BRUCEB NEWS
Security Tip: Are You Available For A Scam?
An email comes in from a co-worker, usually someone higher up than you. It's short, just a few words: "Are you available? I need your help as soon as possible." "Are you available" messages are a scam. Your email response will go to a criminal. The next message will...
VHS STARTS TO FADE AWAY
If you've been holding off on buying a DVD player, the time has come to face facts: VHS is dead. You've already noticed the shift at Costco, always a reliable indicator - the VHS...
AUDIOGALAXY SELLS OUT
AudioGalaxy decided to sell its soul. It settled with the recording industry and agreed to start making a serious effort to filter out copyrighted songs. This permits it to avoid...
XO BANKRUPTCY
XO Communication filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings today, as expected. It’s intended to be a reorganization with no disruption in services. Covad Communications went...
RECORD COMPANIES: FEAR OF MUSIC
The recording industry continues its relentless campaign to prevent us from actually hearing any of its products played out loud. The latest is the proposal floated in a cover...
ANTIVIRUS VENDORS AND SLEAZY PRESS RELEASES
The news from McAfee is alarming: a new virus can infect .JPG picture files; potentially no file type is safe to exchange in e-mail; maybe we should never share .JPGs by e-mail....
NAPSTER AND ITS PROGENY
For those of you that want a refresher, here’s a perfectly nice short article about Napster’s rise and fall, the record industry’s horrible online offerings to date, and the...
FRY’S ELECTRONICS AND OUTPOST.COM
This isn’t new, but I just discovered that Fry’s Electronics acquired Outpost.com late last year and is running the Outpost.com web site. Fry’s is famous for low prices, huge...
XO, STARBAND, AND OTHER BAD NEWS
The extraordinary collapse of the telecommunications industry continues apace. XO Communications has been trying to engineer an infusion of capital from two lenders that would...
CHINA BELIEVES EVERYTHING IT READS
In case you missed this in the paper a couple of days ago, here’s a story that’s absolutely priceless. The Beijing Evening News (circulation: 1.25 million) printed a...
THE END OF FREE E-MAIL
The days of free e-mail are drawing to a close. Yahoo, Lycos, and Hotmail have all started to change their free e-mail accounts to make it more likely that users will pony up a...
CONTROL OF BROADBAND
Salon is doing an extensive series of articles about the consolidation of power and ownership in the media world. This week’s article is particularly interesting. It describes...
KAZAA SHARED FOLDERS
If you’re using Kazaa, Morpheus, AudioGalaxy, or any of the other file sharing programs, make sure you’re not sharing more than you intend. A study released today concluded that...
VERISIGN DOMAIN REGISTRATION SCAM
I got a piece of junk mail that was more slippery than most. Keep an eye out for it. In a plain white envelope was a plain white piece of paper that was formatted to resemble an...
REPLAYTV SPYING ORDER OVERTURNED
A federal court overturned the order entered last month that required Sonicblue to write and install software to monitor what its customers were watching and report that...
MEDIA JUKEBOX VERSION 8
During the last year, not much has changed about the software designed to play .mp3 files. The market leader is MusicMatch Jukebox, which has such a quirky interface that I find...