoE news and product info, as well as an... August 06, 2003

Forum spamming
Spam in online forums is nothing new - in fact, long before it became pretty much exclusively associated with e-mail,... August 05, 2003

Why aren't there storage Weblogs?
Dann Sheridan is offering free blog space to storage professionals, after discovering he couldn't find any Weblogs devoted to enterprise... August 04, 2003

New Web-services Weblog
Adam Bosworth is chief architect at BEA Systems and a key contributor to initial Web-services standards such as SOAP, is... August 04, 2003

Awesome network monitoring tool
None other than Winamp. Yes, that Winamp, Troy Jessup writes: "It seems that using Winamp with Shoutcast streams will let... August 01, 2003

The problem with Perl
Tim Bray: Perl is such a great language, except for when it's not.. He discusses the case of some Perl... August 01, 2003

Keeping up with standards
The ITU has gone bloggy: The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog posts daily updates of news relatated to telecom... July 31, 2003

The Wi-Fi that Made Milwaukee Famous
The city of Milwaukee has launched free Wi-Fi in two city parks. While this is cool (Milwaukee claims its only... July 31, 2003

Why don't more integrators go with Linux?
It's not because they'd get a cut of proprietary software sales, Jiri writes: "It's just that when both costs and... July 30, 2003

Management and Web services
Loosely Coupled discusses a key part of implementing Web services: "Regardless of scale, early adopters of web services agree on... July 30, 2003

Putting whitespace to work
Move over, Java. Give it a rest, Python. Whitespace is THE hot new programming language: "Most modern programming languages do... July 29, 2003

The voice of the telephone dies
Jane Barbe, whose voice powered everything from time recordings to wrong-number messages, died earlier this month: "During her 40-year career... July 29, 2003

Next time, just leave the wireless card at home
OK, so I'm back after a relaxing week in New Hampshire's White Mountains (where they take the Old Man of... July 28, 2003

Don't count out Redmond just yet
Diego Duval discusses the stupid meme that wouldn't die - this time that Google is getting ready to take Microsoft... July 28, 2003

On vacation
I'll be out of the office this week getting a little R&R. See you back here next week.... July 21, 2003

In the end: Movable Type
After a couple of weeks futzing around with potential intranet platforms, we've settled on Movable Type. Huh, that Weblogging tool?... July 18, 2003

The new spam king
Couple weeks back, I bragged about how the 373 spam messages I'd gotten over a 24-hour period was a company... July 17, 2003

Tracking open source in government
OpenSector.org is a new site "where public sector decision makers meet the people, projects and principles of the open source... July 17, 2003

Ghost blogging
We keep hearing about all those way-cool execs who are getting into blogging. But, it turns out, at least some... July 16, 2003

Grid computing may not be very economical
Jim Gray, Distinguished Engineer in Microsoft's Scalable Servers Research Group, takes a look at some current grid-computing efforts (such as... July 16, 2003

DocFinders: Stay or go?
You oldtimers may recall that Fusion launched in pre-cookie days with a registration system that used encrypted URLs unique to... July 15, 2003

Avast!
The ergonomic keyboard for pirates Via Gregory.... July 15, 2003

When you get bored on Google
Bananaslug is a meta-search tool that lets you search Google for something PLUS a random word: "Directed Google searches return... July 14, 2003

Java blogging
Just can't enough of Java? Erik Thauvin has put together a list of his 10 favorite Java Weblogs.... July 14, 2003

Aw, poor baby
Direct Marketing Business Intelligence reports that spam filters are affecting spammers (sorry, "direct marketers"): "A year ago, I would have... July 11, 2003

Today's stupidest Web site
Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. That's one lesson to be learned from Winer Watch. Mark... July 11, 2003

Today's most brilliant software
Bernard Belanger has done it again: "Enjoy the new NaDaTM 0.5 ! "NaDaTM is a new concept. A thought, really.... July 10, 2003

New: Identity-management resource page
And about time, too! Our identity managment resource page will get you the latest Network World news and analysis of... July 10, 2003

Platforms, shmatforms
Joshua Allen, who helps build applications, writes that programmers sometimes lose sight of the people who actually use software: "We... July 10, 2003

Putting his money where his mouth is
Adam Curry is the former MTV VJ (oldtimers may recall the fuss when he registered mtv.com and then MTV woke... July 09, 2003

Who knew IT was so fun?
Dear Abby tackled the online world the other day, in a two-part column that had her offering advice to a... July 09, 2003

Open-source censorware
The Supreme Court recently ruled that libraries can be forced to install Internet filtering software as a condition of receiving... July 08, 2003

Time to gas up!
With the Speedpass-enabled Timex watch: "No reaching for your wallet, or fumbling with change. The new watch looks and functions... July 08, 2003

Paper: open source better at bug squashing
Closed source versus open source in a model of software bug dynamics is a paper by two researchers at the... July 03, 2003

A cool little blogging tool
Weblog geeks can tell at a glance that we use Movable Type for our Weblogs. Suits us fine - especially... July 03, 2003

He can't stand his mouse
Because it's alive and chewing on some peanut-butter cups in his desk drawer, David reports: "What really gets me about... July 02, 2003

The next-gen Web browser
Richard Tallent speculates onthe Next Big Things in Web browsers, offering up a list of possibilibies from both Microsoft and... July 02, 2003

Linux or Sun?
Hmm, maybe it's not Microsoft that should be worrying about Linux as much as Sun. Mike Kruckenberg is in charge... July 01, 2003

Remembering the end user
In the frenzy of application development, sometimes it's easy to forget that the people who would use those applications may... July 01, 2003

A man and his phone
OK, so Matt Croydon wants to see just how much software he can cram into his Nokia 3650 phone. That's... June 30, 2003

Psychalking
First came warchalking - the act of marking off locations of publicly accessible Wi-Fi hotspots. Now there's psychakling - conspiratorially... June 30, 2003

The new RSS
Chances are, most of you have better things to worry about than the RSS "specification," which comes in at least... June 27, 2003

In search of the elusive trojan
Troy Jessup continues his investigations into the trojan that people know exists but can't isolate: "This Trojan is exploiting some... June 27, 2003

Spam record
According to my esteemed colleagues over in IS, the 373 spam messages I received between 11:40 a.m. on Tuesday and... June 26, 2003

A vendor that cares
Adam Kalsey uses Atomz's free search engine on his site. He recently ran up against the company's 500-page limit for... June 26, 2003

New knowledge-management resource
The Association of Knowledgework recently opened up its site (no more registration, no nothin'); check out its white papers and... June 25, 2003

Java wikis
Yes, of course, they exist, and of course there are a bunch out there. So now to find one that... June 25, 2003

The Satan-fighting Cisco switch
It's for sale now in the Chicago area. "So there I was, in the network closet, when i get this... June 24, 2003

A Java-based intranet?
OK, so we showed pMachine and TWiki to our HR and marketing folks. In general, they seemed to like what... June 24, 2003

High availability is not cheap
Even when using an open-source tool such as MySQL, you need to figure out just how much failure you can... June 23, 2003

Date Formats: Hulk smash!
History of RSS date formats explains, in excruciating detail, just one side of a controversy surrounding the way to indicate... June 23, 2003

Ditching privacy policies?
Adam Kalsey says at least some companies are trying to eliminate liabilities for violating their Web site's privacy policies (for... June 20, 2003

Identity spawning e-commerce revolt
Eric Norlin reads some tea leaves and sees a battle brewing e-commerce as it relates to digital identity - especially... June 20, 2003

Bogus PayPal links
Troy Jessup discusses those bogus PayPal e-mail messages that prey on the fact that most people don't really understand URLs:... June 19, 2003

Intranet: Day 2
The pMachine folks figured out what was wrong with the registration script and sent us a new one. Now that's... June 19, 2003

Hey, let's destroy some computers
Sen. Orrin Hatch supports technology that could remotely "destroy" a computer to teach somebody about copyrights. As you might expect,... June 18, 2003

Intranet: Day 1
We got pMachine running on our Linux box - after we had to install some MySQL driver because of some... June 18, 2003

Hey kids, let's put on an intranet!
First, no cracks about cobbler's children. Sure, we've been writing about intranets forever (we even used to put out a... June 17, 2003

Breaking networking news from across the pond
Our International News page now features the latest news, analysis and features from TechWorld, our new sister site in the... June 17, 2003

CD explosion
Ever wonder what would happen if you spun a CD at the end of a Dremel drill? "It peeled out... June 17, 2003

One way to lock down your computer
What you'll need: Large Container Shovel Large Screw Driver Water Supply Concrete Mix Minimal Amount of Wood Phil Dowd provides... June 16, 2003

Google caching not anonymous
Some people have taken to using Google's cached versions of pages as a way of avoiding Web bugs and other... June 16, 2003

What's worse than a car salesman?
According to Bowulf, it's salesmen for network security vendors: "I have just had the displeasure of someone worse than the... June 13, 2003

Building radio networks without FCC approval
A couple of days ago, I pointed to LanLinkup, an interesting project to build a national network on the backs... June 13, 2003

Evils of the Matrix
Troy Jessup discusses how infected files from P2P networks are getting into his network: "Now to trojan a movie you... June 12, 2003

All Java, all the time
weblogs.java.net is a, dare I say it, compendium of Java-related Weblogs hosted by Sun, including one by Java pappy James... June 12, 2003

Wireless LAN from coast to coast
LanLinkup is an interesting project whose goal is to set up: "A wireless lan infrastructure in the homes of average... June 11, 2003

All those Weblog notes on a single page
I've set up a category here for my notes from the ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies conference.... June 11, 2003

Weblogs in enterprise IT
With his budget and staff slashed, Connecticut state CIO Rock Regan is looking to Weblogs as a key tool to... June 10, 2003

On blogs and super-blogs
Tony Perkins, founder of the Always-On Network, said in his keynote that his site is not a Weblog. Somebody then... June 10, 2003

Weblog legal issues
Catherine E. Reuben, partner, Robinson & Cole, LLP, offered some legal tips for both employees and employers: Employee don'ts: Don't... June 10, 2003

Weblogs and journalism
Jeff Jarvis, president and creative director of Advance.net (his Weblog), which runs Web sites for Newhouse newspapers, on the Internet... June 10, 2003

Google saved my dog
Jason Shellen: Google now uses Blogger internally. The help-desk maintains an internal blog for "love notes' from user. He said... June 10, 2003

Blogs and Google
Jason Shellen of Google's Blogger: "We are NOT taking blogs out of Google." However, he declined to say any nasty... June 10, 2003

Wireless photoblogging
Jason Shellen, associate program manager at Google's Blogger (his Weblog), says the company is working with a number of wireless... June 10, 2003

Digital self fashioning
Matthew Berk, senior analyst at Jupiter Research (his Weblog), discussed "digital self fashioning." "On the network, a person is content,"... June 10, 2003

Hold on there, champ
William Stow of Tsunami Corp. says that for all the talk about how empowering Weblogs are: "The fact of the... June 09, 2003

War is Weblog
Major Chris Chambers wrote a Weblog from Afghanistan to support the Army's first-person shooter game - he actually volunteered to... June 09, 2003

Weblogs as revolution
David Weinberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and co-author of the The Cluetrain Manifesto on what Weblogs (such as... June 09, 2003

Weblog as business differentiator
Jason Butler, senior product development manager, BostonWorks.com, said the Boston Globe-related site had to figure out how to compete with... June 09, 2003

How do you get somebody who doesn't want to to blog?
Biz Stone, author of Blogging, says one way is to do what he and a fellow blogger did about a... June 09, 2003

The observer effect
Dan Bricklin raised an interesting issue: Say he's writing a top-secret competitive analysis and includes a link to a competitor's... June 09, 2003

More perspectives from the ClickZ conference
Here are some other folks who are blogging this conference: Joho Beth Goza Das E-Business Weblog (German) Adina Levin BostonConferenceNotes... June 09, 2003

How Weblogs should fit into a marketing strategy
Beth Goza, product manager in the Windows division: She discussed gotdotnet.com, which is a Microsoft effort that includes Weblogs: "Probably... June 09, 2003

Microsoft can't win
At the ClickZ conference, Beth Goza, a product manager at Microsoft, said the company just can't win: "We're constantly being... June 09, 2003

Employees as Webloggers
Dave Winer: I think you have to be really careful about that. "Don't think of it as a calling or... June 09, 2003

Bloggers are journalists
Dave Winer, former CEO of Userland Software, now a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society (his Weblog... June 09, 2003

Enterprises need Weblogs
Comments by Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director, Jupiter Research (his Weblog): On an enterprise basis: "Now is the... June 09, 2003

Confblogging today
I'm at ClickZ's Weblog Business Strategies conference in Boston today. Updates as they happen, at least, until the batteries die... June 09, 2003

Super Mega Fast TCP
Don Park reads a Wired article about work at CalTech to boost 'Net bandwidth by ridiculous amounts through some server-side... June 06, 2003

WiFi terror at 30,000 feet
Martin Tobias gets curious on an airplane and turns on his laptop's WiFi connection just to see what happens. He... June 06, 2003

The programmer who loved his Diet Coke
Ed Kaim has worked at Microsoft for two years now. Microsoft provides free soft drinks for its employees. Over the... June 06, 2003

Former CIO: Oops
A couple of weeks ago, former Utah state CIO Phil Windley tried out some software called WebInspect, a tool for... June 05, 2003

