Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Among Iran's hard-liners, little respect for reform-minded. Conservatives, expected to reclaim control of parliament after elections Friday, wield the greatest power in Iran. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 9:46:51 PM    comment []

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Do-Not-Call Registry. A court today upheld the government's right to help people shield themselves from unwanted calls from telemarketers. By David Stout. [New York Times: Business] 6:50:11 PM    comment []

Belgian virus writer arrested, by Will Sturgeon. A female Belgian virus writer who has been waging a very public and protracted war against Sophos anti-virus expert Graham Cluley has been arrested and charged by the authorities. Over the past few years 'Gigabyte' has launched a number of viruses, all identified by a strong anti-Cluley theme. One launched a game on infected PCs which challenged readers to answer questions about the man the author had nicknamed 'Clueless'. Another game required infected users to knock Cluley's head off on a modified coconut shy. However, like many a Western bar brawl, this petty in-fighting threatened to get out of control and draw in innocent bystanders, and Gigabyte made very few friends outside the virus-writing community. 5:53:28 PM    comment []

Reminder, for those who can hear the sound of my voice: Peter Ludlow here in St. Louis, Friday, February 20, in the Emerson Library Conference Room on the campus of Webster University. "Sex, Money, and Media, and the Simulated City: How Virtual Things Become Real." If you're looking for background information: Here's a quick summary of some issues that I wrote in December. Front page story in the New York Times last month A Real-Life Debate on Free Expression in a Cyberspace City: There is little agreement among players of multiplayer Internet games like The Sims Online about the real-world consequences of their online actions. By Amy Harmon. (And here's a Tiny url version of that link in case it breaks in transit.) Ludlow's newspaper, The Alphaville Herald Play Money is author Julian Dibbell's journal of his effort to make his primary source of income the sale of imaginary goods -- before he files his tax return this year. Ludlow edited Crypto Anarchy, Cyber States, and Pirate Utopias, which covers the territory of political philosophy and real experience concerning Internet and cyberspace governance. This should be a link to a CNN story, but it's a premium subscription thing. I haven't seen it. For what must be a more smart alecky take on the situation, you can view The Daily Show's story on the whole thing. SEX AND THE SIMULATED CITY: Virtual world raises issues in the real one: Personal, corporate rights being debated. By Jim Schaefer, Detroit Free Press. Justice has its price in Sim world, by Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe. Raking muck in "The Sims Online": What happens when a virtual newspaper covering virtual events runs afoul of a real corporation? By Farhad Manjoo, in Salon. The Dark Side of Digital Utopia (BBC News Online). On the economic piece of this Online games to generate real - and academic - riches (New Scientist) Fantasy Economics: Why economists are obsessed with online role-playing games. By Robert Shapiro, in Slate. Synthetic World Economic Data, summer 2003 to present. Why Is That Dollar Bill in Your Pocket Worth Anything?. One view is that the value of a dollar comes not so much from government mandate as from social convention. By Hal R. Varian, in the New York Times. (And this url should work if that one doesn't.) The Unreal Estate Boom: The 79th Richest Nation on Earth doesn't exist. The population is 225,000, the hourly wage is $3.42. Welcome to virtual paradise, where a carpenter can live in the castle of his dreams -- if he doesn't mind an 80-hour workweek double-clicking pig iron and hoarding digital dung. By Julian Dibbell, in Wired. And more Iraq: The Computer Game: What "virtual world" games can teach the real world about reconstructing Iraq. By David Plotz, in Slate. Terra Nova, news and opinions regarding the social, economic, legal, psychological, and political aspects of virtual worlds. 12:37:26 PM    comment []

First exploit based on leaked Windows code surfaces (Sydney Morning Herald) The exploit targeted a vulnerability in Internet Explorer and was released by a security researcher who goes by the moniker GTA. A remote user can create a specially crafted bitmap file that, when loaded by Internet Explorer, will trigger an integer overflow and execute arbitrary code. Internet Explorer 5 is vulnerable to this exploit, but not IE 6. The impact of the vulnerability is that a remote user can execute arbitrary code on a target user's computer when the target user's browser loads a specially crafted bitmap file. The code will run with the privileges of the target user. 9:37:19 AM    comment []

Also from Kevin: See Also: Cingular's $41 Billion Offer Wins Bidding for AT&T Wireless [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Ross Sorkin] 9:37:10 AM    comment []

Kevin Taglang reports Cingular Wins AT&T Wireless, Beating Out U.K.'s Vodafone You may have read on the train this morning that Britain's Vodafone was leading the bidding war, but... AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless will announce this morning a $41 billion deal to combine the two companies into the largest wireless carrier in the US with 46 million customers, wireless spectrum in 49 states and coverage in 97 of the top 100 markets. The combined 2003 annual revenues of the two companies would have exceeded $32 billion. "For shareholders, the transaction provides a handsome return on investment," Mr. Zeglis said in the news release. "For customers, this means all the advantages only the nation's largest wireless company can provide. For employees who become part of the combined company, this means more opportunities than they otherwise would have had with AT&T Wireless as a standalone company." Stan Sigman, president and CEO of Cingular Wireless said in the release, "This combination is expected to create customer benefits and growth prospects neither company could have achieved on its own and will mean better coverage, improved reliability, enhanced call quality and a wide array of new and innovative services for consumers." Cingular is a joint venture between SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Anita Raghavan anita.raghavan@wsj.com, Almar Latour almar.latour@wsj.com and Jesse Drucker jesse.drucker@wsj.com] 9:36:54 AM    comment []

Full-Day Kindergarten. Full-Day Kindergarten. [New York Times: Opinion] 7:20:47 AM    comment []

Once Upon a Time in Wisconsin. At lot has changed since John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey campaigned in splendid isolation during the 1960 Democratic primary in Wisconsin. By Bob Greene. [New York Times: Opinion] 7:18:48 AM    comment []

EU said to reject Microsoft settlement proposal. The European Commission has rejected Microsoft's offer to settle its anti-trust case by putting competitors' software on CD-ROMs, sources said. [CNET News.com - Front Door] 7:01:03 AM    comment []

cypherpunks and CC. I hate to point and run, but there's not more than that that I can do Mondays-Wednesdays and I promise to come back to this BUT: there is a great debate about the value of Creative Commons summarized at Ping's page. [Lessig Blog] 6:39:52 AM    comment []

Stories of driving a taxicab in San Francisco courtesy of the Well's pre.vue conference (and a Well member willing to share). 2:44:39 AM    comment []