Each weekend we highlight the most relevant stories Wired News has covered. To find out what's coming up, jump to The Week Ahead.
Busting the stereotype: A study of 80 computer virus writers concluded that most have normal social lives, get along just fine with family and friends, and generally mean no harm. Amazingly, the brainy young men who do this kind of thing just don't realize how easily their creations can spread and do damage.
The tech vote: The tussle to win hearts, minds, and pocketbooks in Silicon Valley was in full swing this week, even with elections more than a year off. Republicans countered a Marc Andreessen-hosted Gore event by publicizing their tech-friendliness, which they say stems from a general hands-off approach to the tech industry.
Pac-Man first: He did it for glory and fame, yes, but mostly he did it for country. That would be Billy Mitchell, a Floridian who, over the Fourth of July weekend, played his way to a perfect score at Pac-Man. Left in the dust were some Canadian challengers -- "Johnny-come-latelys [who] needed to be put in their place," as Mitchell put it.
Boycott called off: Yahoo gave and gave until GeoCities members were satisfied that the company wasn't laying claim to their Web pages. Some GeoCities users had turned their pages gray -- or simply abandoned their sites -- to protest the Yahoo TOS, but organizers of those efforts say all is now well.
Music to their ears: Musicmaker.com, which had all of US$20,000 in sales in the first three months of the year, hit Wall Street this week. After day one, its capitalization was more than $600 million.
Pay up: ETrade was ordered to fork over $18,000 to a California man who said a computer glitch kept him from making a stock purchase through the online brokerage. Eighteen grand won't break ETrade, of course, but the company might face substantial liability if it loses a major lawsuit stemming from similar claims filed after its infamous October 1997 trading problems.
Numbers up for grabs: Tucked deep in a sprawling juvenile crime bill is a provision that basically requires judges to approve police surveillance of numeric pager data. Not even the Justice Department thinks this post-Columbine rush to just do something is a good idea.
Spam wars: An anti-spam report got Sanford Wallace booted offline for 10 days, so this week he filed a lawsuit against the fink. The former "King of Spam," who claims he's gone straight, said the shutdown crippled his business. Spam activists, meanwhile, worried that a successful suit could have a chilling effect on their work.
Don't take 'em to court: Tech executives can apparently breath a little easier these days. A federal appeals court made it harder for investors to sue company honchos for failing to disclose information about financial troubles.
Take my business, please: Online textbook sellers are driving campus stores out of business -- but the colleges said they don't mind. Less hassle for them, and besides, some of the sellers even give the schools a slice of the revenue pie.
Drano for trade routes: Giants from finance, shipping, and retailing expressed hope that an electronic network will soon replace the current export-import maze that eats up $420 million a year in processing costs. Citibank, American President Lines, Federated -- they're all backing Bolero International, which may not eliminate shipping disputes, but at least will transform them from paper to electronic.
Economic reality: Domain-name speculation may not be so lucrative after all. Sellers said the problem is that people don't understand just how incredibly valuable names such as "coupleup.com" might be. So on eBay and elsewhere, thousands of names sit unbid upon.
Not everyone's cup of tea: After just one issue, the literary elite declared the new Starbucks-backed magazine Joe "middlebrow" and without "any editorial center or heart." Writers, including Mark Leyner and Josh Quittner, disagreed. And in the end, of course, the rag's fate will be determined by readers.
Doing good: America Online said it will launch a hub for nonprofit organizations, but a nonprofit itself may already have beaten AOL to the punch. Guidestar is posting disclosure forms for more than 300,000 IRS-sanctioned nonprofits and, like the upcoming AOL site, it aims to help individuals find out about volunteer and donation opportunities.
Crazy 'bout the Net: With ever-increasing media coverage of the Internet, more patients who are predisposed to psychosis are weaving the Internet into their delusions. So said psychiatrists, who noted a similar phenomenon when communism was a national fear, and when humans first began traveling to space.
Boosting ADSL: A UN group agreed on standards for the next-generation Internet access technology for speeding data over standard copper phone lines. This could mean a vast expansion in ADSL's adoption, since consumers will soon be able to go to stores such as CompUSA and Fry's and buy modems that meet the new guidelines.
Almost the real thing: A Scottish company introduces an ATM prototype that operates by voice and iris recognition. That means no card or keyboards to fuss with. It also means that the bank has important identifying characteristics of its customers -- and that's the part that worries privacy advocates.
Cloning Redmond: Run Windows NT applications without Microsoft software? That's the idea behind PetrOS, a bare-bones operating system software program. A pre-release version will go out to developers next month, and the Australian company behind the project has its fingers crossed that Microsoft won't sue.
Wired isle: Global Crossing said it will run two alternately routed cables between Ireland and Land's End, England, linking the island to its European fiber network and its existing transatlantic cable. The connection should help Ireland attract new e-commerce ventures and retain the many tech companies that already do business there.
Now do it: Marketers promised to do better in protecting consumer privacy, announcing a new "Privacy Promise." The Direct Marketing Association has more than 4,500 members, so if the companies do emphasize "notice" and "opt-out," as they say they will, this latest pledge could be meaningful. But that's a big "if."
Caldera v. Microsoft: Microsoft continued to bring forth motions to toss out Caldera's antitrust suit, and a Utah judge continued to brush them aside. But Judge Dee Benson did schedule another hearing in August to discuss further Microsoft's claim that parts of Caldera's case should be thrown out because Utah's statute of limitations ran out in 1992.
No escaping it: In London, the Umberto Giannini hair salon began offering swiveling touch-screen monitors that provide Net and email access to working women who are too busy for a leisurely beauty treatment. The question is, are they all finding their way here? THE WEEK AHEAD
12 to 16 July, San Diego: ATM, MPLS, IP, VPN, xDSL, SONET, frame relay, gigabit ethernet. Yikes, there's a lot to know about high-bandwidth networking. Broadband Year 99 promises to get you up to speed. At the Convention Center.
13 July, Washington, DC: The House Armed Services Committee meets to take testimony for HR 850, a bill that would relax export controls on encryption. Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI Director Louis Freeh, and the Clinton administration's point man on encryption, William Reinsch, are all expected to appear. Meanwhile, a Senate bill is also making its way through the legislative grinder.
13 July: Last week's earnings announcement was from Yahoo, and the Internet bellwether came in big, with revenues more than doubling. Now we hear from Intel.
14 to 16 July, Memphis, Tennessee: With new technologies, staying plugged in and making all the right moves doesn't mean you'll end up in the right place. So what's a corporate senior manager to do? Tech-innovation guru Clayton Christensen answers the question at the Disruptive Innovation conference, sponsored by the Gilder Group. At the Peabody Hotel.
