Tuesday, May 25

Brent Townshend has reacquired the rights to his patents for 56K modems from 3Com. Townshend says that he will "negotiate licenses under patents covering the V.90 standard on a non-discriminatory basis under reasonable terms and conditions." Under the terms of the agreement, 3Com still has the right to use the technology in Townshend's patents for use in its own products.

Diamond Multimedia has submitted a cable modem design to CableLabs for DOCSIS certification testing.

Diamond also released a Mac and PC compatible USB modem in an iMac-inspired case.

MediaForte has a V.90 upgrade for their Momenta K56flex modem.

The Boston Globe reports that Harvard asked Divinity School Dean Ronald Thiemann to step down after a technician found thousands of pornographic images on his Harvard-owned computer. The technician was installing a larger hard drive at Thiemann's request. Thiemann, who is currently on sabbatical, maintains that there were other reasons for his decision to resign. Salon looks at the ethics involved when a technician works on a client's computer, and at the increasing use of Internet access policies to prevent employees from using work computers for private purposes.

AOL is suing Tribal Voice over its use of the term "buddy list." AOL claims that the term, which is used in its ICQ software, is AOL's trademark. Tribal Voice believes the term is generic.

Home networking and carpentry

Now that I have a cable modem, I don't need my ISDN line for Internet access any more. I've decided to use the ISDN to replace my analog voice lines because an ISDN line in Tennessee is just $37 a month, which includes two phone numbers with caller ID and call waiting. Before I tackle this project, as well as an eventual house-wide Ethernet, I decided to see what information was available.

Grant's Wiring Closet is the best source of info on equipment and wiring for Ethernet.

John's Closet has some great schematics and a handy FAQ server. It discusses networking and ISDN.

For the most common phone upgrade - adding a second number - Mark McGuire has written an illustrated tutorial, "Installing a Second Phone Line".

Found link of the week

John Springer (of John's Closet, above) has a great page about his DUI. Without preaching or complaining, he describes the whole process of getting a DUI and serving out his sentence. This is one of the most fascinating pages I've ever found on the web.

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Friday, May 28

The San Francisco Chronicle looks at Internet Call Waiting, and some alternatives that are available now. For more information, see Daniel Rosenzweig's Call Waiting and Modem FAQ.

Satellite phone company Iridium is trying to restructure its debt rather than go bankrupt, and plans to lower rates to attract more customers.

Mark Hughes sent a link for Star Wars Episode IV in ASCIIMATION (requires Java 1.1; may crash some browsers).

Computer privacy and security

Microsoft released a patch for Windows NT that plugs a password security hole. NT was caching passwords even when users had chosen to not have their passwords saved.

A variation of the Melissa Word macro virus has appeared that will fool some virus software. The new version uses a .rtf extension instead of a .doc extension.

BackDoor and the similar Armageddon are two new Trojan Horses that compromise network security by sending information about the local network to the originator. Trojan Horses must be executed in order to install and activate. BackDoor and Armageddon are mass distributed via email under the guise of being screensavers or game updates. Network Associates and Symantec have information and updates for their virus and security software.

ZipLip is another service that provides encrypted email. Hushmail was mentioned here last week. Both services offer encrypted email through a web interface and use Java applets.

Hushmail offers stronger encryption and seems to be more security conscious: Hushmail only allows you to send mail to other Hushmail members, thus guaranteeing total safety.

ZipLip is more convenient: you can send email to anyone, and they receive an email with a URL to pick up the message. Of course, if someone (e.g. the boss) is snooping on your email, they can use the URL to read your ZipLip mail. For better security on ZipLip, you can require that the recipient supply an agreed-upon password to read the message. Unfortunately, getting that password to the other person can be difficult, and may reveal the password and sabotage your attempts at privacy. Public key encryption was invented years ago to solve that very problem.

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