Johnny Cash, Singer Known as 'The Man in Black,' Dies at 71: Johnny Cash, a towering figure in American music spanning country, rock and folk, died Friday in Nashville. Source: New York Times: NYT HomePage * [Archipelago]

GRC. Steve Gibson has put together a quick little app called DCOMbobulator that will test how effective the latest MS patches are protecting you from the lateset DCOM vulnerabilities, and it will also go ahead and disable DCOM on your machine. As he says on the site though, if you run a NAT router or… Continue reading GRC

Task Force Notes Problems Hours Before Blackout. Voltage shifts and line problems were observed “well before” the blackout on Aug. 14, a government task force said today. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

From the Torch to the Toes, Digital Insurance. A “digital map” of the Statue of Liberty could be used to recreate the statue in the event of a terrorist attack. By Fred A. Bernstein. [New York Times: Technology]

Cringely on ID theft. Cringely on ID theft: One of the better articles I've seen, because he brings home the point about true vulnerabilities. Just as a monoculture of computing configurations tends to increase intrusions, so does a monoculture of identity authentication… in the in the United States that centralized “Social Security Number” is a key… Continue reading Cringely on ID theft

RSS Auto-Discovery 2.0. As I've noted recently, I've been playing (and fighting) with RSS Discovery issues. As for why I might be doing this, use your imagination, ok?. 🙂 It has occurred to me that there's some non-existent infrastructure that we (whoever “we” really is) need to build if RSS is going to really, really… Continue reading RSS Auto-Discovery 2.0

Google Copycat. Interesting. It seems that Google is testing Related Searches on their site. That's so nice of them, copying something we launched on Yahoo Search about 6 months ago. Of course, I'm biased. I wrote the first production version of the system that built the lists of related terms, fine tuned it, and whatnot.… Continue reading Google Copycat

IE, Flash, and patents: here comes trouble. Microsoft has again been told to cripple its market-leading browser in compliance with the Eolas patent lawsuit. IE/Windows will no longer be able to seamlessly play Flash, Quicktime, PDF, and other rich media formats. Other browser makers like Netscape and Opera may also be forced to cripple their… Continue reading IE, Flash, and patents: here comes trouble

New Report: Eudora 6. Our first discussions focus on Eudora's built-in SpamWatch, plus third-party spam management plug-ins. [MacInTouch]

Evan caught this:  Skype.  P2P telephony.  From the Dutch developers of FastTrack (the system that powers KaZaA).  In my opinion, this is the first true legitimate application of P2P technology.  Next step:  a pro version with call waiting, voicemail, etc.   I am going to try it out to see if it does provide the quality level claimed. … Continue reading Evan