February 15 2005 -
Symantec: Who's afraid of Microsoft?
- By Dawn Kawamoto CNET News.com, ZDNet News, SAN FRANCISCO--Symantec outlined plans on Tuesday to defend its
large consumer security business, as Microsoft detailed its push to
enter the anti-spyware and antivirus market. Company CEO John Thompson,
speaking at a keynote speech and roundtable at RSA Conference 2005 here,
said that Symantec would rely on the capabilities of its products to
fend off the challenge. He said he would not rely on antitrust
regulators, who keep an eye on Microsoft and the products it bundles in
with its operating system...
October 07 2004 -
Fake
companies, real money - Elaborate con wrings cash out of
stolen credit cards, By Bob Sullivan, Technology correspondent, MSNBC,
T-Data, a small New-York based software company, doesn't take credit
cards -- never has in its 20-year history. But a few weeks ago, owner
Jeff Duhl found himself looking over $15,000 worth of credit card
charges seemingly accepted by his store...
November 04 2004 -
Islam in the Netherlands, Another political murder -
AMSTERDAM, From The Economist print edition (registration required), For
the second time in two years a horrific murder has traumatized Dutch
society, THE first time the Dutch hoped it was a freak incident. But
a second political murder in the Netherlands in the space of two years
has left this country, which has long prided itself on its tolerant,
liberal values, in deep shock. Dutch people fear that they may now live
in a place where violence has become a way of settling differences of
opinion—especially over rocky relations with a growing Muslim
minority...
July 01 2004 -
Website explores dangers of playing with fire - By Jorn
Madslien, BBC News Online business reporter, As the fireworks flare
across America on Independence Day, endlessly frustrating The National
Fire Protection Association (NFPA), an equally flaming foe will return
to the world wide web. The website formerly known as
www.zippotricks.com - famous
for detailing 555 daring stunts performed with petrol-fuelled Zippo
lighters - will mark the Fourth of July holiday by relaunching under a
new name. The global relaunch, under the name www.Lightertricks.com ,
will cause considerable anger, particularly in the US...
March 26, 2004 -
Canadian Web sleuths save U.S. girl in
porn case - By CHRISTIE
BLATCHFORD, GlobeAndMail.com, TORONTO
— In the Raleigh-Durham area of North
Carolina is a little girl who owes her
life -- perhaps literally -- to seven
Toronto police officers. They are members
of the child exploitation branch of the
force's sex crimes unit, and last
December, they managed to extract
information enough from a collection of
searing child-porn images posted on an
international police website to identify
the six-year-old's school...
November 11, 2004 -
A chance for peace, or more conflict? - From The Economist Global Agenda (registration required),
The death of Yasser Arafat was announced on Thursday morning. The
veteran Palestinian leader's passing should bring an opportunity to
revive the deadlocked Middle East peace process. But no one would be
surprised if it were allowed to slip away, SOME are lamenting the
passing of the leader of a great struggle for freedom; others are
celebrating the demise of a notorious terrorist chief. Either way, the
decades-long conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians seems set to
enter a new phase following the death of Yasser Arafat, aged 75, in the
early hours of Thursday November 11th. Tributes of varying sincerity
poured in from around the world, including from politicians who had
regarded the veteran Palestinian leader as, at best, an annoyance.
Israel, however, did not mince words: its justice minister, Tommy Lapid,
expressed “deep hatred for a man who made terrorism a method in the
world.” President George Bush was studiedly neutral, calling Mr Arafat's
death “a significant moment in Palestinians' history...”
April 12 2004 -
Happy spamiversary
- By Paul Festa and Evan Hansen, CNET News.com, On April 12,
1994, a pair of attorneys in Arizona launched a homemade marketing
software program that forever changed the Internet. Hoping to drum up
some business, Laurence Canter dashed off a Perl script that flooded
online message boards with an advertisement pitching the legal services
of Canter & Siegel, the law firm he ran with his then wife, Martha
Siegel. The response was immediate and harsh, offering one of the
loudest signals up to that point that unchecked marketing would not be
tolerated in the new medium. Thousands of recipients registered their
displeasure, and a new label for the burgeoning business of unsolicited
mass Internet advertising was coined...
April 26 2004 -
Googlemania and the enterprise
- By Dan Farber, ZDNet, Google has become what dozens of
companies were once in the boom days of the Internet economy -- a
dot.com darling. Most of the dot.com darlings disappeared after the "new
economy" went bust, but Google, like Yahoo and EBay, is definitely
beyond the boom or bust horizon. Over the last several years the company
has built a solid business, learning from past mistakes and developing a
platform that continues to expand beyond its modest Web search roots...
March 22 2004 -
Man arrested for allegedly extorting Google
- By Jo Best, Silicon.com, A California man has been
charged with extortion, after allegedly making demands for $100,000 from
search giant Google. According to court papers, he claimed that if
Google did not pay, he would release a piece of software to spammers
that would generate fake advertising hits, costing the search giant
millions. The man, Michael Bradley, was so sure that the folks at Google
would pay up, he even turned up at their offices for a meeting to sell
his software. By then, federal law enforcement agents were already on
the case and videotaped the alleged extortion attempt...
July 19 2004 -
Exposing click fraud
- By Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com, Internet marketers
facing higher advertising fees on search networks are becoming
increasingly concerned about a form of online fraud that was thought to
have been contained years ago. The practice, known as "click fraud,"
began in the early days of the Internet's mainstream popularity with
programs that automatically surfed Web sites to increase traffic
figures. This led companies to develop policing technologies touted as
antidotes to the problem. But some marketing executives estimate that up
to 20 percent of fees in certain advertising categories continue to be
based on nonexistent consumers in today's search industry...
July 26 2004 -
Google searches for $135 per share
- By Dawn Kawamoto CNET News.com, Google has set
the long-awaited price range for its initial public offering, putting
itself in line to raise as much as $3.3 billion, according to a filing
with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The search
giant set a price range of $108 to $135 a share, according to the
filing. Based on those per-share numbers and the expected issuance of
24.6 million shares, the search giant hopes to raise between $2.7
billion and $3.3 billion. That would make it among the largest-ever IPOs...
June 10 2004 -
Ronald Reagan, The man who beat communism - From The
Economist print edition, Ronald Reagan was fond of a nap and no
intellectual. Oddly enough, he had what it took, HE WAS, most
clear-thinking people clearly saw, not the right man for the job. To be
president of the United States in the cold-war thunderstorms and
economic frost of the early 1980s, you needed to be somebody with a mind
sharp enough to carve through half a dozen problems at a time, somebody
who could spend 18 hours a day rationally assembling facts and figures,
a natural chairman of all-powerful committees: you needed to be, well, a
clear-thinking person.
Ronald Reagan, as the ghost in this week's sky would
cheerfully admit, was not at all like that. Only a fortnight from 70
when he became president, the one-time minor film actor often glazed
over in cabinet meetings. He disliked, and sometimes dodged, painful
arguments with awkward colleagues. He could fail to notice murky things
going on behind his back. He was a definite non-intellectual. He was
bound, in short, to be a bit of a bumbler...
June 01 2004 -
Pizza man saved by gun, but fired for packin' heat - Prosecutors
call it 'clear case of self-defense,' yet national chain prohibits
carrying firearms, © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com, A pizza deliveryman
won't face charges for fatally shooting a would-be robber several times
when he was approached in a high-crime area, but his employer, Pizza
Hut, has fired him for violating a company policy against carrying
firearms...
...