The most complete SCO-lawsuit resource ever?
SCOvsIBM seems to have just about every online resource related to the case, so if you're really, really following the... June 04, 2003

Write better emails; make more moneys
The one can't-miss conference of the year: 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference. "I am Mr. Laurent Mpeti Kabila, a senior... June 03, 2003

When you get too popular
Glenn Fleishman describes how he narrowly avoided a $15,000 excess bandwidth bill when he released a free PDF version of... June 03, 2003

Wireless-enabled pickpockets
Criminals continue to find new ways to use technology. First we had reports of Italian mobsters using wireless phones to... June 02, 2003

The next big thing in wireless
SQWERLs: SQuirrel-based WiFi Enhanced Rodent Lifeforms. "SQWERLs are naturally weather-resistant and adapt to environmental conditions much more quickly than any... June 02, 2003

Boss Hogg explains the SCO lawsuit
Arie Rubenstein uses the metaphor of the Dukes of Hazard to explain the SCO Linux issue. Linux is played by... May 30, 2003

Couple of new RSS feeds
We've added two new RSS feeds for your aggregating pleasure: Utility computing (a.k.a. autonomic computing, a.k.a. on-demand computing) and wireless... May 30, 2003

What if your CEO read your blog?
As more and more people set up their own Weblogs at work, one has to wonder if the boys and... May 29, 2003

Interesting-looking e-mail client
Actually, e-mail's only a part of clevercactus. Currently in beta, this Java-based desktop app combines e-mail, a PIM, an RSS... May 29, 2003

Are you certifiable?
Ah, eBay. For just $8.98, you, too can buy a certificate proving you are a certified Linux administrator: "You will... May 28, 2003

Grid computing: Feh
Clay Shirky argues just that in Grid Supercomputing: The Next Push: "As we learned with Push, an intriguing name is... May 27, 2003

Linux group goes after SCO
File under "turnabout is fair play"? LinuxTag, which runs a large European open-source fair, is accusing SCO of deceptive business... May 27, 2003

He'd rather use a socket
Robert Martin expresses some dissatisfaction with Web services, CORBA and all that other middleware jazz: "I think we have gotten... May 23, 2003

The people who actually use open source
Willam Lamb says that open source developers and users are not synonymous: "The question that each person involved in creating... May 23, 2003

Wireless neo-feudalism
Philip Greenspun is traveling through Wales and he is struck by how much more advanced that region is when it... May 22, 2003

Blocking the music spiders
Salim Fadhley is getting annoyed with the recording industry's apparent use of Web spiders to find sites that might be... May 22, 2003

Spam: Good lords
The British House of Lords recently debated spam (link via eBiz). Some excerpts: Lord Mitchell asked Her Majesty's Government: What... May 21, 2003

Google's architecture
Web Search for a Planet: The Google Cluster Architecture describes how Google does what it does on a platform consisting... May 20, 2003

A new Outlook spam fighter
Peter Provost has been running SpamBayes and is very impressed. He writes about SpamBayes: "In the past 32 hours, it... May 20, 2003

A headline I could write
I got a press release yesterday from MuxLab about its newest video balun. I have no idea why they thought... May 20, 2003

A smart Mob
First came smart mobs is a theory (and a book) that mobile phones are revolutionizing the way people participate in... May 19, 2003

This is progress?
Keith notes the growing excitement over RSS aggregators as a desktop platform, but tries to dampen things down with recollections... May 19, 2003

You can't build agile businesses out of inflexible material
Phil Wainewright doesn't think much of Unisys's business process consulting service (as discussed in this article). He writes: "While there's... May 16, 2003

The Dave Kearns Weblog
Network World columnist (and newsletter author and newsletter author and newsletter author) Dave Kearns now has his own Weblog, in... May 16, 2003

Sending in the lawyers
Julian Robichaux, a developer, gets a letter from the SCO Group about its threat to sue even Linux end users... May 15, 2003

SIMPLE Jabbering
Jabber, Inc. compares XMPP/Jabber with SIP/SIMPLE as a platform for instant messaging. Not surprisingly, Jabber claims its XML-based approach is... May 15, 2003

Fiber-seeking backhoe takes out Boston
Well, a good part of IP connectivity in Boston, at any rate. The Boston Globe reports that a fiber-seeking backhoe... May 14, 2003

Is Bluetooth still relevant?
Charles Hudson gets himself a Bluetooth headset and is trying it out when some colleague ambles by and "made a... May 13, 2003

Why you should back up your servers
The Cleveland Plain-Dealer reports that the guy charged with shooting up the Case Western Reserve business school may have been... May 13, 2003

New Microsoft employee
Robert Scoble describes his new employee orientation at Microsoft: "No, I didn't get implants, but I got a blue badge.... May 13, 2003

Confessions of a former spammer
The Oregonian interviews Duncan Shiels, who recently gave up a life of spam: "By early last year, he needed a... May 12, 2003

The dangers of social software
I've mentioned social software, which is collaboration software for the new millennium, or something. Don Parks worries about the potential... May 12, 2003

Mad about their annual report
Cognex wins the award for best annual report of the year: A Mad Magazine parody - complete with fold-out at... May 09, 2003

Office 2003 Beta notes
Mike McBride has set up a Weblog to detail his experiences with MS Office 2003 Beta.... May 09, 2003

For your next software audit
Hey, kids, software piracy is bad! And stopping it is fun! The Business Software Alliance (you know, the software police)... May 08, 2003

Distributed Web directories
Jamie Lewis says a proposal for an XML-based directory system for small and medium based businesses could point the way... May 08, 2003

How many AOL programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
OK, I have no idea, but Dave Winer claims it takes 400 AOL programmers to write the company's impending Weblog... May 07, 2003

Coming soon: Zillions of RSS feeds
It's been tough going to Weblogs of late - I see all those orange XML buttons and I think "I... May 06, 2003

Why Groove isn't built in Java
Groovemeister Ray Ozzie says his company initially looked at building its collaboration tool in Java. But then Sara Williams of... May 06, 2003

Web services and donuts
OK, so last week I discussed Dunkin' Donuts scores, i.e., how many Dunkin' Donuts are within a five-mile radius of... May 05, 2003

Talking cars
Remember KITT the talking car? The one David Hasselhoff rode to fame and fortune? Don't just remember it. Build it!... May 02, 2003

Speeding the 'Net or slowing it down?
We recently ran an article about a start-up called Netli, which says it's come up with a TCP replacement that... May 01, 2003

Doing donuts on the Web
What do you get when you combine a backend database, a decent user interface and coffee? In Boston, you get... May 01, 2003

Those wacky wireless vendors
Over in our NetWorld+Interop weblog, Features Editor Neal Weinberg grouses: "I thought there was a difference between a switch and... April 30, 2003

Extending Fusion's search engine
Here are a couple of toolbar widgets that'll let you quickly find Network World articles related to words or phrases... April 30, 2003

The annals of cybercrime
Orin Kerr, a professor at George Washington University, has a mailing list to post news of court cases involving cybercrime.... April 30, 2003

Social software
It's the new name for collaborative software, I guess. Only this is software with attitude. Many-to-Many is a new Weblog... April 29, 2003

XML security
Mark O'Neill gives some examples for securing XML documents: "As avenues of attack are blocked, attackers have moved further up... April 28, 2003

Mission IT Impossible
That's what Xenos Y. Zalmai says he has: "Your assignment: Come up with a of group calendar solution for Sales... April 28, 2003

How much am I bid for this link?
Tony Pierce is auctioning off a link from his Weblog. Winner gets a link at the top of his home... April 25, 2003

Building a metadata-based Web site
Brett Lider and Anca Mosoiu discuss the importance of metadata in organizing and using documents on public Web sites and... April 25, 2003

The Iraqi information minister on policy-based routing
RouterGod, as usual, has the scoop: "We will beat your packets with our shoes and roast your configs in hell!"... April 24, 2003

RSS needs some fixin-uppin'
RSS is becoming increasingly popular as a way to transfer and aggregate unstructured data (such as, oh, Weblog entries). XML... April 24, 2003

Using a Table PC outside
Tablet PCs: Freedom, mobility, yada, yada. Except you can't use them outside in the sun. Loren, however, experiments with Tablet... April 23, 2003

Hulk smash!
Today's best timewaster: The Hulk trailer. Looks like a really good bad movie, chockfull of pretentious, stilted dialog. But I... April 23, 2003

"Law & Order" is ruined for him
Earlier this year, we discussed the computer guy who got disgusted with all the wrong networking stuff paraded on "CSI."... April 22, 2003

Microsoft spider reported in the wild
Microdoc News reports the appearance in its Web-server logs of a Microsoft spider, i.e., software from Microsoft that crawls its... April 22, 2003

Technology finally catching up to business
That's what Phil Wainewright argues in an overview of developments last week in the Web-services world, from Sonic Software's new... April 21, 2003

Iranian Weblogger arrested?
Word out of Iran is that Sina Motallebi, a well-known Farsi Weblogger, was arrested over the weekend for "threatening the... April 21, 2003

Get the man a testing lab
Barry Bryson is associate technical directory of the Utah Education Network, which helps network the state's schools, colleges, libraries and... April 18, 2003

Content pipelines
There's this vast sea of information out there. And that's just on your desktop: You've got e-mail, your Web bookmarks,... April 17, 2003

Make the time
If you're a typical network pro, you're busy, busy, busy. But Julian Robichaux says you need to make time to... April 17, 2003

Now spam is ruining IM
Steve Mallett writes: "Back when ICQ was still new I had adopted using it. It was fabulous and my friends... April 16, 2003

OASIS overtaking W3C
Don Park comments on the news that the Liberty Alliance is handing over part of its identity-management standards work to... April 16, 2003

The SARS mobile solution
Sunday, a Hong Kong wireless provider, now offers a SARS locator service. Subscribers dial a number and can see if... April 15, 2003

Anti-spam spam
Is it me, or is there just something particularly obnoxious about companies that use spam to advertise anti-spam products?... April 15, 2003

The most misspeled words on the 'Net
Andrew Baio uncovers them: "Armed with a list of spelling errors and my old friend Google, I decided to see... April 15, 2003

The real wireless security worry
Phil Windley discusses man-in-the-middle attacks, which he says should concern you more than WEP cracking (because if you're in an... April 14, 2003

Tivo as hammer
What's that old joke about how, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail? Tobias Hoellrich reports that... April 14, 2003

SARS as a computer virus
On the heels of its Iraq and IT Weblog, Gartner is now providing daily updates on the ramifications of SARS... April 11, 2003

Do geeks actually reproduce?
Kasia swears the following pick-up lines are true: "Want to get together and compare google rankings?" "We should go grab... April 11, 2003

The coming battle between Microsoft and Google
Stefan Smalla says it could be inevitable - he notes Microsoft's efforts to tune up its public search efforts of... April 10, 2003

In VC, timing is everything
Charles Hudson, a senior associate at In-Q-Tel (you know, the CIA's VC wing), discusses timing in the technology venture market:... April 10, 2003

Revised column
Our 3/24 Tester's Choice column about latency on gigabit networks had some factual errors in it. We've posted a revised... April 09, 2003

When only a librarian will do
Does Google make reference librarians obsolete? Nope. Even aside from Google Answers (where you pay somebody to look up stuff... April 09, 2003

Heartbreak of the geeks
Geek guy finds the girl of his dreams: An attractive Web programmer with a CS degree. But after posting about... April 08, 2003

Never leave the bathroom again
I'm hoping that the toilet-paper Web browser/printer recently demo'ed in England has a USB port, so you can plug in... April 08, 2003

Wiki as knowledge tool
You've got your content-management systems, your Weblogs and your forums. Now what if you combined them all into a single... April 07, 2003

Not worth the paper it's printed on
The Internet Toilet Roll Browser won a "concept product" award at some British home show. Not only would you be... April 07, 2003

Wireless phones in time of war
The BBC reports: "Mobile phone users will be "swamped" by text messages advising them what to do in the event... April 04, 2003

Porn sites discover the value of Weblogs
But not in the way you might think (although, yes, there are pornblogs). A lot of Weblog owners are, how... April 04, 2003

Now cut that out
File this under "lovely, just lovely:" All of our articles have a "feedback" link that let you send a comment... April 03, 2003

New use for power over Ethernet?
Mike Gunderloy discusses news aggregators - tools that collect RSS feeds and display them in a Usenetish or e-mail fashion:... April 03, 2003

Web services as stock indicator
OK, maybe I'm getting carried away with trying to tie Web services to everything (hey, I had to wait 45... April 02, 2003

XML as headache
Don Park, who writes applications and does software consulting for a living, allows as how XML can be useful, but... April 01, 2003

Build your own Google interface
Yes, one of Google's charms is its simplicity: Enter some phrase in that simple text box and hit Submit. But... April 01, 2003

How 3G could fail
Clay Shirky makes the case in an essay on Permanet, Nearlynet, and Wireless Data. He argues that, like Iridium and... March 31, 2003

A close shave
Brent Sleeper recalls a flurry of stories in the tech press a few weeks back about "radio frequency ID" chips... March 31, 2003

Freedom of speech in wartime
Network World Senior Editor Ellen Messmer argues that even in wartime, actions such as the denial-of-service attack against the Al-Jazeera... March 28, 2003

IBM no longer Same as it ever was
IBM's changing a bunch of names in its Lotus product line, including Sametime, which soon will become IBM Lotus Instant... March 28, 2003

