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May 6, 2003
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South Korean Group Sues Microsoft Over Slammer
In a sign of users' increasing frustration with the security shortcomings of many software applications, a civic group in South Korea has made good on their threat to file a lawsuit against Microsoft Corp.'s Korean subsidiary, a Korean ISP and the country's Information Ministry.
The suit is the direct result of the havoc caused by the SQL Slammer worm in January. The worm infected thousands of machines all over the world running Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 software, but it hit South Korea particularly hard. Some ISPs in the country were knocked off-line for extended periods of time thanks to huge amounts of network traffic generated by the worm. Damage in the U.S. was mostly limited to smaller network outages, but at least one bank's ATM machines were affected, as was the 911 system in one locality.
Slammer exploited a known flaw in the database software for which Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., had released a patch six months prior to the outbreak of the worm. But that apparently wasn't sufficient to satisfy the plaintiffs in the Korean lawsuit. The People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, suing on behalf of more than 1,500 Internet users, 70 Internet café owners and an online shopping site, says that Microsoft is at fault for allowing the vulnerability into the SQL Server software in the first place, according to a story in the Korean-language Chosun Ilbo newspaper. The group had been threatening to file the suit for several months.
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Windows Server 2003 better than Linux
It will come as no surprise that the tests involved, although performed by an independent lab, were sponsored by Microsoft. But that doesn't change their basic validity. The tests were all about performing that most basic of tasks, file serving. And Windows thrashed Linux.
The combatants fighting it out were Windows Server 2003, Red Hat 8.0 and Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1. The arena was serious enterprise, one of the machines used in the test was an 8 processor HP Proliant DL760 Xeon system with 4GB of RAM. The Linux systems were running Samba. The test was performed using ZD NetBench 7.02. And Windows Server 2003 gave the Linux system a right good stuffing, almost performing at twice the speed in many tests.
The results definitely make Windows Server 2003 look good but we're sure that Linux aficionados will find plenty of faults in the 21-page PDF report on VeriTest. The only thing that Linux would win on in the report is price and even that's not certain with Red Hat Advanced Server.
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Berkeley Law students draft Internet privacy bill
For many Internet users, logging onto the Web and anonymously posting their thoughts in a chat room, Web log, or other interactive site is part of the allure of the World Wide Web.
But while the Web may appear to be an open and free area for comment, a controversial remark posted about a company or individual by a Web user can quickly draw Web users into a complex and protracted legal battle.
A legislative bill that will be considered tomorrow (Tuesday, May 6) by the judiciary committee of the California state Assembly would address the matter by providing Internet users with more legal protections.
The bill, AB 1143, is being sponsored by Assemblyman Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto). It was drafted by a law clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall) that is serving as legal counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based Internet civil liberties organization pushing for such legislation.
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Geeks build PC into styrofoam female body
A crazy sad enthusiast has built a PC into a styrofoam female body, in a dubious cloning experiment that begs questions about geeks everywhere.
Like, for example, couldn't they try getting a wife rather than carving out styrofoam models of blonde chicks in their World Wide Web enabled garrets, frinstance?
The "woman type PC", romantically called ERN001, is featured in a Japanese monthly PC magazine and the latest edition shows what was on the enthusiast's mind.
After building the endoskeleton and fixing the motherboard straight where the intestines should be, the crazy geek installed a DVD in the model's lower abdomen, painted the foam and kitted blonde ERN001 out with pseudo-military clothes, top and red gloves, and connected her to a monitor.
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Europe ready for Mars
Europe's first mission to Mars will blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, 2 June.
The Soyuz-Fregat launcher carrying the Mars Express orbiter, and its lander, Beagle 2, is expected to leave the launch pad at 2345 local time (1745 GMT).
The launch date and time were set following a successful review of all the spacecraft's systems last week.
Mars Express will be leaving Earth slightly later than originally planned because engineers needed extra time to fix a problem in one of the probe's electronic modules.
