Clamming Up

From: spencer_katt@ziffdavis.com

Sent: Monday, August 1, 2005 12:59 AM

To: eWEEK readers

Subject: Acid commentary; stem-cell simians; quahog quota

Spence sensed an oncoming ph imbalance when a phone friend told him "phlooding" has joined "phishing" and "pharming" in the ranks of faux phonetics. The word, apparently coined by an Internet security company, AirMagnet, describes the felonious flooding of Wi-Fi systems with phony log-ins, thus blocking legitimate users entry. "Thats phreaking insidious!" the feline feuilletonist exclaimed. In addition, the phone crony said hed heard RSS referred to as "Really Simple Stealing." Seems some folks are grabbing gobs of info from RSS feeds, repackaging it shoddily on blogs and raking in ad revenue from the found content. "If you find out who coined that one, lemme know," said His Hirsuteness, bidding his pal adieu.

Paging through his e-mail, Spence spied a note from a reader citing yet another dilemma for stem-cell researchers. Seems the insertion of human stem cells into monkey brains, for such things as Alzheimers research, could put the apes on an evolutionary fast track, as it were, making them more humanlike. "Wheres Chuck Heston when we need him?" mused the Mouser. Another reader pointed Spence toward United States Patent Application No. 20050160457. The Katt was amused to see it was one more wacky patent Microsoft was trying to add to its burgeoning collection. This one describes a method of delivering video programming that alerts the viewer when something exciting happens during a program, such as a home run during a baseball game. "I guess Dr. Phil would never be seen again if everyone utilized an excitement-driven content delivery system," laughed the Lynx.

Seeking excitement himself, the Katt skatted to lunch with a tech vet at the Union Oyster House in Boston. As they chomped quahogs and downed brewskis, the pal said shed heard that the retirement of Ciscos chief development officer, Mario Mazzola, in July had a ripple effect among Cisco executives. Other execs, including several who came on board with Mazzola when Cisco bought Crescendo Networks years ago, followed him out the door. Spence gobbled several orders of clams while his companion noted that since buying PeopleSoft, Oracle has been touting improved relations with IBM, including talks with Big Blue over infrastructure and vertical markets. The Furry Ones friend speculated that the discussions deal with supporting all those JDE users on AS/400 and iSeries servers or with which databases Project Fusion will support. The Baron of Babbles buddy also mentioned the clash between the Foxwoods Resort Casino and Connecticuts Division of Special Revenue over PlayAway, the resorts Web gambling venture. Despite casino protests, the state has closed the site until it decides whether the site is an illegal online, off-reservation gambling operation. "Do you gamble much?" asked the compadre as El Gato gazed at the mound of empty shells while the bars TV blared news about a sewage spill in Massachusetts Bay. "Much more than I need to," the groggy Grimalkin replied.