CogitoVeritas.com

The U.S. Navy is developing a service-wide policy regarding the acceptable use of information technology. The policy will affect approximately 900,000 users, including Navy and Marine Corp service members, civilian employees, and contractors. The policy, which is scheduled to be effective during the first quarter of 2005, is designed to guide users and personnel managers in applying consistent rules of operation. The policy will affect all IT devices, including desktops, notebooks, handhelds, cell phones, and fax machines.

 

Google, the search engine company, won a federal court battle against Geico, the insurance company, today that allows the search engine to sell online advertisements tied to keywords that are also trademarked company names. Geico claimed that Google should not be allowed to display advertisements for rival insurance companies when the Geico name is used as a search keyword. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema disagreed.

 

Google, Inc., flush from a solid IPO, is serving five of the leading libraries by offering to pick up the tab for scanning the hallowed collections and making the resulting texts available online, in many cases, at no charge to the reader. The new project, Google Print, offers an entirely new way of conducting library research.

 

Microsoft Corp.’s MSN service debuted a free blogging service, this past week. Users can create a new weblog (blog) and be posting to their online journal in less than five minutes. This is proof positive that blogging is a mainstream activity.

 

Following a major digital brouhaha, Lycos Europe has turned off it’s antispam screensaver, named Make Love Not Spam. The service’s website urges users to stay tuned; however, it’s unclear whether the service will be restarted, after savvy users realized what the service really did.

 

The City of Philadelphia has concluded negotiations with Verizon Communications, and will move forward with plans to develop a metropolitan Wi-Fi network, even though a new Pennsylvania law allows telecommunication carriers from blocking such projects.

 

Secure Sockets Layer, the fundamental security service for the world’s websites and many networks is at risk in the face of a new spyware application, Marketscore, an application that promises to speed up web browsing. The software is bundled with iMesh P2P (peer-to-peer) software and is popular with university students.

 

Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) are vulnerable to infection by the Bofra worm, downloaded through website banner ads.

 

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is developing its own, private, computer network and web, a la the Internet and World Wide Web. The new computer network web, called the Global Information Grid (GIG) will provide military commanders a “God’s-eye view” of the battle. The GIG will enable real-time digital communication and data dissemination through a familiar technology, similar to the World Wide Web, anytime and anyplace, under any conditions, with requisite security.

 

I have a favor ask of you. I am researching how the personal computer (PC) has affected the face of America. Specifically, I am interested in the PC’s effect on American culture and attitudes. For example, how has access to a PC affected behavior and expectations? To do this , I’m asking for your experiences that were brought on by the PC revolution.

 

Verizon Communications has doubled the speed of consumer DSL service is a dozen east coast states. If the market reacts well, the remaining states will receive the same faster DSL alternative. The additional bandwidth is a reaction to Comcast’s doubling the speed of its cable broadband service, earlier this year. The extra bandwidth will be a big hit with online gamers and professionals who work from home.

 

Glitzy graphics showcasing this year’s latest technological developments, surveys and questionnaires supported by product literature designed to help prospects select the models that best fit their needs or technical support FAQs and repair diagrams that facilitate self-repair and minimize the number of request for telephone and onsite technical service: which of these services is the focus of the company’s website? Maybe, all three?

 

Gustav Hendrickson, the current Director of the ECHO, the Electronic Communications & Honesty Organization, will announce tomorrow that all new computers delivered after March 2004 should include free e-mail service.

 

Marcy Levitas Hamilton, a media corporation CEO, has filed suit and is seeking to class action status for her complaint against Microsoft. Hamilton says that the software giant is responsible for a cracker’s being able to steal her Social Security number’s using a flaw in Microsoft’s software.

 

The State of Massachusetts has implemented a policy toward software purchases that favors open-source applications and open standards for state-owned computers.

 

Many of us may remember sneaker nets (sharing files using floppies distributed around the office), and most of us have used local area networks and electronically shared files. If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re using the Internet, a global network that distributes files (webpages, binary file transfers, and peer-to-peer file sharing). However, until recently, the distribution of data on each of these networks were manually controlled, the users choosing which files to distribute, the networks serving only as transmission media for data that are processed by individual users, separated from one another.

 

Start-up MagiQ Technologies, from Somerville, Massachusetts, has released the first commercial implementation of quantum cryptography, the much-heralded solution to the perfect encryption cipher. Theoretically, encryption ciphers created using quantum physics are unbreakable.

 

Must everything eventually be available for free on the Internet? Steve Lohr, in an article in today’s New York Times, argued that all public digital data will eventually be free on the Internet, because it’s too difficult to protect the intellectual property (IP) rights of the authors.

 

Google, the net’s most popular search index is five years old today. Google is named for googol, 1 followed by 100 zeros — a pretty big number. While Google doesn’t quite have a googol pages under index, it does have a bunch, 3,307,998,701, as of this afternoon. The site handles over 200 million search queries each day.

 

The SCO Group plans to send invoices this month to companies using Linux, the open source operating system that’s popular with IT professionals and computer-savvy users. Initial pricing starts at $699 for a single-processor Linux server.