N.Y. Co. Challenges Spyware Control Act (AP)

Grok Headline matches for N.Y. Co. Challenges Spyware Control Act (AP)

N.Y. Co. Challenges Spyware Control Act

N.Y. Co. Challenges Spyware Control Act 06/11/2004 08:01 AM
San Jose Mercury News Jun 11 2004 12:32PM GMT

Adware maker challenges Utah
anti-spyware law

Adware maker challenges Utah
anti-spyware law 04/13/2004 06:17 PM
Online advertising software maker WhenU says the first U.S. anti-spyware statute set to take effect next month could harm its business.

Co. Wants Spyware Control Act Blocked

Co. Wants Spyware Control Act Blocked 06/11/2004 12:44 PM
San Jose Mercury News Jun 11 2004 5:25PM GMT

Spyware and Adware out of Control

Spyware and Adware out of Control 09/20/2004 04:43 AM

Seems I am not the only one that has been dealing with more PC's inundated with Spyware and Adware. I explained in earlier articles that my kids computers are loaded with all the software to fight the intruders. Unfortunately I usually have to slick the drive every 90 days or so because they click on something that gets through the digital blockade I have erected. Thank God for Norton Ghost as it makes recovers real easy.

So what are you using to protect yourself. [New York Times]

Company Wants Spyware Control Act
Blocked

Company Wants Spyware Control Act
Blocked 06/11/2004 04:13 PM
A New York company that makes Internet pop-up ads has asked a judge to block enforcement of Utah's new Spyware Control Act pending resolution of the firm's challenge to the law's constitutionality.

US To Impose Spyware Control Laws

US To Impose Spyware Control Laws 06/19/2004 11:48 AM

Yahoo's Offers New Anti-Spyware Tool...
That Actually Finds Spyware

Yahoo's Offers New Anti-Spyware Tool...
That Actually Finds Spyware 08/05/2004 03:50 AM
It appears that Yahoo heard the backlash loud and clear a few months back when they released an anti-spyware tool that just so happened to skip over adware from Yahoo partners. The latest version, built on PestPatrol's technology will now default to notifying users of both "spyware" and what they consider to be "adware" and then give the user the choice of what to do. I haven't tested the product yet, but it sounds like they're moving in the right direction. It still makes you wonder what they were thinking in offering a purposely crippled offering. People know what spyware is, and telling them that spyware isn't spyware doesn't change how people feel about it. It also doesn't make them look kindly back at the company that provided them with the bogus anti-spyware tool in the first place.

AOL Offers Spyware Stopper... Just After
They Started Offering Spyware

AOL Offers Spyware Stopper... Just After
They Started Offering Spyware 04/22/2004 02:36 AM
Just a few weeks after saying that they're going to start bundling spyware/adware with their instant messenger product, AOL announces their latest anti-spyware application. While we've been complaining about anti-spyware from ISPs that just points out the spyware, AOL claims that this version will disable (though not delete) the spyware. I wonder if it will catch the spyware that AOL installs themselves.

Yahoo's Famed Anti-Spyware App Allows
Spyware From Partners

Yahoo's Famed Anti-Spyware App Allows
Spyware From Partners 06/02/2004 10:10 AM
We didn't write about Yahoo's new "anti-spyware" toolbar that they announced last week, because it seemed to receive plenty of hype, and there were no real reviews of how it worked. There are so many so-called anti-spyware applications out there that don't actually stop spyware and adware for fear of upsetting marketing companies or out of worries that actually stopping spyware may make some applications stop working (upsetting the user), that we figured Yahoo's anti-spyware app (hype and all) probably wouldn't be much to bother with. It certainly looks like that may be the case. eWeek is now reporting that Yahoo tries to dance the careful dance of not upsetting certain companies who threate n to sue people who call their application spyware. Of course, the situation is even more complex because Claria (who you probably know as Gator - despite their attempt to change their name to shake that spyware label) is also a partner of Yahoo. So, it's really not surprising that the default setting for Yahoo's anti-spyware app won't actually remove services like Gator or WhenU. Instead, Yahoo's spyware remover claims these programs are "adware" and will only remove them if you click and extra check box each time you run the program. In other words, once again, you can't trust a provider of anti-spyware software, because they're playing both sides of the fence: partnering with providers on the one hand, and then offering weak removal products on the other. If Yahoo were serious about removing spyware from the computers of users they would refuse to partner with companies that used surreptitious tactics to be installed on computers. Instead, they want to look good to users in the front, while letting in spyware/adware from partners through the backdoor.