More to Web services than SOAP
Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist at Sun, writes: "To the surprise of many, Web services are not just about SOAP... March 27, 2003

Index of Evil
For an example of how Web services are more than just SOAP, see the Index of Evil: "Warblogging operates a... March 27, 2003

Sidekick support, or lack thereof
Mena Trott recently bought one of those T-Mobile Sidekick wireless phones. She describes what happened when it went into "deep... March 26, 2003

Optimization optimization
Mark offers some suggestions to the authors on a book on Web-site optimization how they could better optimize their own... March 26, 2003

Analysts go warbloggy
Both Gartner and Jupiter Research now have Weblogs focused on the impact of the war on IT and related fields.... March 25, 2003

The cardboard case
It's just the thing for all those server blades, I'd think. Stackable AND portable. Via Boing Boing. Oh, speaking of... March 25, 2003

Web services soap opera
Phil Wainewright analyzes Microsoft's decision to pull a couple of representatives off the OASIS task force working on a choreography... March 24, 2003

A floppy Enterprise
What to do with all those 3.5-inch floppy disks cluttering up your office? Make a Starship Enterprise out of a... March 24, 2003

Blogger turns Microsoft down
Russell Beattie contributes to Mobitopia, a Weblog about mobile technologies and issues. He reports that Microsoft recently offered all-expenses-paid trip... March 24, 2003

The new 'Net
Jeremy Allaire, who gave us ColdFusion, is feeling good: "I'm more optimistic about opportunities for innovation and growth than I... March 21, 2003

Does Iraq still have 'Net connections?
Apparently so. Some sites still online as I type this: Iraq Satellite Channel and Babil Online. However, the Iraqi News... March 21, 2003

Baghdad Weblog
At least until his power goes off, Salam is filing dispatches from his home in Baghad: "We obviously still have... March 20, 2003

The joke's on Sun?
So Sun's Scott McNealy thinks .Net is a joke. Robert Scoble discusses what that says about Sun: "Well, if .NET... March 20, 2003

More on XML's problems
Yesterday, Tim Bray complained that XML is too hard for programmers. Today, Joe Gregorio agrees: Is there a Regex-able subset... March 19, 2003

XML too irritating for him
Uber-programmer Tim Bray (he's CTO at Antarctica Systems) has had to deal with XML a fair amount of late, and... March 18, 2003

The trouble with WorldCom
Rafer discusses the way WorldCom has written down billions and billions: "They have convinced the press to bemoan the fact... March 18, 2003

Hiring starting again in Silicon Valley?
Jeremy Zawodny senses the change: "Recruiters. It's been a while, but recruiters have been calling (and e-mailing) again. "I've noticed... March 17, 2003

New Office incompatible with itself
Ridiculopathy reports that Office 2003 is incompatible even with itself: "Personally, I'm really glad they boosted the incompatibility with this... March 17, 2003

Forum update
So far, so good (take a look for yourself). The one area in which Gossamer Forum really can't match our... March 14, 2003

Dogfooding showstopper at Microsoft
Scott Guthrie, an engineer at Microsoft, talks about dogfooding and showstopping at the company. The former's the act of running... March 13, 2003

OS X reboots
Jeremy Zawodny installed a new version of Java on his OS X box and just had enough when the computer... March 13, 2003

How to handle telecom disputes
CNN reports that the CEOs of two New Zealand telecom companies settled a dispute over wireless access by arm wrestling:... March 12, 2003

Make the switch - to Web services
Switch to Web Services - yes, another Switch parody, but a really geeky one.... March 12, 2003

Deloder only the beginning?
The deloder worm is only a taste of things to come, Troy Jessup writes: "This recent worm brings to light... March 11, 2003

A blog blog
Blog Project is a blog about a Stanford project to build a campuswide blogging system. They're looking at using Moveable... March 11, 2003

The Internet is stupid
But that's a good thing, Doc Searls and David Weinberger argue: "Its designers made sure the biggest, most inclusive network... March 10, 2003

Feel the love
Grant shares his affection for security patches: "You know what I like about security patches? I like the fact that... March 07, 2003

The perils of virtual meetings
Kevin Lynch, Macromedia's chief software architect, describes meetings at the company these days - which often involve people on two... March 06, 2003

The next big thing
Is, of course, Web services. How could it not be - it's hyped everywhere! Anyway, Deloitte & Touche Corporate Finance... March 06, 2003

Draft anti-spam RFC
Designated Senders Protocol is a proposal to cut down on spam by reducing forged message headers: This document describes a... March 05, 2003

Sir Tim?
Sam Sethi wonders why Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, an Englishman, hasn't been knighted yet: This Englishman may well eventually become... March 05, 2003

But how do you really feel?
Gerry McGovern discusses content-management systems: Content management software hasn't worked because it was badly designed and massively over-hyped. Software companies... March 04, 2003

Amazon patents discussions
Scan the following paragraph: The discussion system of the present invention receives a selection of an item that is to... March 04, 2003

New forum software live
And in living color yet: Right here. There's an actual forum, on whether Chapter 11 bankruptcy gives some service providers... March 03, 2003

ET, Plone home
Brian Sweeting's been looking for a free content management system. He says Plone is the one: I have been thoroughly... March 03, 2003

Ten hut! 802.11a security holes
As you may have read, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is building one majorly serious 802.11a wireless network.... February 28, 2003

New forums coming Monday
Finally, we begin live testing of our new forum software. On Monday, we'll be hosting a face-off on whether Chapter... February 28, 2003

The birth of a new Weblog
Or rather, the Weblog of a new birth. Couple uses a Weblog to chronicle the home birth of their daughter... February 27, 2003

Recovering from a root compromise
Troy Jessup discusses what to do when you realize somebody's cracked into one of your servers and offers tips on... February 27, 2003

Search engine wars
So after snapping up AltaVista, Overture has now bought AllTheWeb. Sterling Hughes ponders what this means: Overture, Inktomi and Google... February 26, 2003

Computer licenses
No, not those XP licenses Microsoft is so insistent on enforcing. Daniel Rutter wonders if maybe people should be required... February 26, 2003

Re-useless?
Back when I was just a cub technology reporter, I got assigned to the objects beat (ah, polymorphism!). Object vendors... February 25, 2003

The self-feeding computer
Roland Piquepaille discusses work by Israeli researchers to use DNA molecules as computing devices: Because the molecules store the chemical... February 25, 2003

A rockin' good wireless net
The Globe and Mail reports on one sophisticated mobile setup: 140 laptops all with wireless cards talking to a 3Com... February 24, 2003

More fun with MySQL
As noted last week, we're hoping to move our Moveable Type-based Weblogs to a MySQL backend. Next up: Connecting the... February 24, 2003

Reaction to the FCC ruling
Kevin Werbach says: It re-energizes the Bells' obstructionist strategy, and it takes away near-term competitive threats from independent DSL providers... February 21, 2003

Best spam subject line of the week
"Do you have e-mail?"... February 21, 2003

MySQL and us
File this under: Best tool for the job. We heart Weblogs here at Fusion. And we heart Moveable Type for... February 20, 2003

ASP.Net Weblog from the horse's mouth
Scott Guthrie, the head guy for Microsoft's ASP.Net iniative now has a Weblog, in which, big surprise, he writes about... February 20, 2003

Three Degrees of Microsoft
Ross Mayfield discusses Microsoft's planned Three Degrees instant messenger on steroids: Microsoft's first relationship product should be taken seriously. By... February 19, 2003

An Epiphany in Web browsers
Edd Dumphill takes a look at a new Web browser for the Linux GNOME set called Epiphany: Even after a... February 19, 2003

All the Demo news you can use
It's all right here - News, reviews and our exclusive show Weblog by Network World editors Neal Weinberg and Sandra... February 18, 2003

Microsoft and open source
Dave Stutz, who used to work at Microsoft, offers some advice to the company on how to deal with the... February 18, 2003

Google and Weblogs
Say what you will about Google, it gets the Web. So one can only ponder what it will do with... February 17, 2003

Orange or green?
The Homeland Security Color du Jour may be orange, but as David Fletcher notes, despite a recent government warning about... February 14, 2003

Why Google is evil
Daniel Brandt is very serious. Among his reasons: 2. Google records everything they can: For all searches they record the... February 14, 2003

A biblical Web service
Think of Web services and you think of boring stuff like companies exchanging invoice information (well, I do, which probably... February 13, 2003

Office politics
In this interview, Indi Young, an information architecture specialist, discusses the challenges of developing successful applications and intranets. The major... February 13, 2003

The doughnut is the computer
Over on Loosely Coupled, Phil Wainwright discusses a quote from the CIO of Kripy Kreme doughnuts that basically says he's... February 12, 2003

When Weblogs go mainstream
If the world of Weblogs has any Big Names, Dave Winer's probably one of them. The creator of the popular... February 12, 2003

Computer history
Computer History Online Exhibits has some way cool stuff, including recordings of music being played by a 1964 IBM printer.... February 11, 2003

You know you're a geek when...
You wake up in the morning, prepare the clean clothes to put on after a shower and a network card... February 11, 2003

Metro Ethernet mistake?
Neil Fairbrother doesn't think much of a presentation last week by the Metro Ethernet Forum on the future of metro... February 10, 2003

Solving a NAT-ty problem
Steve Bellovin at ATT Labs Research has come up with a way to get a handle on just how many... February 10, 2003

Networking's poor portrayal on TV
A few days ago, I pointed to an item on another Weblog in which somebody complained about some pretty obvious... February 07, 2003

AT&T doesn't quite get online payment
You'd think the largest phone company in the country would know how to run an online payment system. You'd be... February 07, 2003

Diary of a Data Center Move
On Feb. 22nd, Aquent, a Boston-based consulting firm, will begin moving its data center over multiple weekends. Six IT staffers... February 06, 2003

How Slammer spread so fast
A group of researchers are already out with a paper detailing the rapid spread of the Slammer worm (also known... February 06, 2003

Microsoft, fix your patches
As you can see in this discussion, some people say they would apply security patches if Microsoft didn't make it... February 05, 2003

Trying out a couple of new tools here
A few weeks ago, I installed SpamNet to try to ditch all the spam that still makes it past our... February 05, 2003

attbi.com stays on for awhile
The Boston Globe reports that Comcast, taking over from AT&T Broadband, will let its users keep their attbi.com addresses at... February 05, 2003

Killer apps
Julian Bond wonders if voice over IP is The Big Thing for broadband: How long will it be before 10%... February 04, 2003

For those long nights in the data center
Chad Miller spends long nights coding in a roomn with no direct sunlight. He's worried about the impact on his... February 04, 2003

About our new look
The most obvious thing you'll notice is the toolbar on the left. After several months with our new design, we... February 03, 2003

Back on Monday
No new entries today; we're getting ready to launch a new look for Fusion on Monday (better navigation! More resource... January 31, 2003

Grid overload
Phil Wainwright worries about grid-computing burnout: I suspect we're going to be hearing a lot about grid computing this year,... January 30, 2003

More on Slammer
Kevn Tolly says it reveals Microsoft's reliability reality while Scott Bradner describes the worm's quick spread.... January 30, 2003

IBM updates that red pointer thing
Forbes informs us that IBM is coming out with new versions of that little mouse pointer thing you'll find in... January 30, 2003

Remember PointCast?
Remember? News on your desktop?!? Didn't work, of course. First all you meanie network types shut it off because, well,... January 29, 2003

The Web Fridge Project
At first, I thought The Web Fridge Project would be way cool - a place to look at real-time Webcams... January 29, 2003

How to respond to Slammer-like attacks
Joshua, a Microsoft program manager, doesn't agree that we should be trying to get lazy sysadmins to patch six-month-old holes... January 28, 2003

I'm Steve, and I'm a super-villain
Why you should switch to Linux: When you're holding the moon for ransom, you value the stability of an application.... January 28, 2003

Hey, dummy!
I admit I'm no network or system administrator. So could somebody tell me why I shouldn't be really annoyed at... January 27, 2003

Fun with Apache
Starting this week, we're fine-tuning the design of pages and toolbars here on Fusion. The first step came yesterday, when... January 27, 2003

New forensics tool
Tory Jessup reports playing with an interesting new security tool called amap: Similar in function and syntax as NMap the... January 27, 2003

Today's best error page
This page will look just like your basic Internet Explorer error page - at first. Wait a moment or two.... January 24, 2003

A reason to switch to Mac OS X?
The Hacker Translator 1.0 is available only for OS X: Hacker Translator 1.0 will translate any text you input into... January 24, 2003

Reviewer finds 802.11g gear less than impressive
Henry Norr takes some 802.11g gear out for a spin and isn't all that impressed: Though the Linksys Wireless-G products... January 23, 2003

CSI is ruined for him
Diego took in a recent episode of CSI to see what the fuss was about. What ruined it for him... January 23, 2003

Thoughts on wireless TCO
Phil Windley offers some things to consider when trying to calculate the true cost of installing wireless networks, and adds:... January 22, 2003

Desktop death match
A.K.A. Icon War - possibly the best thing to ever happen to the Windows desktop. Make sure you have Flash... January 22, 2003

Our new research centers
Now that we have our content management system happily purring away, we're starting to pay attention to creating new content,... January 21, 2003

Don't you just hate it when that happens?
Have Windows 2000 on your network? Better check out this Microsoft advisory: Error Message: Your Password Must Be at Least... January 21, 2003

