Monthly Archives: October 2003


Senate Supports Spammers 97-0

Well, it sure looks this way to me.
For instance,

the bill now includes a provision, supported by some opponents of spam, that directs the Federal Trade Commission to come up with a plan for a no-spam registry.

I think the off shore spammers will love this one: a list comprised of mostly good email addresses! Yea, I know that the spammers are supposed to send in their lists for scrubbing but I suspect joes p*rn shop won’t be sending in their list.

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AOL Violates User’s Computers

I couldn’t disagree more with this guy:

Russ Cooper, a security expert with TruSecure Corp., said anyone who needs the Windows messaging function that AOL disabled ought to be smart enough to know how to reactivate it.
“I hope more and more providers do this type of proactive security,” he said, “and that we don’t condemn them for things we wish everybody would do for themselves.”

He is talking about AOL which has made changes to the system settings of more then 15,000,000 of their user’s Microsoft Window based systems without those users prior consent.

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Some Modern Dinosaurs may be a bit Closer to Extinction

I expect to see a lot more headphones on folks while they are at their computers (or just a wireless signal away) and not just to listen to the latest music downloads.
Check out this article about Skype, the latest hot peer-to-peer application that will be making a lot of encumbent telephone companies (both land and cellular) nervous and will have government officials at all levels wondering why their utility tax revenue stream is shrinking.
This has the potential to be a classic case of creative destruction and I, for one, think it is a good thing!
Via Assymetrical Information.


Stormy Weather Brewing

Get out your umbrellas,.. well, they might not help for this storm:

A strong dose of space weather is forecast to hit Earth Friday, potentially disrupting satellite communications and posing a threat to power grids on Earth.
The storm of charged particles was unleashed by a dark region on the solar surface called Sunspot 484. The huge spot, about the size of Jupiter’s surface, has been growing for several days and rotating into a position that now points squarely at Earth.
….
The sunspot let lose a storm of energetic particles, known as a coronal mass ejection at 3 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The expanding cloud is expected to arrive midday Friday. It could produce a geomagnetic storm rated G3 on a scale that goes up to G5.

it will probably cause a little chaos with your cell phones as well.
Update: The Apostropher has some more links including this sweet up close and personal look at a sunspot.