Wired is reporting in an article on their site that AOL's customer database, Merlin, was broken into by hackers using a combination of old-fashioned social engineering techniques and some adroit hacking. There are some disputes of this, though, in other press reports, including an article in The Register.

Last night, we went to Taberna del Alabardero, a DC restaurant acclaimed to be one of the best Spanish restaurants in the United States. Reviews in the Washingtonian were excellent, but some of the others were mixed, however we found it an excellent experience. There are many ways to judge …

Microsoft today announced its new Rights Management software for Windows 2000 Server. The press release is here, and an article from CNet is here. The basic structure is to provide Windows programs with access (via a programming API to be available later this year) to documents with user- specific, time-specific …

According to an article on the BBC News site, recent changes in the rules for Formula 1 (the world's most popular motor sport) have participants upset about possible safety concerns related to rule changes for the 2003 season.

I was digging through the Herman Miller site looking for a new chair (try eBay), and ran across a link to a QuickTime movie entitled "The Official Chair of Office Hockey". You'll have to go to the Aeron page to check it out (in the right-hand column).

In yet another round of fun Napster-related lawsuits, CNet is reporting in this article that Napster investor Bertelsmann is being sued by a group of music producers for, in effect, causing more piracy by prolonging the life of the now-failed music-swapping service.

An article points us to a study from Harvard University about IP sharing and filtering. Not surprisingly, the study indicates that lots of sites tend to share the same IP addresses, due to the scarcity of IP addresses and the way that most company's provide web hosting. The basic concern …

According to an article on CNet is reporting that the University of Wyoming has been using a program from Audible Magic to watch over file trading on the campus networks. Chances are that most of the traders didn't know this was going on before the announcement, but the administration is …

Just because you don't have enough opportunity to update your venerable web log from your computer, an article in Wired describes a new and growing set of software aimed at bloggers who want to take the show on the road.

According to an article in the Wall Street journal, a number of companies (including Motorola, Samsung, etc.) are working on portable devices that will compute and provide phone communication over WiFi and cellular networks. The article shows one-such device already available in South Korea.

An article on Geek.com is reporting that IBM is going to build their new PPC PDA using the QTopia OS. Basically, it's the same OS as the Sharp Zaurus, and is a Linux with a QT UI. QT is a cross-platform development toolkit from the Norwegian company, Trolltech. It …

According to an article on MacCentral announces new cameras from Nikon. The cameras are upgrades of the COOLPIX family, lower priced and featured than the D-1 and D-100. More pixels, smaller form factors, 256-level metering...

For those who work with PDF files under OS X, there's a cool little feature in version 10.2.4 and later that allows you to do some post-processing on the PDF files after they've been "printed". This article from MacOS X Hints details how to get the menu to …

The folks at MacRumors have created a new Buyer's Guide aimed at giving Mac users (and would-be Mac users) a quick view of which models are getting long in the tooth and which ones are ripe for the picking.

According to an article on Wired is reporting that there is a movement to change the North American numbering plan to 12 digits from the current 10.

Thanks to Tom, I've found a new service for getting flight information. Their data source is the air traffic control network. Go to Flight Explorer and type in the flight number in the box in the lower left hand corner and you'll get all of the flight data you'll ever …

According to an article on CNet, IBM has now powered up and booted the first computer based on the new Power5 architecture of processors. The Power5 is supposed to be available in 2004 and is targeted at high-end servers and low-end workstations.

Doing some XML work? Looking for a good validating parser that will tell you if your data is well- formed and valid? Found it! Elcel has a nice one (that runs under Windows, Sparc, & x86 Linux) at their Software page.

As part of the IEEE standards process, the 802.11g wireless standard is being revised to version 6.1 from the previous 5.0. The proposal is scheduled to become a standard in June, at which point many of the manufacturers of existing pre-standard hardware are stating that they will …

Professor David K. Levine of UCLA has posted drafts of chapters one and two of his new book The Case Against Intellectual Property, co-authored with Michele Boldrin. The first two chapters (in Acrobat format) are a good read about the problems and potential solutions to current-day intellectual property issues. Generally …