How Comcast is blowing it with e-mail
Bob Frankston doesn't think much of Comcast's decision to force current AT&T Broadband users to change their e-mail addresses (again).... January 17, 2003

The accessory for smoking network pros
The PC 12v Cigarette Lighter Adapter Kit is exactly what it sounds like: A kit that lets you turn one... January 17, 2003

Pop-up legal overview
If you want some background on the legal issues surrounding Gator (the company that can put pop-ups over specific sites)... January 16, 2003

Poor AT&T Broadband users
Now that Comcast is taking over, AT&T Broadband users will be forced to change their e-mail addresses again - for... January 16, 2003

Private subnet
Mike Kruckenberg, a sysadmin at Tufts University describes the travails of moving three servers (Web, streaming-media and database) from a... January 16, 2003

Open source at the Pentagon
A couple of months ago, MITRE released a report on the use of "free and open source software" (or FOSS).... January 15, 2003

The PDA Web server
Sure, why not? splorp . newton . server is a Web site running on an Apple Newton.... January 15, 2003

Anatomy of an outage
Remember the publicity Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston got for that bizarre network outage last fall? John Halamka,... January 14, 2003

Are Java programmers idiots?
Aslak Hellesoy thinks so. Hellesoy reports that over the weekend, his company's mail filter blocked 86 virus-infected messages meant for... January 14, 2003

Why you shouldn't scream at your computer
You wouldn't want the local SWAT team descending on you. The Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo. reports that neighbors called... January 13, 2003

Wi-Fi in a can?
WiFi Speed Spray: The patented formula in WiFi Speed Spray is the result of years of scientific research and testing.... January 13, 2003

How carriers are blowing wireless
Clay Shirky looks at the 1980's failure of ZapMail (FedEx's effort to build a national fax network) and sees parallels... January 10, 2003

Cable modems vs. DSL
Which is better? Find out here. You'll need Flash and, um, some familiarity with the game of Connect the Dots.... January 10, 2003

Turn your Exchange server into a Weblog tool
OutBlog is a new app that lets you use Exchange and Outlook to publish Weblogs. On the plus side, you... January 10, 2003

Links for masochists
Only click on the links here if you want to give yourself a blinding headache. Via MetaFilter, where, apparently, some... January 10, 2003

Weblog readers
My name is Adam and I'm, I'm a Weblog addict. [Applause. Shouts of "welcome, Adam!"] My Weblogs bookmark list approaches... January 09, 2003

Next up: Wristblogs
Dublin start-up home" href="http://www.newbay.com/">NewBay thinks there's a market for mobile-phone Weblog updating. Its FoneBlog lets users update Weblogs through texting... January 09, 2003

Adaptive security
Owen Densmore writes about new security apps and techniques that involve attempts to adapt to new attacks, rather than following... January 08, 2003

Up with ties!
Steve McLaughlin can't wait for companies to come back to their senses and start requiring workers (at least of the... January 08, 2003

Microsoft's top 10 challenges for 2003
At least, according to Directions on Microsoft, a consulting firm that follows Microsoft (and, as you might expect, only Microsoft;... January 07, 2003

Clarification on IE and TCP/IP
Bruce Tiemann responds to the comments on his report that Microsoft had tinkered with the way Internet Explorer uses TCP/IP... January 07, 2003

So maybe IE doesn't mess with TCP/IP
Last week, I linked to a report that alleged that Microsoft had tinkered with browser/server TCP/IP communications in such a... January 06, 2003

LazyWeb
Finally, a Web site for people who think they have great ideas for Web applications, but are too lazy to... January 06, 2003

How Internet Explorer messes with TCP/IP
Brian Tiemann got curious why some Web pages seemed to pop right open in Internet Explorer. So like any good... January 03, 2003

Cablemania
When business slows, what usually happens is companies lower their prices to attract more business. Look at car companies and... January 03, 2003

What's wrong with Nokia's developer site
Russell Beattie lets us know: I sent ANOTHER comment to Nokia about their website. It's really annoying that almost all... January 02, 2003

It's all relative
The theory of relativity - in words of four letters or less: Izzy said that you can't tell if you... January 02, 2003

Who says programmers are trained monkeys?
They're really trained orangutans. At least, the ones who use the Ook programming language. Now there's an Ook# .Net compiler... December 31, 2002

404 Error: The Movie
Best 404 page of the day. Make sure you have QuickTime and your sound turned on. And after you watch... December 31, 2002

Spam, spam, spam
Here at Network World, we always get a week off at Christmastime. This year, so did our spam filter. The... December 30, 2002

Flo control
It's what every home network needs. Well, every home network in a home with a cat, at least. Boris was... December 30, 2002

Back in a week
We (meaning all of Network World, not just Greater Compendiumia) are off next week, so no new updates for a... December 20, 2002

Webloggers as ants
John Hiler's been reading about the social behavior of ants and finds they are startlingly similar to the way people... December 20, 2002

All seeing eyeball no more
At least, not on the Web site of John Poindexter's Information Awareness Office. You remember his Total Information Awareness program... December 20, 2002

Google is the Web?
Well, maybe not yet, but Joshua Allen foresees when it could be: Here is something to think about: if you... December 19, 2002

What is RSS?
Find out here.... December 19, 2002

Web design and words
Jesse James Garrett discusses Web design and information architecture: The most important factor in evaluating the link is its language.... December 18, 2002

The FBI's new 'Net tracking tool
See it here. And here, take a look at some signs some librarians have been posting on their public-access terminals... December 18, 2002

Reach out and touch someone
Towards Tangible Virtualities: Tangialities is a paper that discusses the importance of touch and tactile feel in developing interfaces for... December 17, 2002

Ballooning interest in 'Net services
The Toronto Star reports that an Ontario company has won a contract to deliver Internet service through networking gear on... December 17, 2002

The case of the 500-mile e-mail
Ever have one of those days? Trey Harris reports on one of his, a few years ago: I was working... December 16, 2002

Wireless prayer
The Denver Post reports on an area man who has turned the misfortune of being laid off into a money-making... December 16, 2002

MPLS Blog
Just can't get enough MPLS news? Then head over to Irwin Lazar's MPLS Blog, which is exactly what it sounds... December 13, 2002

Don't screw with Mac users
Mac Addicts to the Rescue is an amazing tale of how one Mac user tracked down and nailed a scammer... December 13, 2002

Where's Whitey?
Some of us (in particular those of us in the Boston area) might have snorted a bit yesterday on reading... December 12, 2002

It's enough to drive you to Windows
Scot Hacker is not a happy Mac user these days. He has a Mac OS X box with a Brother... December 12, 2002

Uber-geek's uber-Xmas present
Yes, our very own Holiday Gift Guide is chock full of stuff for geeks and the people who love them.... December 11, 2002

For all those trips to the restroom
Toilegami: Toilet Paper Origami Via Weblog Wannabe.... December 11, 2002

Beating those hotel phone charges
Glenn Fleishmann recently signed up for Cingular's wireless service (in part to save money) and decided to splurge for the... December 10, 2002

Blocked Web sites in China
Harvard researchers have released the intial findings of their study of Internet censorship in the People's Republic: Roughly 10% of... December 10, 2002

Just desserts for spammer?
Last month, the Detroit Free Press interviewed spam king Alan Ralsky in his "brand new 8,000-square-foot luxury home." Although the... December 09, 2002

You need some fresh air
Today's best 404 page Via Miss Feva.... December 09, 2002

On vacation for a week
No, really! Back next week!... December 01, 2002

My name is Doug and I'm a recovering Windows user
Hello, Doug! Doug confesses his slide from Macs to Windows: Around March of 2002, I upgraded to Windows XP Pro.... November 27, 2002

Death of Internet imminent
And no, I'm not talking about the terrorist plot to blow up the Internet on 1/11. This is much worse.... November 27, 2002

Why make your own Pringles Wi-Fi antenna?
When you can buy a Cantenna for only $19.95. No messy, oily residue on your hands, either! FEATURES: The Can... November 26, 2002

I dare you to wear these to work
T-shirts from the O'Really line: Distributing Clue to Users and User Obliteration. Via Making Light.... November 26, 2002

Library censors itself
The public library in Piqua, Ohio, is named for Leo Flesh, a businessman who donated money to build the place.... November 25, 2002

The government shopping bot
File this under: Huh? The Australian government has released a Web plug-in that tracks your online shopping: Consumer PING works... November 25, 2002

Security alerts from the state that gave us hanging chads
OK, OK, that isn't really fair, especially since, by all accounts the last election went fairly well, aside from isolated... November 22, 2002

Ellen Feiss speaks!
Yes, that Ellen Feiss. Somehow the Daily Herald at Brown University snagged an interview with her (she's not a Brown... November 22, 2002

Lazy Webmasters?
New Scientist reports on a study that claims many Web operators don't fix security holes even after the holes -... November 21, 2002

Jobs most in demand
Advogato does an analysis of IT jobs on big job Web sites to find which technical skills are in demmand?... November 21, 2002

A really useful .Net app
Tetris.NET - just what it sounds like: Now you, too, can use Microsoft's latest, yummiest application-development thingee to while away... November 20, 2002

Stooopid telemarketers and DSL
My wife was making dinner last night when the phone rang. She made the mistake of answering it: Telemarketer: Do... November 20, 2002

The Ungooglables
Admit it: If you haven't Googled yourself, you've Googled somebody else (one Web producer here recently got a fax from... November 19, 2002

Putting programmers through the ringer
Remember when companies were so desperate for coders they'd hire almost anybody? Well, things are different now. Joey deVilla discusses... November 19, 2002

The Comdex Weblog to end all Comdex Weblogs
It's right here: Five, count 'em five Network World reporters and editors will be uploading their observations on the show.... November 18, 2002

Go ask ALICE
Computer scientists have long had fun with programs that simulate a psychoanalyst. But what would happen if you set two... November 18, 2002

Dammit: Where's the photo of Gates and the giant condom?
Anil Dash is outraged, or something. On Friday, he wrote: You know, Bill Gates had a public appearance next to... November 18, 2002

Let your users know about this latest scam
Last night, I got an e-mail from PayPal about a security problem they'd noticed with my account. The note urged... November 15, 2002

Life without Flash
William Grosso recently upgraded from a Pentium II PC to an Athlon-based one (way to go Bill!). In migrating over,... November 15, 2002

Weblogs as a corporate tool
Rick Klau is a senior manager at Interface Software, which builds CRM tools for law firms and the like. He's... November 14, 2002

Why Bluetooth bites
Bob Frankston doesn't think much of Bluetooth. Actually, that's putting it mildly: Bluetooth itself is not very interesting and would... November 14, 2002

Talk to the pants
The Inquirer (no, not that one) reports that German chipmaker Infineon is showing off "smart textiles," i.e., clothes with electronics... November 13, 2002

That Symantec pricing look too good to be true?
You may recall the other day when I was complaining about spam generated by affiliate programs that I mentioned all... November 13, 2002

Fingering problems with biometric systems
The German computer magainze c't recently tested a number of low-cost biometric security systems and found they could be fairly... November 12, 2002

Today's best Switch ad
"My name is John and I'm a Canadian." See it here. Note: You Ellen Feiss fans will like this one.... November 12, 2002

Dude needs DSL
WISC-TV reports: JANESVILLE, Wis. -- Janesville police responded to a smoke complaint around 1 a.m. Tuesday and found a man... November 12, 2002

Anti-spammers causing spam?
Subtract all the multimillion-dollar offers from Nigeria, the pitches for enlarging various body parts and the requests to visit NSFW... November 11, 2002

Does Amazon think programmers are slobs?
Joshua Allen was crusing Amazon.com for a book on .Net programming. When he called up the page for Essential .Net,... November 11, 2002

Today's best 404 error page
Most 404 error pages are pretty boring - they just tell you the page you were looking for isn't available... November 08, 2002

Try out our new forum software
UPDATE: Whoops, ignore the below. I've blown away the whole forum app, so don't waste your time trying it out... November 08, 2002

Getting control of your browser back
This would never happen to you, of course, but just in case one of your Windows users has downloaded some... November 08, 2002

Microsoft tackles Linux - again
Halloween VII: Survey Says is a leaked (natch) copy of Microsoft's latest internal review of the threat posed by Linux,... November 07, 2002

Content management for monkeys
Squiz is an Australian content-management company. Its Flash presentation promises a "monkey-friendly" content-management system. The demo drags in places, but... November 07, 2002

The power-strip guy
If you've ever brought your laptop to a trade show, you know how Glenn Fleishman feels: There are never enough... November 06, 2002

Feelin' blue
No, not about the election results. Business 2.0 reports on the latest trend in electronics gear: Blue readouts, dials and... November 06, 2002

Why, why, why www?
Shawn Wildermuth ponders: Ok, maybe this may be petty, but why do so many sites require that 'www' before the... November 05, 2002

Diary of a cyber-stalking
Quinn is being stalked online by somebody in England, who, she says, is not only harassing her with e-mail but... November 05, 2002

Weblogs: Useful business tools?
It's the premise behind this week's Network World face-off. Bill Keaggy, brand manager at XPLANE, a St. Louis, Mo., business... November 04, 2002

Re-inventing push technology
Elsewhere on the site, Paul McNamara discusses a company called Serence and its product Klip Folio. It's "PointCast without the... November 04, 2002

