Tuesday, April 3

Judge Thomas Jackson ruled that Microsoft engaged in anticompetitive practices. Microsoft is expected to appeal, but the ruling is likely to prompt a flood of private lawsuits against the world's largest software company. Wired has extensive coverage of the case.

Nearly half a million Netscape mail users are being forced to change their email addresses as AOL begins consolidation of AOL, CompuServe, and Netscape email addresses.

Competitors are trying to win 3Com customers following the dissolution of 3Com's networking and dial-up modem business.

1stup.com, the company providing the infrastructure for free ISP services such as Excite and AltaVista, is now offering a co-branded pay ISP service.

TI's new DSL receiver features the lowest ADSL power consumption in the industry, just 300 milliwatts per port.

The FBI is searching for the author a virus that causes infected PCs to dial 911.

Sega is expected to begin giving rebates for the full purchase price of Sega Dreamcast game consoles. Sega wants to get game consoles in the hands of consumers who will then pay monthly fees for Sega.com's monthly game service.

A two-year study by the German government concludes that Internet attacks will replace armed conflict within two years.  

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Friday, April 7

No DSL where you live? You can put in your own DSL connection using a dry pair of copper wires, often used for alarm systems, plus some equipment and ingenuity.

In other do-it-yourself news, MacInTouch readers have discovered that you can extend the Apple Airport wireless networking system up to several miles.

New Scientist reports that plans to convert Britain's analog TV network to cell phone use will be impractical.

CNET reviews the Netscape 6.0 pre-release. When released later this year, the browser will fully support W3 standards for HTML, CSS and the DOM model. It will also take half the time to download compared to the current version. Biggest surprise: Netscape 6.0 will drop support for the Netscape-created layers tag.

Computer privacy and security

Martha Mendoza of the LA Times examines why companies are sometimes reluctant to involve the authorities when they've been hacked.

Governments' efforts to curb the spread of strong cryptography is being counteracted by the rapid spread of e-commerce, according to ComputerWorld.

A top secret NATO document has made its way onto the Internet. The document escaped because of a virus, but no report has confirmed what kind of virus or document was involved. Last year the Melissa virus caused an internal Disney Word document to be emailed to members of the press.

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