Spyware Company Sues Utah Over
Anti-Spyware Law

Spyware Company Sues Utah Over
Anti-Spyware Law 04/13/2004 03:42 PM

Photonics Control Announces Optical
Control Breakthrough

Photonics Control Announces Optical
Control Breakthrough 06/26/2004 02:40 AM
Intelligent Photonics Control Corp. (Photonics Control), the world leader in providing embedded control solutions for optical devices, announced today that it has reached a significant milestone. The Company has integrated its solutions into 50 different customer platforms including Optical Amplifiers, VMUXes, OPMs, DGEs, and Tunable Lasers. [PRWEB Jun 26, 2004]

You Control: iTunes puts control in OS X
menu bar (MacCentral)

You Control: iTunes puts control in OS X
menu bar (MacCentral) 08/31/2004 07:26 PM
MacCentral - You Software Inc. announced on Tuesday the availability of You Control: iTunes, a free download that places iTunes controls in the Mac OS X menu bar. Without leaving the current application, you can pause, play, rewind or skip songs, as well as control iTunes' volume and even browse your entire music library by album, artist or genre. Each time a new song plays, You Control: iTunes also pops up a window that displays the artist and song name and the album artwork, if it's in the library. System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.2.6 and 10MB free hard drive space. ...

You Control: iTunes puts control in OS X
menu bar

You Control: iTunes puts control in OS X
menu bar 08/31/2004 01:50 PM
You Software Inc. announced on Tuesday the availability of You Control: iTunes, a free download that places iTunes controls in the Mac OS X menu bar. Without leaving the current application, you can pause, play, rewind or skip songs, as well as control iTunes' volume and even browse your entire music library by album, artist or genre. Each time a new song plays, You Control: iTunes also pops up a window that displays the artist and song name and the album artwork, if it's in the library. System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.2.6 and 10MB free hard drive space.

To control or not to control, that is
the question

To control or not to control, that is
the question 06/28/2004 04:51 AM
The application vendors should do a better job of standardizing default storage locations and names (even as aliases) while still letting users override those choices and pick their own storage metaphor. This isn't nuclear physics - everyone has experience organizing their "stuff" (socks, bills, books, DVDs) so why not a) let them do it and b) use familiar metaphors for it?

The Challenges -and Potential- of 3G

The Challenges -and Potential- of 3G 12/29/2003 08:00 PM
Wireless Watch Japan Dec 29 2003 7:37PM ET

OpenEvents challenges

OpenEvents challenges 02/05/2005 09:12 PM

Peter Caputa puts it succinctly in

Why OpenEvents Is an Uphill Battle!

I am writing a series of posts on why OpenEvents is an Uphill Battle. I am hoping that this rallies some people to think creatively, and also to realize that if we work together to make this happen, then we will all will benefit much quicker.

So, The first reason that OpenEvents is an uphill battle is because the established players have no incentive to share data. Actually, they have disincentives because there are so many businesses that depend on the data for their revenue stream.

[pc4media]

Whether it's XML or rdf, centralized or distributed - sharing and building on Events as an open, shared kind of micro-content - is leaving the station.

FOAF challenges

FOAF challenges 01/09/2004 09:52 PM

FOAF challenges.