More power to you
Who knew so much time and effort went into those symbols so many of us find incomprehensible, like that vertical-line-slashing-a-circle... November 04, 2002

Amy Wohl's mad as hell
Amy Wohl has been analyzing IT developments for, like, forever. She's a steadfast, responsible member of the community. So why... November 01, 2002

Subversive MSN
By now, you've seen those MSN ads with the klutzy "butterfly man" emerging from a cocoon. Who knew the world's... November 01, 2002

Optimistic pessimism on IT spending
Brad DeLong takes a look at some recent federal statistics on technology spending (specifically, PCs and peripherals). On the one... October 31, 2002

Vitally important Web stats
OneStat, which makes Web log analysis tools, claims that Monday is primo Web surfing time: Monday is the most popular... October 31, 2002

Why Yahoo went with PHP
Michael Radwin, an engineer with Yahoo since 1998, recently spoke (at a PHP confab) on how the site settled on... October 30, 2002

Too lazy for eBay comments?
The Ebay Feedback Generator! can generate both positive and negative comments. You still need to paste them in, though... Via... October 30, 2002

Databases and the sniper case
The Center for Democracy and Technology takes a look at the various databases used in tracking down the Washington-area snipers.... October 29, 2002

Hey, get away from my monitor!
Just print this out and tape to your monitor. Via Boing Boing.... October 29, 2002

Another anti-Outlook coming
Spaces is a Java-based e-mail clients and personal information manager intended to replace Outlook. It's due out in November, which,... October 28, 2002

Realistic Internet Simulator
How many pop-ups can you kill? Hours, well, minutes, well seconds of annoying fun. Via Weblog Wannabe.... October 28, 2002

Talking to the clowns upstairs
Admit it, you've had meetings like this. Via Danelope.... October 28, 2002

Spammers keep getting more inventive
If you have anything to do with a public Web site, you know how addicting referral logs can get. It's... October 25, 2002

Somebody teach John Kerry how to use e-mail
An acquaintance who lives in Massachusetts recently wrote Sen. John Kerry to express her feelings on the war in Iraq.... October 25, 2002

Kapor: I'm no Outlook killer (yet)
Mitch Kapor takes exception to those (slowly raises hand here) who've characterized his proposed "interpersonal information manager" as screaming death... October 24, 2002

Ogggggg
I could say that all day: "Ogggggg!" Brings out the caveman in me, I guess. The reason I bring it... October 24, 2002

Not everybody thrilled with the Kapor Outlook killer
We're referring, natch, to Mitch Kapor's planned open-source interpersonal information manager, a.k.a. Chandler. Don Park thinks Kapor, being Kapor, will... October 23, 2002

The Parable of the Languages
Shelly Powers wonders what might happen if programming languages could talk: As FORTRAN wheezed to a stop, COBOL was emphatically... October 23, 2002

Google by the numbers
Mark Hurst interviews Google Product Manager Marissa Mayer about the search engine's deliberately spartan user interface: There's this one user,... October 23, 2002

A really antique Macintosh
Andrew Leman's ElectriClerk couples a 1988 Macintosh CPU and monitor with a 1923 Underwood typewriter keyboard: Most of the computer... October 22, 2002

Ripping the Web apart and putting it back together again
Anil Dash says search engines like Google are great, but that a new class of tool is needed: the microcontent... October 22, 2002

Open-source challenger to Outlook?
Or: Mitch Kapor takes on Microsoft again. As Dan Gillmor reports, Kapor has set up a foundation to create an... October 21, 2002

The ultimate geek jacket
The new SCOTTeVEST, Ver. 2.5 features everything you need to get you out to those remote offices (you know, like... October 18, 2002

How do you say "beep beep beep" in Japanese?
Ellen Feiss starting to get just a bit tiresome? Please meet Momo Kokikuchi, who's starring in Apple's Switch campaign in... October 18, 2002

Why you couldn't buy World Series tickets online
Or, at least, not from tickets.com. Kasia Trapszo is a software engineer for the site, which had 7,000 World Series... October 17, 2002

One baseball cap we won't be wearing
Normally, vendor graft doesn't elicit much comment around the newsroom - even if we don't go to trade shows, we... October 17, 2002

Noooooo.....
Associated Press reports that news of Steve the Dell Dude's demise are premature: "Dell loves him and he loves Dell,"... October 17, 2002

Weblogs, ethics and Microsoft
Interesting dustup right now in the Weblog world. Seems Microsoft paid for a bunch of Webloggers to attend some product... October 16, 2002

R.I.P. Steve
Are you among the many who sighed a sigh of relief when you heard that the Dell Dude is getting... October 16, 2002

If real people switch to Macs, who switches to XP?
P.R. people, apparently. The Associated Press reveals that the "real person" who wrote an "article" for the Microsoft Web site... October 15, 2002

The multimedia refrigerator
LG Appliances now sells a refrigerator that features:an embedded 15-inch LCD TVA fully functional Web browser and 'Net connectionBuilt-in digital... October 15, 2002

This patent will change our lives
From the Canadian Patents Database: COSMIC CUBE (or, in French: ORDINATEUR COSMIC CUBE): The "Cosmic Cube" creates cubical wavefields by... October 14, 2002

Hey, dummy, I'm talkin' to you!
We've all sat through meetings like this. Via Danelope.... October 14, 2002

For want of an e-mail, the sale is lost
Last week, we bought a Samsung DVD/VCR device. Kinda cool, except when we opened it, we discovered its alleged universal... October 14, 2002

Forget blogging; get into clogging
Yeah, blogging is so 20 minutes ago. Matthew Langham writes up the Next Big Thing: No-one seems to have come... October 11, 2002

Nigerians worried about lack of Web content
The Daily Times of Nigeria whines that Nigerians aren't putting up enough Web content. I dunno. I'd say that, based... October 11, 2002

The spammers just keep getting more ingenious
As the serious Windows junkies among you probably already know, the more modern versions of Windows (i.e., NT, XP and... October 10, 2002

Uncovering Quidnunc
Like all of us, Mitch Wagner is getting increasingly annoyed by those phone calls in which somebody seems to hang... October 10, 2002

Two new Weblogs
Check out John Fontana's reporting from the Microsoft Exchange Conference. And since I obviously don't have enough things to occupy... October 09, 2002

Internet maps
An Atlas of Cyberspaces - Historical Maps is a cool collection of maps that show how the Internet's grown, from... October 09, 2002

Web of trust
The Economist reports on an IBM study that claims Web users are more trusting: The Internet's anonymity and vastness encourage... October 09, 2002

What app do you live in?
Inessential.com has a discussion on desktop apps that people "live" in. Personally, I can particularly relate to this one, because... October 08, 2002

Networking that'll make your skin crawl
Well! Seems som Japanese researchers have figured out how to make a 10M bit/sec network using human skin: The technology,... October 08, 2002

New CMS up and running
I'd feel like running through the newsroom this morning yelling "it's alive, it's ALIIIIVE!" if I weren't so tired (what... October 07, 2002

Never use your PC to discuss marriage with the babysitter
The Scotsman offers proof: HELL hath no fury like a computer-literate woman scorned. A wife who suspected her husband of... October 07, 2002

Memo to staff: Re: Your sex lives
Yet another clueless type has let the world know about his sex life via e-mail (note: that link will take... October 04, 2002

Best spam of the day
Well, well, well. Looks like spammers have discovered the translation services at Altavista and Google. How else to explain the... October 04, 2002

Why Microsoft is no longer going to hell
Yes, yes, sure was fun when you could see Microsoft in the top slot when you searched Google on "go... October 03, 2002

Fight piracy -- regulate potty chairs!
You may have heard of the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, which seeks to restrict what consumers can... October 03, 2002

The wireless toothbrush
Embedding a PDA in your cellphone (or is it the other way around)? That's so 2001. Crest now offers a... October 02, 2002

Talking heads
Esteemed colleague Mark Gibbs recently wrote about something called Veepers, which is a technology that lets a photo-realistic simulation read... October 02, 2002

What is bandwidth and why is it important?
The University of California at Irvine has an interesting paper documenting its traffic-shaping policy for students. Via Hack the Planet... October 01, 2002

Content management tip: Definitions
A CMS is only as good as the people who use it, so get your end users involved early and... October 01, 2002

Google blips
CNN reports on Google blips - those seemingly odd search results that arise from the way Google figures out results... October 01, 2002

Maybe the 'Net's TOO easy to use
As Memepool put it: If you absolutely must post about your joy-riding exploits, make sure it's in a forum the... September 30, 2002

Content-management workflow
Right now, we don't have a programmatic workflow. Our new software has a cool, easy-to-use workflow builder. So, naturally, we... September 30, 2002

Finally, a reason to get a new Mac
ExitToShell offers a Mac OS X system-tray icon that: displays the current Homeland Security Advisory status for the entire country... September 30, 2002

The unseen victim of filtering software
When somebody raises issues with Internet filtering, it's almost always from the perspective of censorship or filters blocking out legitimate... September 27, 2002

Installing our new CMS, part 1
With any luck, on Oct. 6, you'll call up Fusion and you won't notice anything at all different. Oct. 6... September 27, 2002

Best spam subject line of the day
"May we repair the 'crack' in your head?" No, thanks, I like the way it lets in extra sunshine...... September 27, 2002

What's missing from Fusion's forums?
We currently use an outdated version of Web Crossing to run our forums. It's served us well over the years,... September 26, 2002

How to make money on the Internet
Offer products you just don't see anywhere else. Take, for example, Mr. Bling, who sells gold caps for your teeth:... September 26, 2002

Why the BBC uses Linux
Damion Yates is part of a team that supports Unix systems at the BBC. In this article, he discusses where... September 25, 2002

Corporate advocacy
If only Kmart were as good at selling stuff as it is at creating advocacy Web sites. Kmart Forever is,... September 25, 2002

Tesla coils as a PC power source
Here in Boston, one of the fun things to do is to go to the Museum of Science and watch... September 24, 2002

Dave Kearns vs. the Mac users
This week, Dave Kearns writes about those Apple "Switch" ads (including our fave l'il raver, Ellen Feiss). To sum up... September 24, 2002

What do you see when you go to hell?
Google has the answer.... September 24, 2002

Why the Nigerian spammers are so persistent
This is one of those stories that make you go "Oh. My. GOD!" The Detroit Free Press reports on the... September 23, 2002

Boy, he hates Java
Miles Nordin doesn't like Java. No, let's restate that: He hates Java. With a passion. Why, emacs is a better... September 23, 2002

Java as art
CODeDOC is a project by the Whitney Museum that seeks to link art and programming languages: A dozen artists coded... September 20, 2002

Newtons around the world
Remember the Newton, that noble, if doomed proto-PDA from Apple? Apparently, a fair number of people still use them (then... September 20, 2002

Hackers beg boring people to stop encrypting e-mail
Excerpt from the report: "The other day I'm monitoring some government servers, and I see all these encrypted emails from... September 20, 2002

The world's coolest hub
Charismac Engineering is now taking orders for Hubzilla, a four-port Firewire hub embedded in a Godzilla model. The ports take... September 19, 2002

Nokia to wardrivers: Drop dead
The BBC reports that Nokia has come out against people who drive or walk around looking for open wireless access... September 19, 2002

N+I Atlanta: RIP
It's official: N+I Atlanta is no more. Are you sad or what? Key3Media, the show's organizer, is still planning an... September 19, 2002

Microsoft's plan for reducing bugs: embarrassment
Rob Fahrni is a Microsoft developer. And he's gettting just a little sick of people criticizing Microsoft because of all... September 18, 2002

Network security as Greek tragedy
Bruce Schneier makes the comparison: Polyphemus's one eye is a single point of failure; when Odysseus pokes it out, he... September 18, 2002

Torture a spammer
Go ahead, you know you want to. It's a shoot-em sort of game that is really a clever way for... September 18, 2002

Sorry, early risers
For the lack of postings here. I am, apparently, one of those people whose computers hate them. My laptop, the... September 18, 2002

Finally, a use for all those Iridium satellites
You remember Iridium, right? Sure, what with all those ambitious plans to create a globe-girdling network of satellite phone systems... September 17, 2002

Memo to staff: Stop detailing your sex lives in e-mail!
The National Post way up north reports on the latest case of an e-mail message gone horribly awry, this time... September 17, 2002

Scamming the spam scammers
Ever wonder what would happen if you actually wrote back to one of those Nigerians or Sierra Leonians or Angloans... September 16, 2002

The DEMOMobile Weblog
Elsewhere on Fusion, you can read all about the new wireless stuff that'll be introduced at this year's DEMOmobile show.... September 16, 2002

Dusting off a SPARC 10
Here's how I know I'm really not a networking geek: Our house is increasingly filled with old junk like a... September 16, 2002

First smiley found
In a stunning feat of cyber-archaeology, a band of resarchers at Microsoft have uncovered the first online use of :-)... September 13, 2002

The Ellen Feiss Song
Yes, everybody's favorite maybe-she-really-is-stoned Applegal continues to hang on, this time thanks to iSwitch, a musical interpretation of her Apple... September 13, 2002

Politicians discover the joy of cybersquatting
ABC News reports on a candidate for the California state Assembly who registered domains with the name of his opponent... September 12, 2002

Headstone for hackers
Here it is. Via Doc Searls (sad thing is, first thing I thought of after I stopped laughing was "hey,... September 12, 2002

