<CONTENT /> v.3

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Microsoft to sell stake in Corel. The software giant is preparing to sell its minority stake in the struggling Canadian software maker at a loss of more than $100 million. [CNET News.com]
2:30:59 PM

Yahoo! News - McDonald's to Offer Wireless Internet - Would you like super-sized Internet access with that burger and fries? In a further sign of the spread of wireless Internet technology, McDonald's restaurants in three U.S. cities will offer one hour of free high-speed access to anyone who buys a combination meal. Ten McDonald's in Manhattan will begin offering wireless WiFi, or 802.11b, Internet access on Wednesday, McDonald's spokeswoman Lisa Howard said.

Cool. The program will expand to over 300 locations shortly. WiFi is going to be everywhere.

Now for the law school angle: Once the McDs across the street puts in a hotspot, how do you keep it from leaking into the classroom of some Luddite prof heavily opposed to always on Internet access in the law school? Answer: you don't. Wireless access will be virtually everywhere in major urban areas within 3 years, so even if your school has carefully constructed a wireless net that excludes classrooms, students will still be able to get all the net they need to relax during those long tedious torts rambles. Sounds like fun.

9:57:25 AM

PeopleSoft's PeopleTools Contains Serious Flaw - Security researchers have discovered a serious vulnerability in PeopleSoft Inc.'s PeopleTools application framework that can lead to a complete compromise of the installation's embedded Web server. This could in turn give the attacker confidential information about the server and its contents and help him compromise other PeoplSoft applications. Eweek
9:47:06 AM

Sun to release StarOffice 6.1 beta next week - Computerworld - Sun Microsystems Inc. is gearing up to release the first public beta of the next version of StarOffice, hoping to boost the level of competition in the market for desktop productivity software.
The beta version of StarOffice 6.1 will be available for download from Sun's Web site by the middle of next week. It adds features designed to make it more appealing to large businesses, said Iyer Venkatesan, Sun's product line manager for StarOffice. The final version is expected to ship in September or October, he said.
9:44:08 AM

Try the Microsoft Office System - order the latest MS Office beta here.
9:24:11 AM

PCWorld.com - Microsoft Unveils Office 2003 Beta 2 - Microsoft is growing its Office. With the release this week of Beta 2 of the next version of the popular productivity suite, Microsoft unveils first cuts of two new members of the Office family: OneNote, for electronic note-taking; and InfoPath, to create XML documents.
9:19:39 AM

E-mail scams continue to target PayPal users - Computerworld - Users of PayPal, eBay Inc.'s online payments service, have once again been targeted by scam artists trying to gain access to their personal information.
Kevin Pursglove, a spokesman for San Jose-based eBay, confirmed that during the past week, PayPal subscribers have been targeted by fraudulent e-mails that appear to be from PayPal.
9:15:44 AM

Ars Technica: Fraudster convicted over Nigerian 419 email scam - The Register is reporting that a man has pleaded guilty to fraud in Winona, Minnesota, having been taken in by the now famous Nigerian 419 scam emails. Carl Fratzke lost $750k, thinking that this money would be converted into many millions more, but $250k of it did not belong to him.

FWIW, I still get about 4-6 of these sorts of emails every day.

9:03:21 AM