FOAF challenges

Some interesting discussion has been triggered by Jon Udell's comments on FOAF. I agree with Edd and Dan that FOAF is about more than social networking and have said as much here on several occasions. Personally I see two problems with FOAF neither of them big.

Firstly the name causes people to adopt certain expectations about it's intended usage particularly with general surge of interest (fad?) in social software. I certainly wouldn't advocate a name change but, as the exchange with Udell has demonstrated, we need to take care to present FOAF correctly.

The second problem is just about data. Because there is no central repository of FOAF data, it's harder to create FOAF applications: you either need to run a scutter yourself to collect up what's available, or generate FOAF out of the back-end of another site. Of course you can also hang out on #foaf and badger someone (e.g. Jim Ley or Matt Biddulph) to give you a data export; that's what I did.

I firmly believe that playing with the FOAF data that's out in the wild will generate the most interesting applications, and provide essential implementation feedback on the vocabulary itself.

So I'm going to try encouraging folk to regularly and visibly publish the results of their scutter runs. An "offical" data set hung of the FOAF homepage would also be useful. This should hopefully encourage the development of more FOAF applications.

Incidentally I mentally classify those applications as follows:

• FOAF-generating -- e.g. FOAF-a-Matic, ecademy, TypePad, etc. Applications that generate FOAF but don't typically process it to perform any useful function. These are an important step in producing a critical mass of data
  
• FOAF-gathering -- e.g. a Scutter, FOAFbot, FOAFnaut. Applications that harvest the web of FOAF data to build a data repository. Functionality is then built around this repository
  
• FOAF-consuming -- e.g. FOAF explorer/viewer, Dashboard, Planet RDF. Applications that read specific FOAF data, to fulfill some function. FOAF-gathering applications also typically consume data in this way -- to manually refresh their repository -- but I'm thinking of slightly different application scenarios, e.g. automating web site registration and preference maintenance, generating a project or community blog, etc.
  

For me this classification separates out some of the implementation issues: a FOAF-consuming application doesn't typically have to worry about attribution, trust, etc. The data is coming from a limited number of sources. FOAF-gathering applications have to deal with a much more difficult set of problems. [Lost Boy]

Calypso Wi-Fi Challenges 3G

Calypso Wi-Fi Challenges 3G 12/03/2003 06:24 AM
3G Dec 3 2003 4:46AM ET

The challenges of synching

The challenges of synching 01/04/2004 08:26 PM
I predicted the other day that synching would appear in lots of newsreaders in 2004. (Some have it already, yes, but they don’t have it as I’ve defined it below.)

A good question would be: why isn’t synching already a feature of every newsreader already? It can’t be that hard, right—just read and write from a file somewhere that two copies of your newsreader can access.

I mean, what’s the hold-up? You just need something like a .newsrc. No big deal, it’s an old problem that’s been solved many times before.

Okay, so the rest of this post will be about the challenges in implementing synching.

What is synching?

First we need to define what synching is. It’s really a collection of features and requirements.

1. It’s merging, not cloning, of subscription lists.

2. It also synchs read/unread states of individual items.

3. Your newsreader uploads and downloads your synch data so you don’t have to do it manually with a browser or FTP client or whatever.

4. Your newsreader knows (or at least guesses) when it needs to download and upload synch data.

5. It works between different newsreader software on different operating systems.

I’ll take these one at a time.

Merging

Cloning is easy, merging is hard—but synching has to be merging.

For instance, imagine you have a newsreader at home and one at work. You subscribe to the same feeds—except that at work you also subscribe to some at-work-only feeds that you can’t get at home.

So when you get into work in the morning, you want to synch your data from last night at home. If it’s just cloning your subscription list, then the additional at-work-only feeds would get deleted, since you aren’t subscribed to them at home. Since we’re merging, not cloning, your at-work-only feeds do not get deleted.

