Each weekend we highlight the most relevant stories Wired News has covered. To find out what's coming up, jump to The Week Ahead.
Gotcha: Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who coauthored the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, was offered the domain senatororrinhatch.com. for US$45,000. This delicious bit of irony was the product of one Joseph Culligan, who said that precious few cybersquatters have made any money off national brand names, and that Hatch missed the real threat -- government-themed names, which the proposed law does not address.
Getting high: So, what's in a name? With bids so far topping out at $260,000, and a Friday evening deadline approaching, auctioneers turned up the hype for drugs.com. "Drugs.com will give the person that buys it the opportunity to be one of the major players in the pharmaceuticals market," said Jeffrey Tinsley, forgetting, apparently, that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
US vs. them: The Postal Service really wants control of .us. Who wouldn't? Could be a very valuable domain. Which is why California congressman Chris Cox, not fond of the PO's monopoly, proposed that private companies oversee the management of .us addresses.
Bottom line-ism: Analysts and investors said they see a market shift toward nerdier Net businesses, ones that do backend stuff -- and make a profit. Apparently, mere promises of future growth and a cool-sounding Net name may not be enough to prime the investment pump anymore.
Valley blues: Seems the long hours required to succeed in the tech industry mean few hours left over for dating and relationships, leaving many a geek with raging career but flaccid personal life. Indeed, "A higher percentage of computer professionals come in with socialization issues," said Dr. William Fitzgerald of the Silicon Valley Marital and Sexuality Center.
And summertime blues: In the hotly competitive market for tech-savvy summer interns, IBM crafted an alluring pitch. Come to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the summer and work on high-profile programming projects "that will actually see the light of day." Extreme Blue, they call it, and the kids love it.
Y2K prep: The Coast Guard said it'll be ready for 21 August, ready for GPS Week Number Rollover. Perhaps as many as a third of the Global Position Satellite receivers will deliver faulty guidance as orbiting satellites hit their version of Y2K -- 1,024 weeks -- and click back to zero. Rescue agencies don't know how many boaters and hikers will be foiled, but they'll be listening extra-careful for maydays, just in case.
Rio truce: Once it was at the center of the struggle between the recording industry and upstart digital music companies. But when the new digital music standard SDMI came along, that fight about the Rio portable digital audio player become irrelevant -- and this week the parties settled. Now we'll see if SDMI really works.
Dear Mr. Chairman: The war between Congress and ICANN continued, with chair Esther Dyson disputing contentions that communications with the Justice Department about the fate of Network Solutions and its domain monopoly were inappropriate. Dyson's point in a letter to committee chairman Tom Bliley: If ICANN is to end monopoly dominance in domain name registration, it has to talk to DOJ.
Bliley, by the way, is also beating down another anti-ICANN track. He's trying to determine whether the White House helped raise money for the fledgling domain name organization -- possibly in violation of federal law.
More, please: The tech industry got a boost last year in the number of foreign workers it could bring into the country, but quickly used up all those new slots. So it was back this week fighting for more, with a new approach from Silicon Valley Democrat Zoe Lofgren in the House, and a simple increase in the old H-1B program from Republican Senator Phil Gramm. Either way stinks, union reps said.
Concrete solutions: Construction workers' idea of hacking might have more to do with a piledriver than with Java, but they're still benefitting from wireless technology. Using a Web-based business application, San Francisco construction companies with widely dispersed crews have used Palm devices to such great effect, they're six months ahead of schedule on a project to provide citywide transport to the Giants' new ballpark.
Golden handcuffs: With more companies including stock options in their compensation package, the question of how to divvy up shares in the event of divorce is getting a lot more attention in Silicon Valley. One consequence, said family law attorneys, is a boomlet in prenups that specify how options get divided.
Prohibition lives: The House of Representatives passed a bill that gives the state attorneys general in 20 states the power to seek a federal injunction against any company violating state alcohol laws. A victory for wholesalers; a defeat for small wineries and fans of their hard-to-find stuff, who were just beginning to see the Internet as a way around distribution problems.
Now we know: All green plants trace back in direct linear fashion to a common ancestor. So said scientists working on the Deep Green project, a six-year effort involving more than 200 plant biologists in 12 countries. "This indicates there's an Eve in the primordial soup," noted one of the co-principal investigators.
Free this, free that: A start-up working with EarthLink announced it would give away iMacs -- but only if you qualify for a First USA credit card and sign on for three years of Net access. Oh, and if you're willing to listen to an advertisement first, yet another start-up is offering free voicemail service.
