The latest AIM beta for Windows from AOL contains "Encrypted IM". Following the "more info" link, we find out some more tidbits about how this is to work. It looks like the end-to-end pieces are part of AOL's move to offer enterprise AIM services on their existing infrastructure. Staying away …

There may be some hope for the music industry yet. According to an article in the New York Times, Warner Music considered the sharing of music in the negotiations with iTunes and explicitly decided to allow it for rendezvous during the contract negotiations. But, I found more interesting some of …

SlashDot pointed to an article by Bob Frankston on ZDNet describes how he thinks that Bluetooth is dead because it is basically a one trick pony in comparison to 802.11. I, on the other hand, think that until we find a better way to mesh wireless networks for different …

An article in EETimes comments on the evidence that SCO has shown to certain journalists and analysts under non-disclosure. The article details 80 lines of code that are identical, even to the comments. This brings to mind a few questions for me: What is the significance of 80 lines in …

There has been a lot of writing recently about anti-spam techniques. Much of it very recently has centered upon whether or not to employ challenge-response systems in order to create white-lists on a per user basis. My question is, why not use a distributed version of this? It seems to …

Rejoice! Number portability is at hand! The Washington Post reports that Friday an appeals court ruled against cellular providers who wanted to delay or stop the required implementation of the FCC ruling by November 2003. At this rate, I'll finally be able to get rid of my second cellular account …

Broker and financial management powerhouse Merrill Lynch states in a story from CNET that they are finding significant savings by making use of Linux as a key operating system in their deployment. Not only have they saved a bunch of money on the server side, but they are going to …

According to an article on CNET, file sharing company Altnet may begin suing competitors for "violating" it's recently-licensed patent for finding identical files based on a hash of their contents. This may eventually win the prize for stupidest patent when such a prize is given, considering the whole purpose of …

Three french cellular companies have agreed to allow roaming on their WiFi networks throughout France, according to this article from IDG Hong Kong. The move is not too surprising considering the European GSM philosophy of having everybody roam on everybody else's network for reasonable prices. Unlike AT&T in the …

This is just an off-the-wall thought on my part. But, with Cable and Wireless getting out of the US, it makes me wonder if they're going to ask MCI to take their internet services business off of their hands. You remember, the one that MCI was forced to sell to …

Local Fairfax company PromiseMark was acquired this past week, according to an article in the Washington Post. They were acquired by a credit monitoring firm and the acquirers are moving the company (sans the CEO) to California. I first met these guys when I was at Inter.net and they …

An article from CNET reports that Sun is preparing a huge marketing blitz (advertising and awareness-raising badging) for its Java technology. But, this leaves me wondering if the folks at Sun are still missing the point. Comments made in the press release indicate that they will be liberalizing the license …

According to an article on CNET, SCO announced Thursday that it has an amendment to the contract with Novell that grants them the copyrights to most of what they need to prosecute their case against IBM and the Linux community. Although this bolsters the rationale for SCO's right to actually …

An article on LinuxJournal includes a copy of the NDA required by SCO of anyone who wants to look into their claims about trade secret/patent/copyright infringement vis-a-vis Linux. It's not surprising to me that this NDA is as rock solid as it appears to be. In particular, they …

A number of articles this morning, including this one from BBC News talk about Fast TCP. Unfortunately, the examples that each of them give, about TCP breaking transmissions up into 1500-byte morsels, sending one packet and waiting for an acknowledgment before sending the second one are patently untrue, so what …

According to this article from CNET, SCO has reopened their German web site, with content modified to comply with the court order there.

CNET reports that it has obtained a copy of the Asset Purchase Agreement between Novell and SCO. From this, they have determined that Novell explicitly kept all patent and copyright rights, but there is some question from the contract as to whether the rights to enforce the copyright conveyed to …

You've all seen them, they're the 10-digit numbers on the covers or backs of every book published in recent memory. Sometimes, they are incorporated into UPC or EAN bar codes (used for product identification at check-out). The official ISBN information is covered on the International ISBN Agency web site. You …

CBS Markecensoredch is reporting that Palm is purchasing Handspring for $169M. Press release from Handspring is here.

An interesting article from Wired writes about how G8 protesters tried to get their message out about what was going on by using the web, laptops, and smart phones. This whole idea makes an interesting comment about the web and freedom of the press. As long as there are opportunities …