But this leads to an interesting problem: what happens if you unsubscribe from a feed at home? The synching mechanism won’t delete it from your work subscription list, because for all it knows that feed could be a work-only feed.

And there’s another entire set of problems that come up because for most newsreaders the subscription list is an outline rather than a flat list. Merging hierarchies is far more difficult than merging flat lists.

Synching read/unread states of news items

This is possibly the toughest of the challenges.

In an ideal world, you can identify every item in an RSS feed with a unique id of some sort. So the synch data would be able to pair a unique ID with its read/unread status.

But not all versions of RSS have the concept of a unique ID. And, even in the versions that do have unique IDs, they’re not mandatory, and lots of feeds don’t use them. (And sometimes feeds have a terrible bug: they have unique IDs that aren’t actually unique.)

So, in the absence of a unique ID, how do you identify an item in a way that will work every single time? Answer: you can’t. There is no solution that will work every single time. (And this is why sometimes you notice in your newsreader items that are unread that you know you’ve read. They’ve been edited.)

Even if you include an entire item, all its text and links and various elements, it’s possible that the item was edited between leaving home and arriving at work.

So instead the synching has to do the best it can. Any format will probably use links and titles and whatever else so newsreaders can do a best guess. (I suspect that most developers hate situations like this, by the way, and it may be the single biggest reason why synching isn’t yet universal among newsreaders.)

Uploading and downloading

You’ll want to tell your newsreader where to save your synch data so you can get it at home and at work.

You might say, why not use .Mac? Because not everyone has an account. Because your newsreader at work might be on Windows. (And there are some other technical reasons which I’ll skip.)

Why not use FTP? Or HTTP-upload? Or...?

The answer is probably that a couple different methods may need to be made available. (FTP and HTTP-upload seem like obvious candidates, but I’m just guessing.)

But here’s the deal: I doubt that every newsreader already includes code for uploading files by the various methods people will want to use. Sure, there are libraries available, but newsreader developers will still have to write code and do a bunch of testing. Even a seemingly small thing like this still takes time and effort.

Knowing when to upload and download

This may be the easiest part.

When you launch your newsreader, it can ask if you want it to synch. It would then download your synch data from wherever and do the synch.

Similarly, when you quit, it could ask if you want to upload your synch data.

There may be more sophisticated algorithms that would make sense too, but the above is I think a good minimum.

Different newsreaders, different operating systems

This means getting a bunch of developers to agree on a format for synch data. That’s probably the easy part—the hard part will be testing to make sure X can synch with Y and Y can synch with Z and Z can synch with X.

That, by the way, is where you come in.

SCO challenges IBM witnesses

SCO challenges IBM witnesses 09/13/2004 04:13 PM
The Linux adversary again demands evidence from Big Blue and cites allegedly contradictory testimony.

Teleconnection Challenges 3G

Teleconnection Challenges 3G 09/20/2004 03:06 AM
3G Sep 20 2004 7:19AM GMT

New Year, Same Challenges

New Year, Same Challenges 01/08/2004 08:27 PM

Addicted to challenges

Addicted to challenges 12/31/2004 06:35 AM
Express Computer India Dec 31 2004 10:55AM GMT

Four Key Challenges for Operators in 3G
Rollouts

Four Key Challenges for Operators in 3G
Rollouts 09/15/2004 03:34 AM
3G Sep 15 2004 7:19AM GMT

MoD challenges Porton Down case

MoD challenges Porton Down case 04/19/2005 03:48 AM
The government challenges a verdict of "unlawful killing" over the death of an RAF serviceman who underwent nerve gas tests in 1953.

Get ready for the challenges - and
potential - of 3G

Get ready for the challenges - and
potential - of 3G 12/28/2003 05:28 PM
Singapore Business Times Dec 28 2003 4:38PM ET

Herbicide Ban Faces Challenges

Herbicide Ban Faces Challenges 12/30/2003 06:10 AM
Malaysian plantation workers suffering the effects of paraquat hope a phased national ban on the herbicide survives challenges by chemical companies and planters. An EU approval works against them.