Server suicide
A Web server in London is scheduled to kill itself on Thursday and you can watch: The Tsunamii.Net Crush Server... September 11, 2002

Murphy willing
Nathan Torkington may have found the patron saint/devil of IT pros everywhere: Murphy (you know, as in Murphy's Law). He... September 10, 2002

N+I Weblog
Get the latest scoop right from the floor, where grizzled reporters Tim Greene and Phil Hochmuth are on the prowl.... September 10, 2002

Best argument ever for getting broadband
The Island Packet in South Carolina reports on a woman charged with stabbing her roommate for starting a dial-up 'Net... September 10, 2002

The economics of Weblogs
An economics professor with perhaps a bit too much time on his hands argues we're now in the golden age... September 09, 2002

Big Brother comes to California high school
The Los Angeles Times reports on a high school where students are monitored electronically throughout the day via equipment from... September 09, 2002

Internet routes around censorship
You may have read how the Chinese government has suddenly decided to keep its 'Net-using citizens from getting to Google.... September 06, 2002

Wireless Mobile Productivity Devices
But we call them "notebooks." Phil Windley, Utah's state CIO ponders who should be getting wireless-equipped laptops to replace stodgy... September 06, 2002

Good intranets take time
Web usability consultant Jakob Neilsen has published his list of the 10 best intranets of 2002, along with some commentary... September 05, 2002

This PDA stylus idea will light up your life
Apparently, some Sony Clie owners keep losing their styluses (styli?) Clie World has instructions for keeping your stylus in place... September 05, 2002

Well, then
Hixie says: Americans are fat. Smokers are stupid. People who don't speak Perl are irrelevant. Those with an "f" in... September 05, 2002

Fake wireless access points
Call it security through obscurity. Until somebody comes up with a really crack-proof wireless system, Black Alchemy has come up... September 04, 2002

Dear Lord, Why, part XXXVI
Or yet another reason the Internet should be banned: MONKEE MANIA 2002. It's in Flash, yet.... September 04, 2002

Greece goes bonkers over computer games
The Register reports on a new Greek law: The government of Greece is making heroic efforts to humiliate the nation... September 04, 2002

Welcome to the newest version of Compendium
Compendium's now being published with Moveable Type. OK, OK, so this makes it the fourth tool I've used in roughly... September 03, 2002

Is the FCC prolonging the telecom slump?
John Judis makes the case in the New Republic. He argues that under current Chairman Michael Powell, the commission is... September 03, 2002

Firewalls as a security risk
In Firewall Follies, Simson Garfinkel says firewalls are disasters waiting to happen, in large part because they do nothing to... September 03, 2002

Compendium takes a vacation
Up in the bucolic mountains of New Hampshire and Maine. See you right after Labor Day!... August 23, 2002

Internet safe for another day
Oh, phew. In case you missed the story, a federal judge yesterday threw out BT's suit against Prodigy, the one... August 23, 2002

Holding off on the Wi-Fi Grande
Steve Outing thinks the Starbucks wi-fi plan is just too expensive: People already pay $40 or $50 a month for... August 23, 2002

The Britney Spears Telecom page
On which every picture ever taken (or Photoshopped) of Britney with telephones and other telecom equipment is proudly displayed, including... August 22, 2002

Subtly making Fusion easier to use (at least, in IE)
Look to the left and you see a toolbar. Ho, hum, you say? If you're using Internet Explorer on Windows,... August 22, 2002

So what would a busy network manager's Weblog look like?
It might look a lot like Dave McNamee's Weblog, in which Dave McNamee, a product manager with the state of... August 22, 2002

SpamCops or SpamThugs?
Edward Felten is an associate professor of computer science at Princeton. In this article he writes about how he was... August 21, 2002

Poetry as the ultimate anti-spam weapon?
Anne Mitchell, a California attorney, has come up with a novel way to beat spam. Well, actually, a haiku way:... August 21, 2002

Security expert: Scared of Palladium
Like Dave Kearns, Scott Bradner and Mark Gibbs, security consultant Bruce Schneier has some strong reservations about Microsoft's Palladium encryption/security... August 20, 2002

Our newest Weblog: The Multimedia Exchange
Wherein Fusion Multimedia Editor Jason Meserve discusses the latest in multimedia and streaming technology. The more blog-aware may notice that... August 20, 2002

How to convince the boss to buy into this blogging thing
Lunch Reviews is a daily listing of what people in one office eat for lunch - why doesn't your office... August 20, 2002

Wardriving takes to the air
Time was when, in a certain circle of wireless hacker types, wardriving and warchalking were cool. They are so last... August 19, 2002

The growing politicization of open source
Tim O'Reilly (he of the eponymous computing books), doesn't like the idea of governments mandating the use of open source... August 19, 2002

How would this guy deal with spam?
The El Paso Times reports: Incensed over too many postcards about missing children and meat sales, an Upper Valley man... August 16, 2002

Is Katherine Harris an IEEE member?
An IEEE working group has been quietly trying to build something called a "Standard Upper Ontology," which, as far as... August 16, 2002

Dual leaky buckets and hot-potato routing
We're working on a cool new secret project. Oh, OK, you can take a look at what could be our... August 15, 2002

Into gizmos?
Who isn't? That's why you need to check out Cool Tools: Daily Dose, written by our own Keith Shaw, for... August 15, 2002

Two more Apple "Switched" parodies
To go with these ones: • A PC gamer • A claymation monkey Via MetaFilter... August 15, 2002

Use an open wireless port; go to jail?
At least one FBI agent thinks people who go around looking for - and using - open wireless access pointsare... August 14, 2002

AT&T Broadband barking up the wrong tree
An AT&T Broadband user (let's call him Deep Modem), noticed an interesting contradiction on the provider's site. On its service... August 14, 2002

9/11 schlock
So, what's the best way to commemorate the events of 9/11? Why, buying tchotchkies, of course, at least, if you're... August 13, 2002

Getting around the spam filters
As Paul McNamara has chronicled, over-eager spam filters on some mail systems now dropkick legitimate e-mail that happens to contain... August 13, 2002

Ray Ozzie: OSes still matter
Ray Ozzie, the father of Lotus Notes and now the father of Groove, spent some time recently discussing why Groove... August 12, 2002

One Ellen Feiss collectible that won't last long
Everybody's favorite maybe-stoner Apple spokesswitcher now appears on the front of a t-shirt promoting the legalization of marijuana. Get yours... August 12, 2002

Sun and open source: Is McNealy whining too much?
Over at LinuxWorld, Nicholas Petreley acknowledges a complaint from Sun's Scott McNealy that the open source movement may be damaging... August 12, 2002

Andy's computer
Andy has a lot of time on his hands (maybe not quite as much as the guy with 1,000 Disney... August 09, 2002

What's wrong with "Minority Report"
Jane Pinckard recently saw the Spielberg/Cruise effort and points out all its technology flaws: Speaking of efficient, I noticed that... August 09, 2002

Internet radio to go
In Bring on the WiFi Radios, Doc Searls writes about the idea of using Wi-Fi to turn PDAs into portable... August 09, 2002

Blogs as disruptive tech
Think "content management" and you may think expensive, complex systems that require sophisticated programmers and hardware to run. But coming... August 08, 2002

Atomic storage
Technology Research News reports that researchers at the University of Wisconsin say they've figured out how to use individual gold... August 08, 2002

Microsoft's newest threat: Google
You wouldn't think so, but dig down into this speech by Microsoft Corporate VP Yusuf Mehdi at a Goldman Sachs... August 08, 2002

The Ethernet-enabled teddy bear
Teddy Borg is a teddy bear with an embedded five-port 10/100 Ethernet switch. "Dear Lord, why?" you ask? Teddy Borg... August 07, 2002

T-shirts for geeks
Halibut Stuff sells shirts only a nerd - or a Unix networking type - could love, with slogans like "B*A*S*H"... August 07, 2002

Apple "Switched" parodies
Here are all the ones I could find (of course, some might argue the real ads are, in fact, parodies... August 06, 2002

Can't get enough trademark news?
Then The Trademark Blog is for you - pretty much daily links to breaking trademark and copyright news. Via Evhead.... August 06, 2002

Is this a trade show or a Tom Clancy movie?
I *think* Sector 5 is some conference in Washington D.C. later this month on network security and cyberterrorism. But after... August 06, 2002

The Macintosh couch
Last week, it was the mouse-pad couch. This week, geek chic rises to new heights with a couch made entirely... August 05, 2002

A site that dares to link
Yeah, sure, hyperlinks are the heart of the Web and all, but a growing number of companies want to stop... August 05, 2002

The LED Museum
Continuing our quest to find the most obscure topic with obsessive fans, today we stumble across the LED Museum -... August 05, 2002

Really high tech
The BBC reports: A survey about cannabis use has found that people who work in the technology industry are the... August 02, 2002

Mac Dudette nearing 15th minute
Ellen Feiss, the possibly stoned Macintosh dudette, continues in the spotlight this week, what with t-shirts and mugs and the... August 02, 2002

Copyright wars
Doc Searls sums up the current (seemingly one-sided) battle between Hollywood and the recording industry and everybody else on the... August 02, 2002

Off for a couple of days
To re-stain a deck and go to a state park. See you on Friday!... July 31, 2002

What to do with those extra mouse pads
The Mouse Pad Couch is a couch constructed entirely out of (tasteful blue) mouse pads: Here is the Mouse Pad... July 30, 2002

Phone shui or Phone pfooey?
Phone Shui is a site, sponsored by a British cellphone vendor, that purports to bring calming essences, or something, to... July 30, 2002

How the Semantic Web could work
How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web is an interesting little fantasy (prediction?) about how everybody's favorite... July 29, 2002

The cellphone signal pen
No more embarrassing jokes about your operatic ring tone. The Cellphone Call Signal Pen has a little light that flashes... July 29, 2002

Ivy League stupidity
Just in case you need proof that certain elitist East Coast colleges aren't all they're cracked up to be, read... July 26, 2002

Some PC food
Trubador proves that you can fry an egg on your average modern PC's motherboard: With everything completed i shut down... July 26, 2002

New resources coming to Fusion
Well, not new, actually, just revamped, expanded and just generally made too peachy keen for words. The one closest to... July 25, 2002

Filtering the filters
A Harvard Law prof and one of his students is curious just how pervasive Inernet filtering (you know, using software... July 25, 2002

30 Days to a More Accessible Web site
Dive Into Accessibility is a collection of tips for making a Web site more usable for people with disabilities, arranged... July 25, 2002

The Pocket Calculator Show
Come back with us now to those halcyon days of yore, when real geeks proudly showed off their calculator watches.... July 24, 2002

How open is RealNetworks' new "open" software?
You may have read about RealNetwork's Helix server, which not only will dish out Microsoft streaming media but which will... July 24, 2002

Miss us?
In case you tried to reach Fusion earlier today, no, we didn't suddenly disappear. Our new Web-hosting company (which has... July 23, 2002

Google text art
When you use Google to search Usenet postings, it color-codes your search words in messages it finds. Paul Johnson has... July 23, 2002

The perils of Wi-Fi
Yes, it's no secret that most default wireless-LAN setups have the security of a piece of Swiss cheese. But as... July 23, 2002

Resolved: A document is not a car
The leading entry in this year's competition for best statement taken completely out of context comes from this message on... July 22, 2002

Dude, you're gettin' a Mac!
Yeah, yeah, you can't stand Steve the Dell Dude, either. And with each increasingly self-referential commercial, he gets more and... July 22, 2002

You think telemarketing is bad now?
PC World offers up today's depressing telco news: Phone companies now can share a consumer's private information with certain affiliates... July 19, 2002

Extreme wireless
Dan Kohn writes: I finally have my "extreme wireless" home music setup working. In my bedroom, I have a Bang... July 19, 2002

Putting his money where his blog is
Phil Windley is CIO for the state of Utah. He has a Weblog and thinks the whole blogging concept is... July 18, 2002

Why two heads are better than one
Ev writes: I've discovered one reason pair programming is productive: It's a lot more obvious you're spending time surfing blogs... July 18, 2002

Critic says: Time for Mac fanatics to give it a rest
Steven Den Beste has nothing against people who use Macintoshes. It's the people who worship at the feet of Steve... July 17, 2002

The case of the bounced e-mails
Mary Alice Gorman and Richard Goldman, own a bookstore in Oakmont, Penn. called the Mystery Lovers Bookshop, along with a... July 17, 2002

Scrollbar racing
It's the ultimate online sport. Via Friday Fishwrap.... July 17, 2002

Yahoo gets medieval on your e-mail
Need to Know has compiled a list of all the words that Yahoo Mail automatically changes in HTML e-mail to... July 16, 2002

You can call me Wing Commander Tibbs
British Airlines leaves no stone unturned in its efforts at inclusiveness. The registration page on its "My BA" site lists... July 16, 2002

Palladium patents
Want to dig deeper into Microsoft's revolutionary/1984ish (depending on your point of view) proposed Palladium OS? You could, of course,... July 15, 2002

The Web-enabled Etch-a-Sketch
No, we're not talking about some Java simulation. This is a real honest-to-goodness shake-it-upside-down Etch-a-Sketch that uses a TCP/IP connection,... July 15, 2002

Cyberwar czar a cyberwar dud?
Security expert Richard Forno doesn't think much of Richard Clarke, the president's special advisor for cyberspace security: At the heart... July 12, 2002

