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Weekly Happenings about & affecting the Computer World

 

 

Flawed software vulnerable via Web

SEATTLE (AP) - Flaws in the Microsoft Office software suite could be used by pranksters or cybercrooks through e-mail or rogue Web sites to retrieve, alter or erase data in computers used by millions of people. Some newer Compaq and Hewlett-Packard computers that can be upgraded automatically over the Internet also contain flaws that could be similarly exploited, but only over the Web, security experts have found. Attempts to take advantage of either set of vulnerabilities would not be detected or prevented by antivirus software, but there is no evidence that such mischief has occurred, said Russ Cooper of Lindsay, Ontario, in a telephone interview Saturday. Cooper, who runs a Windows NT security mailing list called NTbugtraq, said Microsoft developers expect to have an Office fix ready as early as a day or two. (That fix is available)

Fees will subsidize school Internet

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A federal program that adds fees to telephone bills to subsidize cheaper Internet hookups for schools and libraries was largely upheld by a federal appeals court Friday. Commissioner Susan Ness of the Federal Communications Commission called the ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals "a huge win for America's children." And Vice President Al Gore, whose support led opponents of the program to dub it "the Gore tax," also applauded the decision as a victory for America. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling was not a total victory for the FCC, which implements the program. The court said the FCC can only assess the fees on interstate telecommunications services, not in-state services.

SEC updates Y2K readiness database

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday it has updated the database on its Web site that includes Year 2000 readiness reports that brokerage firms, mutual funds and transfer agents must file. The database contains more than 27,000 reports that describe the companies' state of Year 2000 preparedness, their costs for fixing the problem and their contingency plans. The SEC adopted rules under which it will go to court starting Dec. 1 to shut down brokerage firms that are not ready for the millennial date change. In a 5-0 vote, the commissioners set a target date of Aug. 31.

Virtual city offers vision of L.A.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Bill Jepson drives through a canyon of skyscrapers under a partly cloudy sky, passing the shiny black tubular towers of the landmark Bonaventure Hotel, concrete office buildings, neon-lit shops and posh apartments. But the landscape disappears when he wanders south of 9th Street. No buildings. No roads. No people. The void doesn't worry Jepson - his digital construction workers just haven't finished building that neighborhood on the powerful machines in their computer lab. Using bits instead of bricks, the Virtual L.A. team is slowly rebuilding the City of Angels to within inches of accuracy. Once an area is finished, it can be walked, driven or flown through just as freely and realistically as in the real world.

Internet pornography sites thriving

BOSTON (AP) - When Internet pornographers allegedly tried to use Nancy Kerrigan's fame to sell pictures on their Web site, all they needed was the correct spelling of her name. By inserting it 32 times in a block of text called a "metatag" used by Internet search engines, they were able to fool the search engines into believing the site was about the medal-winning Olympic skater. Some fans curious about Kerrigan found themselves directed to pornographic pictures on the site - though Kerrigan's name was never seen there and there certainly were no nude pictures of the skater. Last month, Kerrigan, 29, sued the site's operators and it has since disappeared from the Internet. Her success has hardly had a chilling effect on the thriving Internet pornography industry, where even small sites can make up to $10,000 per month.

Sega has high hopes for Dreamcast

NEW YORK (AP) - Sega Enterprises Ltd.'s future in the home video-game business may come down to one thing: Will its new Dreamcast video gaming system be a best seller? Already, there are signs that consumer demand is there. The company was expected to announced on Monday that it has taken more than 200,000 pre-orders for the $199 new system, which will hit store shelves Sept. 9. While the orders are coming in well ahead of expectations, analysts still warn that the initial hype over the new console doesn't guarantee a long-term hit for the company that once led the video game business.

Another GREEDY politico jumps up!

Bozo ain't dead after all!
Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., proposed a bill that would levy a 5% federal sales tax on all goods sold over the Internet or through catalogs. The "Sales Tax Safety Net and Teacher Funding Act" would use the taxes raised to create a trust fund, and remit the money collected back to the states in the form of grants for elementary and secondary school teacher salaries. The huge jump in Internet sales - Jupiter Communications estimates the 1998 sales figure at $7.1 billion and expects that to jump to $12 billion this year - sparked local and state governments into action.

