BRUCEB NEWS
Tech Tidbits
As we enter into the twentieth year third month of the global pandemic, technology news has slowed down as much as everything else. There aren't many things to tell you about! Here are a few bits of tech news that have caught my eye in the moments between bouts of...
COPY PROTECTED CDS CAN CRASH COMPUTERS
More copy protected CDs are hitting the market - especially in Europe, but clearly the US is next. They corrupt the CD in ways that make many of them unplayable in a computer or...
INTERNET PRIVACY AND APATHY
In March Yahoo changed its marketing policy. With no warning, it suddenly granted itself the right to send advertising spam, postal mail, and telemarketing phone calls to tens of...
KAZAA LITE
Kazaa has taken over as the best music sharing program - most users, best selection, best interface. But Kazaa has been rightfully attacked for including other "spyware" programs...
STAR WARS REVIEWS
Pick your flavor of early reviews of Attack of the Clones. On one side: a very favorable review from BBC News. Sample: "This is quite possibly the best Star Wars of the series....
STATES BAIL OUT ON MODULAR WINDOWS DEMO
The states in the Microsoft trial screwed up in a big way yesterday. The lawyers blew it, and the states may have blown a hole in their case. The states have been insisting that...
ROBERT HEINLEIN AND THE RECORDING INDUSTRY
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years , the...
BACKUP SOFTWARE
Stomp Software is a new name to me. They've partnered with Veritas (well-known at the enterprise level) to produce BackupMyPC, the latest iteration of Veritas Backup Exec. It's...
HIGH-TECH HOAX
I love stories about gullible people duped by magic tricks. It makes me feel proud to be a skeptic. A Florida newspaper is running a series about Madison Priest, a good ol' boy...
MICROSOFT AND MONEY
Microsoft acknowledges what analysts have also been pointing out - that its growth will start to slow over the next few years. But Microsoft's cash on hand is starting to raise...
THE DEATH OF INTERNET RADIO
The death of Internet radio is three weeks away. No fooling. The recording industry collaborated with the media conglomerates that own virtually all conventional radio stations...
THE AOL-TIME WARNER BLACK HOLE
Last week, AOL Time Warner announced that it was writing off $54 billion of its net worth as being completely unsaleable and without any value whatsoever. This embarrassing loss...
HOW ORACLE SCREWED CALIFORNIA
It's either sad or amusing to read how Oracle suckered the state of California into buying millions of dollars of software and licenses that the state didn't need, covering more...
PRIVACY: BANKS vs. MICROSOFT & AOL
A recent study discovered that almost half of you would trust banks to handle online wallets, but most people would not trust Microsoft or AOL to hold the same financial...
CITIZENS FOR A MURDER-FREE AMERICA
Any Philip Dick fans out there? Take a look at Precrime, the web headquarters of Citizens for a Murder-Free America. Precrime proposes using a revolutionary new technology called...
KLEZ VIRUS
There's yet another e-mail virus running around loose, the "Klez" worm. It's finding a lot of unprotected systems, and causing the usual problems. Here's an article about the...