Each weekend we highlight the most relevant stories Wired News has covered. To find out what's coming up, click over to The Calendar of E-vents.
Judgment Day: US Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson released his findings of fact Friday in the government's antitrust case against Microsoft – and it wasn't pretty for the software giant. Finding that Microsoft used monopoly power to bully competitors, Judge Jackson held Chairman Bill Gates directly responsible. Microsoft promised to keep its dukes up, while competitors, legal experts and pundits unleashed tirades of pointed opinion.
For full coverage of the yearlong saga, see Wired News' US v. Microsoft special report.
Hack extraordinaire: Wired News revealed that two European programmers had produced a utility called DeCSS that can read DVD movie discs and save the file on a hard disk, minus the encryption. Amazingly, the duo was able to break the code because one of the product's licensees inadvertently neglected to encrypt the decryption key.
Once the story broke, speculation moved to how the movie industry might respond. Increasing security is definitely a start, along with changing the security system. Yep, that would mean every DVD console on the marketplace would need a firmware upgrade – but DVD vendors may just have to bite the bullet if they want to protect the format. Then there's the issue of what to do with DVD-ROM drives.
Real uncool: The industry's self-policing organization TRUSTe launched an investigation of RealNetworks after it was revealed that RealJukebox software monitors users' listening habits and other activities, and sends the information and the user's identity to the company.
The man behind the story was Richard Smith, who also fingered the author of the Melissa virus and has been at the center of half-a-dozen of the biggest tech stories this year. His latest revelations set off a firestorm of posts on mailing lists and message boards, as ticked-off Jukebox users pledged to delete Real software from their hard drives.
Meanwhile, sources said results of the Real probe would be released this coming Monday. Could TRUSTe revoke the company's seal of approval? Based on its past rulings, that seemed unlikely.
Auction war: Comparison-shopping site Bidder's Edge flouted eBay's demand to stop listing its items for bid alongside those of Amazon, Yahoo, and other auction sites. A couple of days later, EBay responded by blocking AuctionWatch.com's servers from extracting eBay listings. Ominously, AuctionWatch said it was mulling a three-pronged counterattack on legal, technical, and business fronts.
Throwing in the towel: The founder of a popular online forum for customers said frustrated users appear to be giving up on their plans to order Visors, Handspring's hot PalmPilot alternative. The problems – for both online and telephone sales – include duplicate orders, double credit-card billing, overcharging on sales tax, and being unable to handle the demand for under-supplied colors.
Bad faith: The state of Washington sued Microworkz, alleging that the cut-rate PC-maker continued to take orders for the Webster and iToaster knowing that it was unable to fulfill outstanding orders – and then lied to customers about the status of their orders or refunds. Microworkz said the allegations are old news, and that it's long since cleaned up its act.
They're everywhere: It's the last place you'd expect to find a billboard for a US computer publication – on a winding road to Pokhara, Nepal. But there it was:, "PCWorld. For computer users, an IDG USA publication." "A lot of international tourists go to [Pokhara] for trekking," said an IDG rep, explaining why the company chose such an unlikely placement.
Picking up the pieces: Craig McCaw wants to save one of those big, failing satellite networks. He unveiled an agreement to a group of investors prepared to spend as much as US$1.2 billion to resurrect ICO, which filed for protection from creditors after failing to secure funding from key investors. ICO, founded in 1995, was planning a satelite network for sending voice, data, and faxes.
Making it easy: Election Day came and went in the United States, and the usual pathetic turnout gave new currency to talk of online voting. The election information Web site DNet – as well as politicians, technology advocates, and grassroots organizers – said that if anything can revitalize the nation's interest in voting, it's the Internet.
Lab laps: A Seattle researcher taught rats to swim a particular route. Then he bombarded them with microwaves similar to those emitted by mobile phones. Forced to swim again, the poor rats lost their way. Hardly conclusive evidence that cell phones cause memory loss, observers said – but definitely fodder for further investigation.
We found out: Britannica.com was set to re-launch – but quietly this time. You might recall that when the encyclopedia publisher's site went live with its free content a few weeks ago, it received loads of free publicity, and was inundated with more visitors than it could handle. For this weekend's second go, an exec said, "We're not going to send out a press release."
We have liftoff: SpaceRef launched, hoping to turn the combination of a noncommercial source of inside NASA information and a space-oriented search database into the backbone of a mainstream portal. One of the guys behind SpaceRef is former NASA engineer Keith Cowing, who has a muckraker's penchant for dredging up embarrassing meeting minutes, agency memos, even unpublished photographs of problem areas on the space shuttle fleet.
Stale stuff: AltaVista continued to have problems with its "re-indexed" search service. Seems a lot of new listings were lost in the process. The situation was so bad that a recent query confined to the date range 10 October to 1 November, produced ZERO results for the search term "MP3," even though it's one of the most searched-for terms on the Web.
Semiconductor shakeup: Taiwan was hit by another earthquake. This one wasn't nearly as powerful as September's 7.6 shaker, but it may well have been strong enough to knock sensitive chip fabrication equipment out of kilter, analysts said. That could also goose prices for laptops, since Taiwan is a leading producer of flat-panel screens used in laptop computers.
Bright futures: MIT's Technology Review focused on both accomplishment and potential in picking its list of 100 important innovators of the 21st century. All under age 35, we have Andreessen, Yang, Dayton, Robertson, Torvalds – lots of familiar names. "We don't call these the top innovators in the world," said Bob Metcalfe, one of the pickers. "These are a hundred innovators."
Murkier yet: The BBC reported that an Australian government official has confirmed what both the Americans and British have consistently denied – that the super-secret spy network "Echelon" exists. But those who have been following the story for years said the BBC hadn't uncovered anything they didn't already know. "The news is that the BBC is talking about it," said the Electronic Frontier Foundation's John Gilmore.
Putting out a contract: Users on both end of the equation said eLance.com is making the whole freelancing game work more efficiently by connecting buyers and sellers of Web-based all over the world. But at what cost? If eLance.com and similar services take off, competition from cheap foreign labor may drive down rates in high-pay places, particularly the United States.
Showing the way: A three-judge panel in Philadelphia heard arguments on COPA, the federal statute that restricts online content deemed "harmful to minors." But if the judges were looking for guidance on what to do about the controversial law, they got it earlier in the week when another federal court sided with the ACLU in its battle against a similar New Mexico statute.
An ocean apart: US Commerce Secretary William Daley was in Berlin last weekend to make a case against e-commerce tariffs, but the Europeans remained unconvinced. The irony of the EU's position is that companies in Europe oppose e-commerce tariffs. In a confidential briefing paper, the European and American businesses that make up the Transatlantic Business Dialogue called for precisely the same permanent ban that European governments oppose.
That's the week that was. For information on ongoing goings-on, click over to The Calendar of E-vents.