World's first song about Webcasting and the Library of Congress
Lisa Rein isn't real happy about the Librarian of Congress's recent decision on copyright fees for online playing of music.... July 12, 2002

Dublin Core meltdown
Imagine the Dewey Decimal System applied to the Web. That's pretty much the idea behind the Dublin Core, which seeks... July 11, 2002

If a Web site were a tire swing
It'd look like this. Via CamWorld.... July 11, 2002

If you open a Wi-Fi point, the terrorists will have won
Cable providers are stepping up their campaign to scare (dare I say "terrorize"?) wireless geeks into shutting down those wireless... July 10, 2002

The Google mirror
elgooG is just what it says it is: a mirror of Google. Via Memepool.... July 10, 2002

Best spam of the day
It advertises "the portuguese footwear portal and B2B Application." Lest you think this is a rare occurrence, a long time... July 10, 2002

Sounding the alarm over the Homeland Security Web site
David Weinberger and W. David Stephenson take a look at the official Tom Ridge Fan Club, um, Office of Homeland... July 09, 2002

Mathematical Legos
When it comes to Legos, most of us are content building simple little houses that look remarkably like cubes or... July 09, 2002

Sometimes, interactivity bites
Online learning is changing the way we work, eat and sleep, isn't it? It's just so cool and a way... July 08, 2002

Gooey light could speed optical computing
New Scientist proves just how bizarre the universe really is with a report on how some scientists say Light can... July 08, 2002

Shut the bloody phone off already!
New Scientist reports relief could be on the way for people tired of having movies, weddings, funerals, etc., disrupted by... July 08, 2002

Just in time for the Fourth: The official Army kill-people game
AMERICA'S ARMY is an all new first-person (and multi-player) shoot 'em up from your friends at the U.S. Army, available... July 03, 2002

Meet up at meetup
Meetup is a site that lets you arrange semi-public meetings, things like book clubs, Slashdot fanboy parties and the like.... July 03, 2002

It's amazing what some people throw out
DealMac has a forum on the best things dumpster divers have found in the trash. Among them: Various Macintoshes, monitors... July 02, 2002

When everything seems like hieroglyphics
Get yourself to Write Like an Egyptian and see what your name would be in ancient Egyptian. Via /usr/bin/girl.... July 02, 2002

So what do you think?
I'm back, neither tan nor rested, but ready, at any rate. Tell us what you think of the new site... July 01, 2002

State of Utah gets into wireless warchalking
Warchalking, the effort to create chalk signals to wireless geeks that here be an open access point, may become an... July 01, 2002

Off for a couple of days
No, not lounging on a beach or anything like that. We're completely overhauling the site and the new site goes... June 27, 2002

An XML programming language
That's what x++ claims to be (question: Can you have x++ if there was never just an x to start... June 26, 2002

WorldCom's former auditors
One guess. Via Dan Gillmor... June 26, 2002

Beware the chalk-wielding wireless geeks
Back in the day, hobos used to leave pictographic signs alerting other hobos to such things as the presence of... June 25, 2002

Death of the 'Net predicted?
Scot Hacker looks at articles by or about Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf about where the Internet is heading; neither... June 25, 2002

Dude, the '90s are over
Why would somebody think Greedmaster is a good name for a Web-design firm? Via CamWorld.... June 25, 2002

Pickle-jar time management
The Pickle Jar Theory lists a supposedly new way to manage your time more effectively. Anybody try it?... June 24, 2002

The XML site map
eXchangable Faceted Metadata Language (XFML) is an effort to give organizations a reliable way to exchange information about their Web... June 24, 2002

The Mouse knows if you've been naughty or nice
The Orlando Sentinel reports that Disney World is experimenting with technology to keep guests from mooching on return visits. Seems... June 24, 2002

Mid-day update: NPR re-evaluating linking policy
This, as they say, just in: Faced with a growing brouhaha over its linking policy (see below for more), NPR... June 21, 2002

RSS in the enterprise
If you've heard of RSS, you probably think it's just a way for Web sites to trade article headlines. But... June 21, 2002

NPR doesn't get the Web
Wired reports on the stupid controversy over National Public Radio's insistence that you get permission to link to any of... June 21, 2002

When cellphone users go too far
Associated Press reports: A man became so annoyed with another sauna user at a fitness club for refusing to end... June 21, 2002

Color me bored
Caution: You're about to read about today's (dare I say, this month's?) biggest waste of time. First, some background. If... June 20, 2002

The dangers of inifinite domain names
So PWC Consulting plans to change its name to Monday when it separates from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (hmm, so what can I... June 20, 2002

Real intrusion detection
This guy describes building a system to see if any intruders are trying to get into his computer. Really getting... June 18, 2002

Telcommunications implosion?
Forget all the overbuilt dark fiber, the mergers, the huge salaries. John Robb writes that the real problem is the... June 18, 2002

SMS for newbies
transL8it is an online translator. But nothing so boring as, say, English to French. Instead, it translates English into SMS,... June 18, 2002

How to define XML tags?
In this article, Walter Perry takes an interesting look at the politics and gaming involved in developing "standard data vocabularies"... June 18, 2002

The war between ISPs and wireless hackers
The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports on the increasing friction between ISPs and people who like setting up wireless access... June 17, 2002

Today's best 404 page
It even talks Via meryl's notes.... June 17, 2002

A snag on the road to Mac nerdvana
Damon Wright is chronicling his transformation from Windows user to Mac-head. He recently ran into a snag, though: He does... June 17, 2002

Bottom-up knowledge management
In this essay, Peter Dorfman argues the only way KM systems will work is if people at the bottom are... June 14, 2002

An opportunity of a lifetime from Spamania
David Plotnikoff reprints a message: Most felicitous greetings and please excuse in advance my intrusion into your present attentions! For... June 14, 2002

Great Caesar's Blog!
Bloggus Caesari - sample entry: June 11, 2002 Cassivelaunus has agreed to my terms. So we leave for the continent... June 14, 2002

Novell's purchase of Silverstream a mistake?
William Lazar doesn't think much of Novell's purchase this week of Silverstream Software: Now Novell, which has had much more... June 13, 2002

SpamAssassin goes after spam
Simson Garfinkel writes that this e-mail add-on is doing a great job at keeping his inbox free for real mail:... June 13, 2002

Why programmers shouldn't be let out of the office
The Philadelphia Inquirer lathers up with a story about a computer programmer who has amassed a large collection of free... June 12, 2002

The PowerPoint challenge
Who da PowerPoint Man/Woman? Two Webloggers are battling to see who can come up with the best PowerPoint presentation. Via... June 12, 2002

A standard Web
The Web Standards Project is dedicated to getting browser makers to comply with various standards, such as CSS and XHTML... June 12, 2002

Museum pleads: Hackers, help us!
Ananova reports that a Norwegian museum is seeking help from hackers. Seems a worker setting up a collections database for... June 10, 2002

Amy Wohl takes on Ralph Nader
Wohl doesn't think much of Ralph Nader's insistence that the government stop buying Microsoft products: Maybe we need to reassure... June 10, 2002

CDs that won't work on your computer
Fat Chuck's Corrupt CDs is a listing of all the music CDs that incorporate copy-protection schemes that will prevent them... June 10, 2002

Animals: Houston all a-buzz
ABC-13 gives us another reason to not move to Houston: Tens of thousands of bees are invading Houston! On one... June 07, 2002

Security through obsolesence
Robin Miller says he and some friends may have stumbled upon an effective way to keep Web sites secure: Run... June 07, 2002

The myth of the community open-source project?
One of the good things about open-source software is supposed to be the community - have a problem, post it... June 07, 2002

Mozilla 1.0 finally out
Download it here. Questions: Is it a noble effort that comes too late to make any diference? Especially in the... June 06, 2002

Trying to keep the spammers at bay
If you run a Web site, you know what happens when you outfit your pages with lots of mailto: links... June 06, 2002

Gaming online moderation systems
Design for Community has an interesting essay on the perils of moderation systems - you know, things like the "karma"... June 06, 2002

Paging Dick Tracy
The WristWatchComputer is a project to build videoconferencing systems you can wear on your wrist, using Linux (or Gnu/Linux as... June 05, 2002

Check out the SuperComm 2002 Weblog
Edge Managing Editor Jim Duffy and Senior Editor Tim Greene have their own Weblog to report on and analyze SuperComm,... June 05, 2002

Will Opti-Onics give Johnny a 4-tube notebook?
It's back to the past with this ad. Via webgraphics.... June 05, 2002

Open-source security tool compromised
SecurityFocus reports: The popular open-source security tool Fragroute is bugged in plain sight by unknown hackers, who may have struck... June 04, 2002

Anti-spammer throws hands up, quits the fight
Michial Thompson figured he'd found a way to fight at least one source of spam - e-mail links on Web... June 04, 2002

Denial of Responsibility attacks on the upswing
Forget denial-of-service attacks. Andy Oram says the real threat to our computer security comes from denial of responsibility attacks: DoR... June 03, 2002

Just jabbering away
IBM has put up a paper on using Jabber, an open-source, XML-based instant-messaging app in an e-business environment (oh, geez,... June 03, 2002

Hypertext guru: Webmasters bite
Ted Nelson has been busy building hypertext systems since, oh, 1960. And yet, his work largely goes unrecognized. Perhaps it's... May 31, 2002

Uncle Walt is watching you
Forbes reports on how Disney will use Internet technologies at its theme parks: If you value your privacy, a trip... May 31, 2002

Data-mining Usenet
Now, no wisecracks about how data-mining the Internet's oldest public space would mean coming up with a mountain of X-rated... May 30, 2002

Is that a PDA in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
Two months after he bought it, Dan Bricklin still likes his Handspring Treo 180. Among the long list of things... May 30, 2002

Nifty little Web sites
We're talking really little here: WildMag's 256b.htm Compo is a competition to build Web pages or resources in 256 bytes... May 29, 2002

Managing your inbox the EZ way
Mark Hurst has written a 35-page report (in PDF) on how to manage your e-mail. The Prime Directive: Keep your... May 29, 2002

Amazon.com recommendations system jiggered
Where there's a will there's a way. Over on Kuro5hin, tandoor reports on how the author of a self-help PDF... May 28, 2002

If you use the Internet, the terrorists have won
We've got those TV ads that call casual drug users supporters of terrorism. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has... May 28, 2002

Oh, no, no more $32-million offers from Nigeria?
The Register reports South Africa has arrested a bunch of Nigerians in connection with those spams you get roughly 10... May 24, 2002

Microsoft fails to convince Pentagon open source is a threat to the nation
Well, a threat to national security, at any rate. The Washington Post reports: In what one military source called a... May 24, 2002

Conference blogging
The esteemed Mark Gibbs recently put on his "oh, why bother?" pout and said, in so many words, trade shows... May 23, 2002

Music to get your Unix groove on
If you're a long-time Unix geek, then you know the words to that immortal song "Waka Waka Bang Splat," you... May 23, 2002

Court: FAQs not copyrightable
Law.com reports on a lawsuit involving an FAQ. Now, this wasn't your basic nerdling FAQ on using mod_perl or somesuch.... May 22, 2002

Factual error found on Internet
The Onion reports on the shocking case of a Brady-Bunch fan site with a mistake. Thank goodness the Web host... May 22, 2002

Google's next generation of services
Take a gander at what's cooking in Google's labs - potential new services include voice searching and keyboard shortcutting as... May 21, 2002

Exploding water balloons in space!
NASA advances the frontiers of science with an experiment involving a balloon, water and a pin in zero G. With... May 21, 2002

His mouse stinks
Not for lunchtime reading: 3 Stench Ridden Days... Yes thats right, for almost 3 damned days I couldn't find what... May 21, 2002

Monster.com in PowerPoint snafu
There's little love lost between online jobs-posting powerhouse Monster.com and the newspaper industry, which sees Monster.com and its ilk as... May 20, 2002

Viral marketing indeed
Some hacker (Russian, apparently) has released an Outlook virus that appends a .sig to outgoing e-mail consisting of an ad... May 20, 2002

Oops!
I've just learned a key networking lesson: Nothing is ever as easy as it seems (I know, I know, you're... May 17, 2002

How come there's no cent key?
Sure, pennies are increasingly irrelevant, but still, why don't standard keyboards have a key for it? At least in the... May 17, 2002

So what if you just want to give content away?
There's certainly been no lack of discussion of online copyright issues of late. But most of it has focused on... May 17, 2002

The rise of the Semantic Web
With that Web hyperlink thing, Tim Berners-Lee made it possible for ordinary people to interact with computers the world over.... May 15, 2002

Walking around Quake
Time was, you had to do some serious drugs to think the monsters were attacking you while you were walking... May 15, 2002

Will 802.11b fall victim to its own success?
Sifry poses the question: Will illegal amplifiers turn the spectrum into another Citizen's Band? Even without illegal amps, is it... May 14, 2002

RealMistake
Cameron Barrett writes the reason RealNames failed (see yesterday's item is not because Microsoft is evil (that being a separate... May 14, 2002

Did Microsoft destroy name-to-domain company?
RealNames used to be a sort of alternate DNS. Companies could buy keywords and then, through a deal with Microsoft,... May 13, 2002

Scrubbed P2P clients
cleanclients.tk has versions of various file-sharing apps that have been hacked to remove embedded spyware.... May 13, 2002

