Mitch writes "The Register is reporting that America Online has lost close to 2 million customers since September 2003. At the end of September they had 22.7 million customers in the US which was down more than 500,000 since the beginning of the quarter. This news comes one day after it was announced that more than 700 jobs would be cut from Virginia offices by the end of this year."

theodp writes "Microsoft was granted a patent Tuesday for Displaying data containing outlying data items, covering the familiar concept of broken y-axis bar charts. Oddly, Microsoft's 2002 'invention' is described in detail in a 1999 listserv post and found its way into scientific journals and other sources before the patent's claims were disclosed. BTW, the patent's term was extended by 269 days, apparently the USPTO's way of apologizing for initially rejecting the patent."

WillAdams asks: "I have an idea for an almost embarrassingly simple USB device, which I believe would be fairly popular --- no hardware or device driver development skills though. Ideally I'd like to approach a company, hand the product idea off and just collect a small royalty. Unfortunately the most obvious choice doesn't accept product submissions. Any suggestions?"

Iphtashu Fitz writes "CNet News is reporting that 4 major internet providers - AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft, and Yahoo, have filed another bunch of lawsuits against spammers. What makes this round interesting is that AOL has filed the first ever lawsuit against against spam that targets Instant Messenger clients, or spim. So far spim has only affected relatively small numbers of users but the problem is growing, which is why AOL is targeting it now."

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Three people faced a judge in Virginia today to answer felony charges for allegedly sending millions of spams touting to AOL users. The defendants are being tried under a 2003 Virginia anti-spam law that prosecutors say is the harshest of its kind in the nation. If convicted on all counts they each face up to 15 years in prison. Prosecutors allege that one of the defendants attempted to send 7.7 million spams in a single day that touted penny stocks and software to let people work at home as a "FedEx refund processor". Defense lawyers contend that the prosecutors will be unable to prove that the defendants intentionally masked the origin of the spam nor that it was unsolicited. The defense was also concerned that the jury pool might not be objective if it was filled with AOL users."

NW writes "Microsoft's Sender-ID standard has been left for the dead since the rejection earlier this fall by the IETF. According to a Reuters story, it has been revised and will be resubmitted to the IETF. Along the way, Microsoft managed to pick up AOL's endorsement of Sender-ID. My humble analysis appears here."

theodp writes "NEWater looks like any other glacier-clear bottled H20. Except, reports Salon, it gushes from the toilets of Singapore instead of a bubbling spring. NEWater is the product of Singapore's new water-treatment system, and it's wastewater that's been purified through advanced synthetic membranes called ZeeWeed, which could help 20% of the world's population that doesn't have easy access to clean water."

theodp writes "BusinessWeek discusses They Made America, a new book which claims Bill Gates got the rewards due Gary Kildall. The book attacks the reputations of key early PC era players - Gates, IBM, and QDOS programmer Tim Paterson - asserting that Paterson copied parts of Kildall's CP/M and that IBM tricked Kildall, allowing Gates to prevail and depriving Kildall of untold riches and credit for a seminal role in the PC revolution. Some material came from an unpublished memoir penned by Kildall after the University of Washington, where Kildall earned a PhD, picked Harvard dropout Gates as keynote speaker for the 25th anniversary of its CS program."

theodp writes "Before the iPod, there was the Regency TR-1. Fifty years ago Monday, tiny Indianapolis-based I.D.E.A. partnered with TI and shook the world with the first pocket-sized AM radio, so impressing IBM chief Tom Watson that he provided a $49.95 (roughly $345 in current dollars!), four transistor TR-1 to each of his senior managers to kick-start the company's transition from valves."

theodp writes "Agreeing with Amazon's characterization of its 1-Click feature as a feature of an electronic product ordering system and not an electronic fund transfer or transaction system, a Judge has tossed out a $50M lawsuit that threatened Amazon's 1-Click patent. But outside of Court, Amazon touts its patent-pending Amazon Honor System as a way for Web sites to use 1-Click shopping technology for voluntary payment transactions - most notably for 9-11 donations and campaign contributions - that do not involve consumer goods or Amazon-specified prices, which the Judge argues are essential 1-Click ingredients."

