Hackers
drawn by thrills, challenge, cash
- MOSCOW - Alexei of St. Petersburg
cracked his first program when he was
12. Frustrated by a game he couldn't
win on his parents' computer, which
ran on an Intel 8086 microprocessor,
he poked around in the game's
programming to make it easier. Now 20,
the technical institute dropout cracks
software to order for $50 to $200,
defeating security measures, so
illegal copies will run on additional
computers. He charged one businessman
$50 to crack a $3,000 program for
automating embroidering machines...
Denver
may track workers by satellite
- Allegations of loafing leads city to
mull use of GPS, It could be getting
harder to hide from the boss. After
allegations that some city employees
are loafing on the job, Denver
officials said Monday they want to
spend $1.5 million to track city
vehicles with the military's Global
Positioning System satellites.
Installing GPS devices on more than
2,000 Public Works Department vehicles
is a long-range goal, said Andrew
Hudson, spokesman for Mayor Wellington
Webb. In the meantime, Denver plans a
lower-tech approach: bumper stickers
listing a hot line where citizens can
report complaints, commendations and
suggestions about the city's 14,000
employees, Hudson said...
Hackers
got Bill Gates' credit card info - Self-styled
'Saint of E-commerce' arrested for e-biz hacks,
e-mailed credit card details, including those of
Gates, to NBCi. A teenager arrested in Wales for
allegedly hacking into e-commerce Web sites had
obtained the credit card details of Bill Gates, head
of Microsoft Corp. and the world's richest man,
newspapers said on Sunday. Raphael Gray, 18, was
arrested on Saturday for Internet fraud after a joint
operation between the FBI and Welsh Police. The FBI
said on Saturday that losses connected to the
activities of Gray and another unnamed 18-year-old
could exceed $3 million...
Baby,
You've Got Mail - Welcome to the World Wide
Maternity Ward, where smiles abound and all the
diapers are fresh. Here, families and friends can
greet their new bundles of joy without leaving home,
courtesy of online birth announcement services offered
by a growing number of hospitals and private Web
companies. "Moms are clamoring for it," says
Laura A. Hopkins, senior district manager for
WebNursery, a company that takes in-hospital photos
and posts them on the Web for loved ones to enjoy.
Hospitals, in order to compete in the maternity
market, are clamoring for it too, Hopkins says...
Can
hyperlinks be outlawed? - Movie studios aim
to criminalize links to DeCSS, a banned DVD-decryption
program. | In a fresh attack on DeCSS, a program
that decrypts DVDs so people can play them on
Linux-based operating systems, the Motion Picture
Association of America filed a motion on Wednesday to
prohibit 2600, the "hacker quarterly," from
linking to other sites that post copies of the
outlawed program. Specifically, says Mark Litvack, the
MPAA's vice president and director of legal affairs
for worldwide anti-piracy, the organization
representing movie studios wants Eric Corley -- aka
Emmanuel Goldstein, publisher of 2600 -- to quit
"trafficking" in the distribution of DeCSS...
Going,
Going, Gone: Business-To-Consumer Sector Goes Bust
- Well, at least Internet stocks aren't terribly
overvalued anymore. Once Wall Street's darlings, dot-coms--particularly
those that comprise the business-to-consumer part of
e-commerce--have turned into pariahs. Their
"spend now and earn later" strategy isn't as
cute as it first seemed. And it's dawned on investors
that companies with paltry revenues, millions in
losses and no profits in sight may not be the best
bets...