Macromedia goes ka-blog
Wired reports that Macromedia has turned to Weblogs - you know, those chatty, stream-of-consciousness daily journal things (like, oh, well,... May 10, 2002

Programming "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall
Here's another site that makes you wonder how we ever survived without the Web: 99 Bottles of Beer shows you... May 10, 2002

The uber-cookie
The Scottish Government is helping to fund a new monitoring system that would let Web sites (and no doubt budding... May 09, 2002

Cable-modem hacking about to get easy
Since broadband over cable is a shared medium, most providers give you modems with built in bandwidth limiters to keep... May 09, 2002

The death of the celebrity CEO
The Economist says Bernie Ebbers is one of the last of a breed: CEOs who are, perhaps, better known than... May 08, 2002

Google's new "Find Anything" service
BBSpot has the scoop: One of the most touching success stories of the new service has been Kyle Ferguson who... May 08, 2002

Seeing the future of the 'Net in porn
From the beginning, the online porn industry has pioneered some of the techniques other merchants have tried to duplicate, such... May 08, 2002

Serviceless wireless
David P. Reed argues we need to stop thinking of public wireless LANs as a "service" provided by a particular... May 07, 2002

If Pooh wrote a Weblog
It might look like Poohpundit.com: Posted 8:55 PM by PoohOK, THIS is getting frightening. First, Heffalumps, now reports of Woozle... May 07, 2002

New blog: Cool Tools Daily Dose
It's been lonely here in the blogging corner of Network World Fusion, churning out the high quality daily networking journalism... May 06, 2002

Horrors! Fiber speeds over copper just a hoax?
The Florida Times-Union is running a series on a guy who got millions from investors for a "magic box" that... May 06, 2002

The Compaq iPaq or Seven of Nine?
whatsbetter?com is the latest variant in the "Am I hot or not" genre. You pick one of two choices, then... May 06, 2002

When software kills
No, this isn't about some Weekly World News story about a computer virus infecting a hacker or something. Thomas Huckle,... May 03, 2002

Ratbot update: The Pentagon's involvement
The Philadelphia Inquirer gnawed on the ratbot story and found that funding for the study comes from the Pentagon. Which,... May 03, 2002

Wireless rats!
Some researchers in New York are using wireless technology to make rats do their bidding. New Scientist reports: The researchers... May 02, 2002

eBay isn't asking for your credit-card number
This morning I got two e-mails, allegedly from the security people at eBay (who call themselves Safe Harbor for some... May 02, 2002

Networking poetry
Ah, love and networking technology, all in one melancholy quatrain: My heart is like a CPU. Via Dashes.... May 02, 2002

Web services mean fatter clients
Hey, remember client/server? Remember fat clients? Sure, you do. I know I do, thanks to the client/server publishing system we... May 01, 2002

Mobile gossip
Evolution, Alienation and Gossip takes a look at the role of mobile and wireless networks in fostering gossip. No, wait,... May 01, 2002

The social network
Last month, Valdis Krebs used network mapping techniques to chart a terrorist network. Now he reverses things - using some... April 30, 2002

Stupid computer stories
Computer Stupidities should really be titled Computer USER Stupidities, but in any case, lots of stuff to keep you busy... April 30, 2002

This XP patch is no fairy tale
Q310510: Recommended Update - Microsoft is being modest; this is THE XP patch of the year. Via MetaFilter.... April 29, 2002

A gift for your outer geek
Geek Culture Caps are geek beenies, complete with propeller (well, you can get 'em without propellers and save some money,... April 29, 2002

The Internet is for everyone, isn't it?
RFC 3271 doesn't describe some cool new way to zap management packets over IP or anything. Instead, it's Vint Cerf's... April 29, 2002

Inter-fada just a myth?
Virus icononclast Rob Rosenberger has been turning his jaundiced eye of late on a growing groundswell of stories about the... April 26, 2002

Saving the DNS root
Paul Hoffman argues that in all the hullaballoo over ICANN and its, um, domain over such things as global top-level... April 26, 2002

New spyware deletes anti-spyware software
You think that's your PC sitting quietly there on your desk. In fact, it's a battleground. At first, you had... April 25, 2002

All Pong, all the time
More proof dot-com insanity is not quite dead: Reuters reports that Comcast has spent $150 million to set up a... April 25, 2002

Robbing Peter to wire Paul at Verizon
For some, MetaFilter is more than just a Web site - it's an adddiction, a place to keep up with... April 24, 2002

The big ball o' Ethernet cable
Used to be, obsessed people would make giant balls out of tin foil or rubber bands. Then people got creative.... April 24, 2002

How one college handles hackers
DePaul University gets tough. Via Weblog Wannabe.... April 24, 2002

You don't want to get a librarian mad
Fiat Lux is an attempt by librarians to catalog good, solid information on the Web. Now, you might be tempted... April 23, 2002

Proof that Apple is flush with success
Presenting: The iToilet. Via Vitally Important Information.... April 23, 2002

N.Y. Times Random Registration Generator
The only surprise is that this took so long, this being an app that logs you into whichever Times story... April 23, 2002

The Commodore 64 Parallel Super-Computer
Yes, of course, there's a project to link those old doorstops up in thousands of attics into a sentient being,... April 22, 2002

Privacy Bird tells on AT&T
A few days ago, I wrote about some beta software from AT&T, called the Privacy Bird, that lets you know... April 22, 2002

The birth of Geek Nation?
What's a nation without politics? NewsForge spills the latest on the American Open Technology Consortium and its proposed political-action offspring,... April 19, 2002

IBM: We won't charge for key XML patent
Earlier this week, ZDNet reported that IBM holds a patent on key parts of ebXML, a proposed set of definitions... April 19, 2002

Calif. buys more Oracle licenses than it has employees
The Sacramento Bee reports on a scandal involving the state of California and Oracle. According to a state auditor's report,... April 18, 2002

Cameras watching cameras
Ananova reports that police in the Dutch province of Brabant have installed cameras to watch the cameras they had earlier... April 18, 2002

Digital identity: Who am I?
Kuro5hin has an interesting discussion on the topic: In my opinion, the technical hurdles -- fascinating though they are --... April 17, 2002

Go outside, will ya?
This is today's best 404 page: The page cannot be displayed because you need some fresh air The page you... April 17, 2002

Why free software usability tends to suck
Matthew Thomas lists 10 reason, all of which can be summed up: (I)n practice, the vast majority of open-source projects... April 17, 2002

Preserving old software
Tim O'Reilly discusses an effort by software guru Grady Booch and others to set up a library or museum of... April 16, 2002

Great, something else to worry about
New Scientist gets us all worried with a story about how the earth's magnetic poles may be about to flip.... April 16, 2002

Why I need a vacation, part 3
Driving to work today, I passed a local resturant with a sign out front offering "half-price apps in our lounge"... April 16, 2002

Her domain was hijacked and the registrar won't help
This story doesn't inspire much confidence in Network Solutions (more here and here). And what has Network Solutions done to... April 15, 2002

Netmaster 10baseT is in the house
Imagine: rap lyrics for networking professionals: I be jackin'. I be crimpin'. I be tracin'. I be pingin' I be... April 15, 2002

The true life adventures of Max Throughput, CCIE
The latest installment from the Router Gods begins: There I was, minding my own sweet business, drinking a shot of... April 12, 2002

The Google API
Just in case you missed it, Google's released a beta API that lets you interact with its database via SOAP.... April 12, 2002

A joke that women who date engineers would get
Just read it.... April 12, 2002

Fighting spam with P2P
New Scientist reports on an effort to use peer-to-peer technology to fight spam. Folsom was co-designed by developers Vipul Ved... April 11, 2002

The AT&T Privacy Bird
The AT&T Privacy Bird lets you know about the privacy policies of Web sites you visit. This plug-in for IE... April 11, 2002

What the alpha geeks are up to
Tim O'Reilly, of the eponymous computer publishing empire, says we can often see the future in what the mega-geeks are... April 10, 2002

Hardware vs. software vendors
Amy Wohl asks Can HW Vendors Understand SW?: I'm thinking that we should recognize that these are inherently different businesses... April 10, 2002

The Web via e-mail
You can access your e-mail through the Web, but can you access the Web through e-mail? Of course you can!... April 09, 2002

Keeping up with Web services
The absolute bestest way to keep up with Web services is, of course, our Web Services Breaking News page. But... April 09, 2002

OS Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
Don Marti is interested in determining which operating systems really suck and which really rule. He could do extensive benchmark... April 08, 2002

We Have the Way In
We have the way in is, of course, a parody of the Microsoft/Unisys campaign to convince people that Windows is... April 08, 2002

Irony plug-ins
Having trouble figuring out which Web sites are just sarcastic parodies and which are for real? Irony Plug-ins, which work... April 08, 2002

What if software self-destructed - on purpose?
It's the question Jon Lasser asks in this essay. And no, he's not talking about the need for software vendors... April 05, 2002

The annotated Jack Valenti
LawMeme takes an interview with Hollywood mouthpiece Jack Valenti on the subject of digital copyrights and annotates it. Example: What... April 05, 2002

Free XML tools
Free XML tools and software is exactly what it sounds like: A listing of all sorts tools for working with... April 04, 2002

Cat-proofing your computer
PawSense is software that supposedly can detect the sorts of keystrokes cats would make if they jumped on your keyboard... April 04, 2002

Paul McCartney on the importance of backup
Well, or somebody pretending to be him. Check out these lyrics: Yesterday, All those backups seemed a waste of pay.... April 03, 2002

Mapping a terrorist network
Valdis Krebs uses some network mapping techniques to look at the connections between the terrorists on the 9/11 planes and... April 03, 2002

Do as I say, not as I do
Section508.gov is a Web site on the government's efforts to ensure Web sites comply with federal laws relating to handicap... April 02, 2002

We are Blog; Resistance is futile
John Hiler argues that Weblogs are taking over the world. Or something. He recounts the snowball effect that happened after... April 02, 2002

Alert: Why Google is so fast
This new white paper from Google is quite illuminating.... April 01, 2002

Unix more complex than Windows?
That's the theme of a new marketing campaign by Microsoft and Unisys that features ads showing somebody who's painted himself... April 01, 2002

Use Yahoo Mail? Expect even more spam
"And what part of 'no' don't you understand?" Go ahead, ask Yahoo the question. See what they say. In case... April 01, 2002

The IBM songbook
Thrill to the words of Ever Onward I.B.M.: Ever onward! ever onward! that's the spirit that has brought us fame.... March 29, 2002

Abe Lincoln: 'Net entrepreneur
A few days ago, Disney honcho Michael Eisner said if Abe Lincoln were alive today, he'd support the sort of... March 29, 2002

E-mail puts end to carrier-pigeon service
The BBC reports on a plan by the Indian government to replace its Police Pigeon Service with boring electronic mail.... March 28, 2002

Kids today are so clever
Hey! ASL? is a site that lets IM'in' fools save valuable seconds by posting biographies, so they no longer have... March 28, 2002

Whiny Joe Nacchio
Dan Gillmor is posting frequent updates from PC Forum. In this one, he reports on how Qwest honcho Joe Nacchio... March 27, 2002

Who am I?
Digital Identity is a Weblog devoted to digital-identity and related issues, such as universal authentication. You know, Passport, the Liberty... March 27, 2002

Nick Burns must die
It's time for IT staffers, especially the ones who man the Help Desk, to start treating lusers^H^H^Husers with kindness and... March 26, 2002

On the importance of copyediting
The worst manuals of 2002 highlights employee and technical documentation that seem to require workers to commit crimes while on... March 26, 2002

Add Apple to list of companies that break Acrobat security
Remember that Russian programmer who got arrested last year because his company makes a product that can unlock Adobe's allegedly... March 25, 2002

Bet Carly F. wishes she could have done this
A company called Inforte will hold its annual stockholders meeting entirely online. The company estimates it will only cost about... March 25, 2002

First spam, now whispers
Webmaster World reports on how some companies are now targeting online forums in their never-ending attempts to suck you into... March 22, 2002

Google says it will add back part of anti-church site
Dan Gillmor reports that Google now says it will reload a link to Xenu.net's home page after it stripped the... March 22, 2002

Yes, I'm using new software to write this
I had been using Radio Userland to write Compendium. The other day, though, something went wrong; the app's config file... March 22, 2002

Google drops site from its database
Welcome to the real world. Google's busy humming along, becoming the world's best search engine. Then as a lark, some... March 21, 2002

Finally, an honest spammer
You know what really drives me up the wall while perusing spam? No, it's not the blatantly false promise they... March 21, 2002

Talking spam
Not happy enough with just reading your spam? Now you can listen to it, as well, thanks to Spam Radio.... March 20, 2002

Improving Google?
Webmaster World takes a look at an IBM research effort, called CLEVER, to improve on Google's search technology.... March 20, 2002

Her name was Carly ...
Use the Source imagined if Barry Manilow sang the song of the HP/Compaq merger (to the tune of "Copacabana"): Her... March 19, 2002

Finally, tap dancing on your Palm
Tamagotchi move over. Tap is a Palm app that lets you teach a little character how to dance. Once you... March 19, 2002

The hidden life of Pong
Last week, it was text-based Pong. This week, see what happens when you go to bed without turning off your... March 19, 2002

Linux viruses
One of Linux's supposed strengths over Windows is the fact that there aren't all that many Linux viruses. The Linux... March 19, 2002