Net gains: Who needs a multimillion dollar ad budget when you've got a cult following on the Net? That's a question that popped up at the Herring on Hollywood conference this week, as Blair Witch Project, the first wide-release film primarily marketed on the Internet continued pulling in big audiences.
Also at Herring: Hollywood's hot for it. And so are advertisers. No surprise, then, to hear Snap.com's Edmund Sanctis predict that TV as communal experience will largely disappear in the next few years, displaced by TV on demand.
Magic chip: Sun announced development of a new architecture called MAJC, which it said will accelerate multimedia and communications applications written in C, C++, and Sun's Java programming language. Could be a boost for Java, but it's strongest suit might be its adaptability.
Now we've done it: Scientists at the International Botanical Congress in St. Louis said humans had abused the earth so effectively that extinction rates are close to that of previous mass extinctions. Any hope for reversing the trend? Only if we drastically slow the growth in human population, said the biologists.
The public trough: A US federal appeals court upheld the $2 billion program known as "e-rate," which subsidizes Internet connections for schools and libraries. The program set up thousands of connections in its first 18 months, but poor organization and an abundance of red tape left some schools feeling short-changed.
Not all well: Tough week for denizens of the Bay Area-based online community The WELL. First, thousands of members' credit card numbers were stolen. Then in reporting on the theft, a local TV station read excerpts of WELL posts. A no-no for the WELLites, who huffed that it was "rude" and a violation of their privacy.
Film fracas: The MPAA ratings board dealt the film Black and White an NC-17 rating because it contains a three-way makeout scene. Unable to convince the board to overturn the rating, the film's makers took their case to the people via streaming Internet video. "I hope more discussion about this kind of censorship in filmmaking will be the result," said executive producer Hooman Majd.
Advertising's EBay: Take the schmoozing out of the advertising business? That's the heresy proposed by Chris Redlitz, who said he'll transform the $500 billion ad world by using the Web to auction off everything from billboards to prime-time TV slots online.
So young, so rich: Twenty-one-year-old Scott Wainner sold SysOpt.com, the hardware review site he started at age 16, to New York-based EarthWeb. No word on precisely how much Wainner made, but as he put it, the multimillion-dollar deal "is a great opportunity for me in starting my life."
Thrill ride: Computer-aided design is allowing roller-coaster makers to make 'em faster and scarier -- and they have to, designers said. At Paramount's Great America in California, they're hoping that flipping and spinning at 4.7 Gs will thrill a generation desensitized by special effects.
Words count, Word doesn't: "Counsel who use Word are not entitled to a litigating advantage over those who use WordPerfect." That's the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, expressing its pique at Microsoft and the word-counting function that doesn't count footnotes -- allowing a few lawyers to stretch beyond the 14,000-word brief limit.
You're getting sleepy: After almost 40 years of research, scientists found the gene that causes narcolepsy in dogs and mice. The discovery could provide a way to stop humans from falling asleep at the wheel.
Know thine enemy: "As a newbie, you don't want to go into a game and get shot instantaneously," said Matt Merriam, chief operating officer for Rivalworks.com. So the company lets gamers create a profile highlighting their interests and skills, so other players can know how proficient they are. At the same time, it protects users' privacy, to keep spammers at bay. THE WEEK AHEAD
8-13 August, Los Angeles: Siggraph, always the biggee for purveyors in computer graphics, comes to the City of Angeles for its 26th edition. At the Convention Center.
9 August, Washington, DC: State securities regulators issue a report on day trading. In the past, they've been wary, saying that firms have routinely "misled customers by exaggerating the potential profits ... and downplaying the risks of losses."
9 August, Washington, DC: The US Postal Service introduces PC Postage, which it says will allow people to print digital postage directly onto envelopes or labels.
11 August: The moon comes between the sun and Earth pretty frequently -- but as the BBC put it, "this eclipse follows an unprecedented trajectory which takes it across a lot of highly populated land." But remember: Looking directly at the sun is risky business. Follow precautions!
11-14, Berkeley, California: The Association for Computing Machinery holds its fourth Conference on Digital Libraries. Who attends such a gathering? "Theoreticians, collection developers, publishers, researchers, educators, policy makers, practitioners, developers, and designers of systems, interfaces, and related applications." At the Radisson Hotel, Berkeley Marina.