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Japan's masked politician
A Japanese wrestler-turned-politician has insisted on wearing a brightly patterned mask - his trademark in the ring - for his new job as a local councillor.
Critics say it is "indecent" that Masanori Murakawa refuses to reveal his face.
But on Tuesday - his first day of work at the local assembly in Morioka, northern Japan - Mr Masanori's mask was resolutely on display.
Councillors are due to meet on Wednesday to decide whether he should be allowed to continue wearing his mask when the assembly formally convenes.
But he is better known in Japan as "The Great Sasuke", a wrestler with a penchant for covering his face with vinyl masks.
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PeopleSoft Announces More Linux Support
PeopleSoft Inc. on Tuesday is expected to announce additional support for its business software on International Business Machines Corp products that run the free operating system Linux.
"We're teaming with IBM to deliver PeopleSoft applications in an Linux environment, which gives our customers greater choice," Rick Bergquist, PeopleSoft's chief technology officer, said in a statement.
PeopleSoft's business software automates such things as accounting, purchasing and customer service. Its users already can operate some programs with Web browsers, Web servers and database servers that run Linux.
With this latest announcement, PeopleSoft adds Linux support for Web application servers, or software that helps users build, run and integrate Web-based applications.
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First CellularRAM samples shipping
The race to find the next big thing in memory technology has another twist on its path. Mobile phones often use static RAM (SRAM) because of its useful low power requirements; it doesn't need constant refreshing like DRAM. Now Cypress, Infineon and Micron have started sampling CellularRAM, a pseudo SRAM (PSRAM).
SRAM is expensive because it normally uses 6 transistors for every bit of memory. That makes it effectively 6 times the price of DRAM. But the latter's constant need to be refreshed means that it is power hungry and that's the last thing you want in a battery operated device when you're looking for long stand-by times.
PSRAM isn't quite SRAM but it's close enough. It uses a transistor and a capacitor per bit of memory and can do its own refreshing. But that means no extra refresh circuitry to chew your battery, as long as the PSRAM has power, it stays refreshed.
The fact that PSRAM is so much simpler than SRAM to produce and takes up much less silicon should lead to it being much cheaper eventually.
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Wal-Mart banishes men's magazines
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it has stopped selling men's magazines Maxim, Stuff and FHM because the retail chain has received complaints from customers about their racy content.
A Wal-Mart spokeswoman told the New York Times that the company made the decision after "listening to our customers and associates. I know we've heard on at least one of those magazines, they weren't pleased with the offering."
The Times said that the company's standards and the magazines' content have not changed, but the firm has been under pressure from Christian groups in the past for its sale of certain magazines.
In the past, Wal-Mart has refused to sell CDs that carry warning labels about explicit lyrics. Instead, the store sells sanitized versions of albums, with some songs omitted or covers redrawn to pass muster with the chain's buyers, the paper added.
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Harry Potter "Order of the Phoenix" Stolen From Publisher--Left in Field
One of the publishing world's most closely guarded secrets -- the latest book in the best-selling Harry Potter series -- has been let out of the bag and left in a field.
Publishers of author J.K. Rowling's latest boy wizard saga launched an investigation Tuesday after The Sun newspaper reported that advance copies of the much-anticipated fifth instalment were found in a field in eastern England.
They believe two first editions of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'' -- due for release June 21 -- had been stolen from a nearby printworks.
"The matter is currently under investigation, with the suspicion that theft is involved,'' Rowling's publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing, and agent said in a joint statement.
Bloomsbury said it had not reported the incident to police and declined to give more details, Reuters reported.
The Sun said the copies were found Monday by a 40-year-old father-of-two as he walked near a printworks in the small town of Bungay, Suffolk. It said the man contacted the paper and handed over the books.
The copies will be returned to the publishers and no details of the plot will be printed in the paper, the Sun said.
Printer Clays Ltd. -- located close to where the discovery was made -- is printing hundreds of thousands of copies of the new book. The company declined to comment on the incident, Reuters reported.
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