Problems and Challenges with Honeypots

Problems and Challenges with Honeypots 01/16/2004 10:57 AM

AMD low-end chip challenges Celeron

AMD low-end chip challenges Celeron 06/18/2004 03:49 PM
ZDNet Jun 18 2004 7:20PM GMT

Nortel Challenges Startups

Nortel Challenges Startups 11/01/2003 03:10 PM
Nortel's trials for mesh networking backhaul could threaten unknowns with similar products: Strix, FireTide, BelAir, Tropos, and others use wireless backhaul -- often 802.11a -- to create clouds or islands of access without bringing a wired connection to each location. But Nortel's product sounds similar and has their marketing and brand behind it....

The Challenges Facing Bell TV

The Challenges Facing Bell TV 04/04/2005 06:22 AM
The fact that the Baby Bell telcos are now rushing to offer television over fiber is nothing new. Plenty of articles have been written about it, and it seems like this one is a little late to the game. However, it does raise some interesting points about the challenges the telcos face in reaching a point where they'll be competitive with cable TV. First, is that even after they spend billions rolling out fiber (to the home, or for the cheap Bells, the node) they have to sign the necessary content deals to have channels to offer. Since the content providers know the position the Bells are in (they absolutely need this content), the rates are going to be on the high side -- which, in turn, means that the subscription fees for end-users are going to be large, or the telcos will take some hefty losses on the service (which is exactly what's likely to happen in the short-term). However, it's also going to limit the flexibility the telcos have -- so they won't be in a position to do more creative pricing (like some of their cable competitors) to attack the market. While everyone knew that it would be easier for the cable companies to jump into the voice market than it would be for the telcos to jump into the TV market, the amount of time it's taken the telcos to act, combined with these hurdles, suggests that telco TV isn't going to be a money maker for quite some time -- if ever. At this point, the best the telcos can hope for is that telco TV will provide other benefits, such as reduced churn in other services.

Nepal ex-PM challenges emergency

Nepal ex-PM challenges emergency 04/02/2005 09:12 AM
Former PM Koirala demands the return of democracy in Nepal a day after being freed from house arrest.

Google Offering on Course Despite
Several Challenges

Google Offering on Course Despite
Several Challenges 08/10/2004 09:46 PM
Google said it would end the registration period for its widely anticipated initial public offering and start the bidding "soon thereafter."

TechEd drills into IT challenges

TechEd drills into IT challenges 05/28/2004 06:33 PM
Microsoft trained its focus on concrete challenges facing IT at its TechEd 2004 conference last week, rolling out products designed to enhance security, productivity, and integration.

Sun challenges IBM on desktop Linux

Sun challenges IBM on desktop Linux 01/22/2004 03:24 PM
ZDNet Jan 22 2004 7:03PM GMT

The Direction of Peace and its
Challenges

The Direction of Peace and its
Challenges 04/03/2005 07:58 AM
Arabic Media Internet Network Apr 3 2005 12:37PM GMT

PHP Blog: Top 10 Webmaster Challenges

PHP Blog: Top 10 Webmaster Challenges 02/07/2005 01:32 AM
Top 10 Webmaster Challenges Webmasters deal with a myriad of complex design challenges every day. This article will discuss the top ten challenges and provide solutions and tips for solving each problem.

Selling Wi-Fi presents serious
challenges

Selling Wi-Fi presents serious
challenges 06/16/2004 10:15 AM

A Joystick That Challenges You to Sweat

A Joystick That Challenges You to Sweat 02/10/2004 02:55 AM
A Maryland start-up company has put together a new game pad that builds up more than a player's thumbs.
Grok Description matches for N.Y. Co. Challenges Spyware Control Act (AP)
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N.Y. Co. Challenges Spyware Control Act (AP)

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