Tuesday, November 23

SBC and Prodigy are combining operations, with SBC holding a 43 percent stake in Prodigy. SBC recently commited to a US$6 billion investment in DSL upgrades for its phone system.

A city audit of @Home cable modem users in Seattle finds that 20 out of 24 are happy with the speed. Problems found in the audit include delays in installation, service outages and email outages.

Computer Currents asks "DSL Security.. Is it a Problem?"

Hey, folks, like those new G.Lite DSL routers? Network Computing has a G.Lite buyer's guide to help you choose one.

Computer security

A variation of the Melissa virus - called Melissa.w or Pralissa - has been discovered in several corporate networks. Like the original Melissa, the new strain sends itself to 50 email addresses from Outlook's address book. Melissa.w then tries to reformat the user's hard drive.

Less-destructive forms of Melissa are still causing problems. Members of the press were recently surprised when they received an internal policy memo from Disney. The memo had been typed in Microsoft Word, became infected with Melissa, and then emailed itself to the media. [For some reason, this makes me feel like I'm actually living in the futuristic year 1999.]

Even good old Unix Pine isn't safe anymore. A new exploit allows a specially-formatted URL to execute arbitrary commands in the Unix shell. Affected versions should be upgraded.

In response to repeated security threats, the Department of Defense is considering the removal of all JavaScript and ActiveX code from their web sites. [Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any risks to the server from JavaScript and ActiveX. The client, definitely, but not the server - Leslie]

56K.COM observed the Thanksgiving holiday and didn't publish on Friday.

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