Angel Technologies is floating a new idea for delivering high speed Internet access: beaming the signal from planes patrolling the city. The plan requires three planes and three full-time crews. [When their Internet service goes down, it really goes down. - Les]

Juno, best known as a provider of free ISP service, has raised the monthly price for "bandwidth gluttons" to $29.99, effectively telling them to take a long walk on a short pier. After trading in the fifty dollar range last year, the company's stock was trading at around twenty cents this morning.

EarthLink and ComCast have signed a deal that would allow EarthLink to sell cable modem service over Comcast's network in Philadelphia. Other cities will follow if the trial is successful. EarthLink will begin delivering service over AOL Time Warner's cable lines in the second half of 2001.

CNET reports that EarthLink loaned top executives US$4.6 million to cover margin calls on the company's stock.

Corey Grice of ZDNet wonders how broadband might survive the recession.

Down the old tubes

Excite at Home, Microsoft and Verio are getting out of the DSL business, in part because of the bankruptcy of their wholesale DSL provider, NorthPoint Communications. AT&T bought NorthPoint's assets for approximately $135 billion.

Officials at Internet service provider PSINet told investors that PSINet's stock may be worthless.

3Com has discontinued its Internet appliances, including the Kerbango Internet radio and Audrey web pad.

Computer security and privacy

A cross-platform Windows-Linux virus has been reported, though few anti-virus companies have confirmed its existence. The virus, which is not malicious, is written in assembly language.

Janelle Brown of Salon looks at the recording industry's attempts to monitor downloads over P2P networks.

French hackers claim they have had access to DoubleClick's servers for two years.

What was initially believed to be a "super cookie" set by EarthLink's browser turned out to be specifications for the user's monitor. EarthLink uses the information to tailor content to the user's browser.

The ACLU is going to court to fight a filtering law that requires federally-funded schools and libraries to filter Internet access.

An AOL program designed to reduce spam deleted hundreds of thousands of emails sent from EarthLink customers to AOL customers.

A former AOL TOS enforcer reflects on his days of censoring naughty screen names and banning misbehaving chatters.

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