Topoimagery writes "After months of speculation and a few low-quality bootleg video clips, we finally get some official video from New Line. The Official Lord of the Rings Site has a preview of the upcoming Return of the King EE in Quicktime format. Here are direct links to the small version (4 MB) and large version (9 MB). Highlights include Voice of Saruman, Mouth of Sauron, Houses of Healing, and Aragorn confronting Sauron. Released date is December 14, and you can pre-order now. (For those of you who can't get enough spoilers, here's a site describing all anticipated new scenes on the DVD)."

An anonymous reader writes "Today marks ten years since the first public beta of Netscape Navigator was released. Both CNet News.com and MozillaZine have full coverage, with the former revealing that AOL is planning to release a new version Netscape in the New Year (thankfully separate from the IE-based version of AOL's browser). Even the Netscape portal (which never mentions the Netscape browser) is celebrating the anniversary. A lot of water has passed under the bridge in the last decade (especially since AOL bought Netscape) and the baton has now passed onto the Netscape alumni-filled Mozilla Foundation, but it's still worth remembering that Netscape changed the world not once (by making the first really good browser), but twice (by being the first major commercial program to go open source)."

theodp writes "Do you use drop-down menus, alphanumerical input boxes, check boxes, radio buttons or sliders to allow client side-processing of data? Utilize SQL, HTML, ActiveX, Java, Perl, JavaScript or JScript to do so? Employ arrays, stacks, queues, linked lists, or decision trees to organize things? Well Bunky, you might be infringing on Microsoft's new patent for Dynamically adjusting data values and enforcing valid combinations of the data in response to remote user input, which the USPTO granted Tuesday after 6+ years and two rejections."

jfruhlinger writes "According to News.com.com.com, America Online is preparing to release a free AOL-branded browser that is 'based on Microsoft's Internet Explorer technology.' The browser will be available to users who don't have AOL as their ISP. I admit that I find this development baffling -- not only does AOL already own a browser, but why on earth would a non-AOL user want to use an AOL-branded version of IE?"

theodp writes "A German security company has divided opinion in the IT industry by offering a job to the teen charged with creating Sasser. Silicon.com asks its CIO Jury: Would you hire a hacker? and finds the jury split down the middle, with one IT Director saying doing so would be like hiring serial-killing doctor Harold Shipman to treat your ailing and aged mother."

theodp writes "Every word spoken in the e-Courtroom where Branden Basham is on trial for his life appears immediately before the judge on a computer screen. There's a flat-screen monitor between every two seats in the jury box, a witness-box monitor with touch-screen features, and large-screen monitors for public viewing. Lawyers say e-Courtrooms help reduce trial time by making evidence display and tracking documents more efficient. 'It made the Chadrick Fulks' case three to five days shorter,' said an Assistant U.S. Attorney, referring to Basham's co-defendant, who plead guilty and was sentenced to death."

ars writes "Yahoo is reporting that AOL is adding a new feature alowing customers to use two passwords to log on. The second password comes from a small small device from RSA Securitywhich displays a new password each minute. The scheme is called two-factor authentication and will cost $1.95 a month plus a one-time $9.95 fee. It's aimed at small business and people who conduct large transactions online."

williampiv writes "For most of the millions of people around the world who regularly use instant messaging, the communications tool has largely been a text-only experience in which typed emoticons offer only minimal clues to someone's state of mind. The recent launch of two services -- a brand new, fully three-dimensional chat-room product known as IMVU, and AOL Instant Messenger's new 3-D SuperBuddy icons -- is putting the spotlight on a major shift by the leading IM providers toward making graphical avatars a fundamental personalization feature."

DominoTree writes "America Online said Thursday that it will not support the Microsoft-backed antispam technology called Sender-ID. The online giant cited 'lackluster' industry support and compatibility issues with the anti-spam technology SPF that AOL supports."

An anonymous reader submits "Amazon have put up a new version of their A9 search engine. The "Beta" label was dropped, the color scheme changed, and new search types were added: Images (provided by Google), Movies (provided by IMDB), and Reference (provided by GuruNet). Several sources are already reporting this." Theopd writes with a more critical view of the hype surrounding A9's launch (note the link to battellemedia); read on below.