Tuesday, September 12

Wireless

ISPs in some rural areas are mounting wireless transmitters atop grain elevators and water towers. In relatively flat rural areas, the devices often have line-of-sight for miles, without the expensive permits needed to construct towers.

CNET explains the new mobile phone radiation measurements, and offers an emissions chart for popular phones.

New Scientist reviews the mixed evidence concerning the health effects of mobile phones.

GeoWorks is countersuing Phone.com in a dispute over web phone patents.

Dot-coms for sale or rent

FuckedCompany.com, one of my favorite sites, is being auctioned off on eBay as of yesterday. Bidding went as high as US$10 million, but some bids were retracted and the high bid is currently (8:16 AM EDT) US$1,679,098.00. [Jeez Louise. Makes me wonder how much I could get for 56K.COM. - Leslie] Later: On Wednesday Phil Kaplan withdrew the eBay auction because of the large number of bogus bids. He's still seeking buyers through more traditional means.

SafetyTips.com has reconsidered and will buy APBNews.com. Creditors had rebuffed SafetyTip's original offer as too low, but then failed to find any other interested buyers. The catch now is that SafetyTips has re-negotiated the deal and will only have to pay half as much as they previously offered.

Emulex stock hoax

Upside examines the journalistic end of the Emulex hoax.

SatireWire offers up "How to Spot a Fake Press Release."

John Dvorak thinks the fake press release was a work of deceptive art.

Computer security and privacy

The General Accounting Office gave the federal government a grade of D- for computer security.

An Internet Explorer 5.5 feature lets web sites track you, even if you turn off cookies.

Hackers stole 15,700 credit card numbers from Western Union's web site during a maintenance window in which a database was left exposed. Western Union is contacting customers who used the company's web site to transfer money and suggesting they cancel their credit cards.

A judge has ordered a California company to repay the US$37.5 million it illegally billed to consumers. About half of the consumers affected didn't have a computer. The company had purchased a database of 3 million credit card numbers from a California bank.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has fined four companies the CFTC claimed had misled investors about the risks associated with their investment systems. The four companies fined were rhythmofthemarkets.com, internationaltrading.com, accutrader.com and yentrading.com.

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Friday, September 15

Cable and DSL companies are squaring off in TV spots that would make George W. Bush and Al Gore proud.

On Wednesday, Phil Kaplan canceled the eBay auction of Fuckedcompany.com mentioned in Tuesday's 56K.COM, though he wants to sell the site through other means. The San Francisco Chronicle looks at other dot-coms that are being auctioned off.

The Federal Communications Commission will review the open cable access issue.

The FCC may force AOL to open up its Instant Messaging platform as a pre-condition of approving the Time-Warner merger.

A group called Alliance for Childhood is questioning the role of computers in kindergarten and elementary school classrooms.

Don asbestos suit. Set flamethrower to "incinerate." Eudora 5.0 has a new feature called MoodWatch that purports to detect strong language in incoming or outgoing email.

We'll-give-you-money-to-look-at-ads-site AllAdvantage.com is laying off workers and postponing its IPO.

Computer security and privacy

A General Accounting Office study found that 97% of government web sites surveyed failed a basic set of privacy guidelines. The criteria were adequate notice of practices, choice to give or not to give information, access to change personal information and assurance that information is secured properly.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has severed ties with Amazon because of recent changes in Amazon's privacy policy.

SatireWire reports on the poor guy who's afraid hackers will steal his VISA card, No. 8099 0788 341 9800, expiration date 12/01.

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