Bids may hit $1 mln for domain name

LOS ANGELES (AP) - What's in a name? At least $260,000 so far, and maybe more than $1 million if the name is Drugs.com. Eric MacIver, a 21-year-old Internet entrepreneur in Mesa, Ariz., stands to reap the windfall from drug companies' bidding for rights to the Internet domain name to which he owns the exclusive rights. Intense bidding under way for the name highlights the competition among companies seeking the right name to lure customers in the increasingly crowded world of electronic commerce. By Wednesday afternoon the highest confirmed bid was $260,000, but several large drug companies and well-heeled speculators have expressed an interest in bidding before the auction closes Friday evening.

E-commerce means
businesses' savings

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Cisco Systems saved $250 million last year distributing software to its business customers over the Internet. U.S. banks saved $18 billion with online transactions. General Electric has lowered supplier costs by using online auctions. The savings provided by e-commerce are starting to add up. A new study being released Thursday by Giga Information Group predicts that corporations around the world will save up to $1.25 trillion - close to France's entire gross domestic product - doing business over the Internet by 2002. Those savings range from reducing the amount of people it takes to process a sales request to making it easier and less expensive to order office supplies online.

Elway plans health, money Web site

DENVER (AP) - Retired Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway will team up with a Florida firm in a venture to create an Internet site focused on health, fitness and financial planning, his business manager said. Elway and Boca Raton, Fla.-based JWGenesis Financial Corp. will be partners in MVP.com, a company to be launched at the Super Bowl in January in Atlanta. Elway and JWGenesis executives were to make a formal announcement about the venture in New York. Jeff Sperbeck, Elway's business manager, did not release details of the deal. He described the planned company as "not specifically sports related. It's more of a business venture than a sports venture."

 

Online banking risks persist

WASHINGTON (AP) - Internet banking carries more risk than traditional bricks-and-mortar varieties, yet 44% of the financial institutions in a survey hadn't taken all the steps deemed necessary to limit risks, according to a new report by congressional investigators. The number of banks, thrifts and credit unions offering Internet banking has nearly tripled over the past year, and more than 6 million Americans go online to transfer money between accounts, pay bills, check account or investment balances and apply for loans. Some lawmakers are concerned about the safety and security of online banking and the possibility that consumers could lose money or have their financial privacy breached by hackers.

Internet shopping slips

WESTPORT, Conn. (AP) - The percentage of Internet users making a purchase online decreased slightly in the second quarter, the first drop in a year, according to a survey. The percentage of people with online access who said they purchased something from a Web site fell to 71% in the second quarter, down from 74% in the first quarter, according to Greenfield Online, a Westport, Conn.-based Internet marketing research firm. The decline followed four straight quarters of increases in online purchasing, according to Greenfield. Greenfield said the decline could be attributed to there being no specific reason to shop. The 90-day period covered by the March tracking study included post-Christmas shopping.

Home & Garden TV plants Web site

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Inspired to start a garden or remodel your kitchen? Home & Garden Television's latest venture promises to tell you how - on the air and on the Web. It's a new digital network called Do It Yourself, or DIY, that will go "on-air, on-line" simultaneously with an integrated Web site Sept. 30. DIY aims to give the country's estimated 128 million do-it-yourselfers more than just the basics for home projects. It offers both how-to cable programming and an Internet guide to everything from building plans to supply sources. That TV-Web convergence is reflected in DIY's motto: "Watch. Click. Print. Do."

Most banks reported OK for Y2K

WASHINGTON (AP) - Ninety-nine percent of the nation's federally insured banks, thrifts and credit unions have completed testing for the Year 2000 computer bug, federal regulators reported Monday. Among the nation's 10,335 banks and thrifts, 10,246 received the highest possible rating for readiness, 78 were told they needed to improve and 11 drew unsatisfactory ratings, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Meanwhile, only 56 of the nation's 10,807 credit unions had not completed Year 2000 testing as of July 28, the National Credit Union Administration said in a report to Congress last week. Most financial institutions already are using computer systems that are Year 2000 compliant every day without problems, the regulators said, without offering specific numbers. The institutions had to meet a June 30 deadline for testing.

