June 2000 Technology Updates1. Painting sells for $135K on eBay. Or does it?In early May a user of the online auction company eBay posted an abstract painting on the site with an opening bid of twenty-five cents. When the bidding closed the painting had been bid up to over $135 thousand. A photo of the painting led some art experts to believe it could be a work by Richard Diebenkorn. Diebenkorn, who died in 1993, always signed his work with his initials, RD. The photo revealed that the painting contained the initials and was in the Diebenkorn style. Another work by the artist had sold for almost $4 million in 1998. Problems with the seller's conduct emerged a few days after the auction closed. The seller, an attorney from Sacramento, CA, had himself bid on the painting to drive the price higher. This practice, called shilling, is not allowed under eBay's rules. eBay voided the auction and informed the buyer that he is under no obligation to complete the transaction. For more information, click on these links:
2. PC Tips - Deleting filesWhen you delete a file under Windows 95/98 you are prompted for a confirmation. However, the deleted file is not in fact actually deleted. It is sent to the recycle bin instead. To restore a file that has been sent to the recycle bin follow these steps:
The selected files will be returned to their original directories. You can permanently remove files from your computer by following these steps:
If you want to permanently remove files when you delete them -- bypassing the recycle bin -- simply hold down the Shift and Delete keys simultaneously. You can also remove the confirmation dialog box that appears when you attempt to delete a file by following these steps:
3. The WebbysThe movie industry has the Oscars and TV has the Emmys. For the fourth year the Web industry has honored its own with the Webby awards. This year's ceremony was held on May 11 in San Francisco. The event was broadcast, where else, on the Web at Yahoo!Broadcast. Awards were given out in 28 categories, including activism, commerce, community, and education. In keeping with the Webby rules each winner was allowed to make a five-word acceptance speech. The awards are given out by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, whose judges include a who's who of artists, movie makers, authors, and Web industry luminaries. While the judges decide who gets a Webby in each category, Web users can vote for their favorites, which receive a People's Voice award. For some Webby winner sites, click on these links:
4. The legality of linkingA recent lawsuit filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) against the hacker Web site 2600 may have broad-reaching implications. The MPAA has sued to prevent 2600 from linking to sites that provide a program (called DeCSS) that bypasses the copy protection built into DVD players. The MPAA won a previous suit that prohibited 2600 from posting the DeCSS program. The current suit once again raises legal issues concerning the use of hyperlinks, a key concept of the World Wide Web. (Last month's technology updates reported on a similar case involving Mattel's CyberPatrol software.) In what many legal experts consider a precedent-setting case a federal district court judge ruled that so-called "deep linking" (linking to a page deep within another company's Web site instead of the main page) did not violate copyright laws in a case involving Tickets.com and Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster objected to links on the Tickets.com Web site that take a user to pages deep within Ticketmaster's site. Ticketmaster wanted Tickets.com and other sites to link only to its main page. Experts are quick to point out that the 2600 case differs significantly from the Tickets.com case in that Tickets.com links to legal material and 2600 does not. For more information, click on these links:
5. Love Bug bitesIn early May a devastating e-mail worm with the subject line of "ILOVEYOU" spread around the world, destroying computer files and shutting down e-mail systems. A worm is a program that replicates and sends itself to other computers on a network. In the case of the "Love Bug" worm, the program spread as an attachment to an e-mail message. Apparently originating from the Philippines, the worm is activated when users receiving the e-mail open the attachment using the popular Outlook e-mail package. The worm deletes multimedia files and sends itself to the first 50 people listed in the user's Outlook address book. The worm shut down e-mail at large companies, such as AT&T and Disney. It also struck NASA, the CIA, and the Pentagon. The worm may have caused as much as $1 billion in damage. It is easily avoided by deleting any e-mail message with "ILOVEYOU" in the subject line. For more information, click on these links:
6. End of the Browser?With the ironic theme "End of the Browser," the third annual Browserday was held on May 19, 2000, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Society for Old and New Media sponsored the event. Multimedia design, art, and technology students throughout the world were invited to submit their original Internet interfaces. The submissions were judged by a seven member panel that consisted of journalists, artists, technology specialists, and academics. Thirty-five of the best submissions were chosen to make presentations during the event. Among the presentations was a browser that uses retinal motion and brainwaves as input. And then there was "Terrasonica," a submission that allows for navigation in a virtual world using only sound. It was created specifically for the visually impaired. The winner of the browser award was "HyperSPC," a text-filtering browser that displays only relevant information. The browser removes all images and multimedia elements and provides the user with the text of a Web site. This text can be manipulated by the user and combined with text from other sites. The user can specify how often to check the Web for updates to the text. For more information, click on these links:
7. Intel recallOn May 10, 2000, Intel announced that it would replace all of the motherboards in computers that contain a flawed Intel chip. The recall affects Pentium III computers that contain a memory translator hub (MTH). The MTH was created, by Intel, to allow Intel's fast 820 chipset to work with standard (slower) memory chips. The 820 chipset was designed to work with fast Rambus memory, but the Rambus memory chips are in short supply and are about three times more expensive than standard memory. Therefore, many computer makers use standard memory and rely on the MTH. The problem with the MTH can cause computers to freeze or reboot unexpectedly. Intel will replace standard memory with Rambus memory in affected systems. The cost of the recall is expected to exceed $100 million. Intel has been working since February to fix a similar problem found in high-end workstations. For more information, click on these links:
8. Cable rulesA U.S. Appeals Court handed down a ruling on May 19, 2000, that let stand a law giving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the authority to limit the number of cable subscribers each cable company can have. Time Warner had challenged the law on First Amendment grounds. The company claimed the limitation violated free speech. The court disagreed in a unanimous decision. Time Warner is still challenging the specific FCC rules that limit the number of subscribers to any one cable company to 30 percent of the total number of cable and satellite subscribers in the country. The current limit is approximately 26 million subscribers. The decision may have an immediate impact on the ATT&T purchase of Media One. The combined company would have over 33 million subscribers. The FCC has told AT&T that it must sell some of its cable properties to comply with the rules. For more information, click on this link:
9. Microsoft trial draws to a closeThe monopoly case against Microsoft appears to be winding down, at least in the District Courts. The Justice Department has submitted to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson its plan to breakup the company into two parts, an operating systems company and an applications and internet company.. Jackson gave Microsoft's lawyers 48 hours to respond to the proposal. He denied a request to extend the deadline for response until December. It appears that Judge Jackson will request that the case bypass the Appeals Courts and move directly to the Supreme Court. Jackson has hinted that he favors breaking Microsoft into three companies, as opposed to the two the Justice Department has proposed. The three-way plan would split Microsoft into an operating systems company, an applications company, and a company that would own the Internet Explorer Web browser. For more information, click on these links:
10. Green cards or visasOn May 11, 2000, President Clinton introduced a proposal to increase the number of H1-B visas issued to foreign technical workers. The visas allow these workers to find jobs in U.S. high-technology firms. The president believes that these visas will ease the acute high-technology labor shortage. Last year Congress increased the number of H1-B visas to 107,000; however, they were all used within the first four months of the year. The Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) has sent a letter to Congress asking for temporary green cards instead of visas for foreign workers. Green cards would enable workers to easily change jobs or start their own businesses. However, immigration advocates feel that the IEEE has put forward this proposal in order to derail the increase of H1-B visas. The IEEE has opposed H1-B increases in the past, fearing that high technology jobs will go to foreign workers. Immigration advocates believe that Congress is less likely to increase green cards (which give immigrants permanent resident status in the United States) than H1-B visas (which provide only temporary permission to work in the United States). For more information, click on these links:
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