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RAIN 0727 Weekly Update: Technology (12)



Washington Post 7/21/02
The Instant-Mess Age
'IM' Isn't Private, and That's a Problem for Firms, Workers
By Shannon Henry
"I think Mark is doing the right thing by going into rehab," Tim Gordon, vice president of an online concierge service, typed quickly to a friend. Sitting at his office computer, Gordon was multitasking in cyberspace as usual, holding several instantmessaging conversations at once.
And that's why he accidentally sent the message to a co-worker, not to his friend.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35586-2002Jul20.html


Washington POst 7/21/02
Taking It With You, on Portable Drives
By Rebecca Rohan
The 1.44-megabyte floppy drive is still standard on most home PCs, but, like those little slits for razor blades in medicine cabinets, it doesn't see much use anymore.
CD-RW drives have taken over much of the work of the too small floppy, but they aren't always the most convenient option - - especially if your fellow users don't have CD burners of their own.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35577-2002Jul20.html


NINEMSN 7/21/02
Film industry tracking down pirates
AP - Hoping to end the online trading frenzy that has plagued the music business,
the movie industry is hunting down digital film swappers and getting their Internet
service cut off.
The action is part of intensifying efforts by the entertainment industry to control
piracy. Those efforts include invasive technical measures.
The Motion Picture Association of America uses a special search engine to scour the
Web for copyright movies, which circulate on the same peer-to-peer software
networks as MP3 music files.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/Sci_Tech/story_35871.asp


Wired 7/22/02
Liverpool: I Wanna Hold Your Spam
By Daithí Ó hAnluain
A woman in a major British media company recently contacted the company's entire, 30,000-strong staff with an urgent query: "Has anyone got any blu-tack?"
This type of "occupational spam" -- in this case, a plea for the kind of adhesive typically used to stick posters to walls -- has clogged up e-mail servers so much that an English city council has banned the use of internal e-mail one day a week.
External and personal mail is unaffected by the ban.
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,53868,00.html


ExtremeTech 7/22/02
JPEG Committee Speaks Out On Forgent IP
By: Mark Hachman
The committee in charge of the JPEG file format said it will strike back in response to the patent claims being musted by Forgent Networks Inc.
In a statement on the company's web site, the JPEG committee said it would begin amassing its intellectual-property warheads in response to Forgent's claims.
"As a response to [Forgent's claim], the JPEG committee will be collecting, through its new web site (to be launched shortly) a substantial repository of prior art and it invites submissions, particularly where the content may be applied to claims of intellectual property," the site reads. "A note will be placed on the web site shortly explaining the process for such submissions."
http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=29376,00.asp


Darwin 7/23/02
Five thoughts about: Storage
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/thoughts/


The Times-Picayune 7/24/02
This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds
And now, e-mail that knows when to disappear
By Chris Seper
Newhouse News Service
Your e-mail will self-destruct.
An upcoming version of Microsoft's e-mail program Outlook will let authors
decide how long an e-mail message will exist and whether it can be sent to other
people or printed out for posterity.
It's one of a series of new controls Microsoft is preparing that would give users
greater control over their written words in an era when everything from private
love letters to company secrets spread across the Internet like oil spills.
http://www.nola.com/archives/t-p/index.ssf?/livingstory/email_24.html


New York Times 7/25/02
A Hard Drive for the Hip Pocket
By WILSON ROTHMAN
IF you live in an apartment, you must occasionally get the urge to knock
down a wall, boot your neighbor and double the size of your place. Maybe
it is human nature or Manifest Destiny, or that you simply have too much
stuff. There is no painless way to expand your personal space, but if your
storage problem extends to a PC overflowing with MP3 songs, PowerPoint
presentations and digital video, an external hard drive may be the solution.
External drives have long been a saving grace for knowledgeable users
upgrading to a new computer, archiving documents or shuttling data between
work and home. But often the devices were slow or tricky to manage, and
generally they were too expensive and bulky for the general user.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/25/technology/circuits/25BASI.html?



Wall Street Journal 7/26/02
Ivy Imbroglio: Princeton Admits
It Spied on Yale Admissions Site
By CHARLES FORELLE
In a feat of Ivy League counter-espionage, Yale University caught Princeton University
accessing confidential Internet records to see whether its rival had admitted or rejected students who had applied to both schools.
Princeton admitted the intrusion and said it had suspended, with pay, associate dean and director of admissions Stephen LeMenager, pending an investigation of the incident. Mr. LeMenager couldn't be reached for comment.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1027628736531063280,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/26/education/26IVY.html?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020726/ts_nm/life_princeton_dc_1



Transform 8/1/02
What's Next After DVD?
by Lowell Rapaport
The entertainment industry is currently wrangling over which new storage format it will rally around for consumer high-definition video. Why is this decision important for business? Because consumer media formats are typically adopted as standards for
computer data storage.
Compact discs and DVDs both started out as consumer media formats for music and video and were then adopted by the computer industry. The decision on the next multimedia format, therefore, will affect data storage for years to come.
http://www.transformmag.com/db_area/archs/2002/08/tfm0208tp.shtml





Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA
pakurilecz@aol.com
Richmond, Va