AT&T tests N.Y. local phone service

NEW YORK (AP) - AT&T is quietly offering local telephone service to some consumers in New York, becoming the second major long-distance company to enter that Bell Atlantic market this year. Opting for a more gradual approach than MCI WorldCom, AT&T is looking to sign up just 6,000 of its 5 million New York customers at first, and only in the New York City area and Albany. AT&T said Tuesday it began calling up its long-distance customers in those markets Monday evening, offering a fixed-rate package for local and long-distance service.

IBM wants $11 mln tax refund

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - City schools would be hit hard if IBM wins a lawsuit that could mean a property tax refund of as much as $11 million. The New York-based electronics giant claims Santa Clara County over-assessed three of the company's properties in San Jose by more than $1 billion between 1990 and 1994. "The CEO of IBM...has given a lot of speeches about the poor state of public education, but through a technicality, IBM is now attempting to get a tax refund that would directly impact in a big way schools," county tax assessor Larry Stone said Monday. "Our commitment to education is indisputable," countered IBM spokesman Kevin McKee.

Top antivirus company's
security invaded

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) - Like firefighters turning their hoses on arsonists inside their own firehouse, Symantec Corp. repulsed hackers who infiltrated the leading antivirus software company. The hackers posted a message on Symantec's Web site early Monday, threatening to disarm the company by unleashing a worm, or a mutating line of destructive code sent via e-mail. Symantec employees in the Netherlands noticed the threat after about an hour, and called executives in San Jose, who deleted the message and repulsed the contagion with Symantec's security software, said a spokesman.

Stolen goods sold over eBay

JACKSON, Mich. (AP) - Two Michigan men have been charged with committing old-fashioned shoplifting with a high-tech twist - fencing thousands of dollars in stolen goods through the Internet auction site eBay. Theodore R. Armstrong, 31, and Neil A. Schultz, 30, were arraigned on racketeering and fraud charges Monday in Jackson County, in south-central Michigan. Each faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Police said the pair shoplifted $40,000 in merchandise from Meijer discount stores in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, then sold about half of it on eBay to buyers around the world. Blackman Township Detective Sgt. David Elwell said the buyers didn't know they were bidding on stolen merchandise.

Net IPO leaps 103%

NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Shares of Internet Capital Group, which develops and invests in Internet commerce companies, more than doubled in the company's first day of trading Thursday, becoming the Nasdaq stock market's biggest advancer. Stock in Wayne, Pa.-based Internet Capital (ICGE) climbed 12-3/8, or 103%, to 24-3/8. Nearly 12 million shares changed hands. The company issued 14.9 million shares, which priced Wednesday at $12.

Emachines unveils iMac knockoff

(CNET) - Upstart PC maker Emachines, which has grabbed headlines and market share by offering ultra-cheap computers, is now training its sights on Apple with a computer that resembles the IMAC. Irvine, Calif.-based Emachines Thursday introduced the eOne PC, an all-in-one computer - a design which incorporates the monitor and PC's electronic guts into one case-that looks like the popular iMac. The eOne has a translucent "cool blue" case, while the original iMac had a two-toned case with "Bondi Blue" accents. Emachines is hoping to avoid a lawsuit from Apple because the shape of the computer is different from the iMac

Barbie turns 40 with figure intact

PITTSBURGH (AP) - She debuted in 1959 as a classic pin-up girl: spiked heels, black and white strapless bathing suit, bee-stung lips, powder blue eye shadow. On Thursday, after 40 years of various incarnations - businesswoman, teacher, rock band member and World Cup soccer jock - Barbie dazzled fans again in a glamorous gown inspired by her first outfit. Accents included black gloves, rhinestone jewelry and a bouquet of 40 miniature pink roses. "She's just so beautiful," said Linda Costello, a 46-year-old accountant who was one of hundreds at the 40th Anniversary Barbie's unveiling in Pittsburgh. The ceremony was the highlight of a three-day National Barbie Convention, a mecca for collectors of the 11-1/2-inch plastic icon that has enraptured millions of young girls.

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