Apple's FireWire gets nod from High Definition Audio Video Network Alliance

For many years, I've wanted audio and video equipment to use a standard digital connection. Imagine a world where the speakers, DVD player, and TV Audio all plug into a bank of firewire ports on the back of the stereo. It doesn't matter which one because the stereo configures everything automagically and all the signals are digital.

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Star Trek Computer Interface (LCARS)

All I can say is "where do they find the time to do this. . .oh, right, they don't date":

The LCARS Standards Development Board at http://www.lcarsdeveloper.com features near-exact replications of the LCARS interface seen on Star Trek (particularly Voyager). As you'll see on the site, there's more to LCARS than just random colors and numbers, everything actually means something! You can even learn how to pilot the USS Voyager!

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Shareaza spyware?

I was using the P2P program Shareaza the other day (downloading non-copyrighted files, I assure you) and I noticed that my anti-virus software was filtering outgoing mail. The strange part about that is that I don't have a web client configured (I use Gmail). I began trying to figure out which application was trying to send the mail and it turned out that it was Shareaza which is not supposed to have any spyware. The scary part was that the message was being sent to a Russian domain.

I couldn't find the e-mail that was trying to be sent (by checking in AVG's outbox), and after a quick search through the source code, I couldn't find any reference to a .ru address. I'm going to assume that the application has been hijacked somehow, but I used the opportunity to wipe the hard drive and make sure my file system was intact.


UPDATE: after doing some searching on spyware in Shareaza, I managed to find these comments suggesting that it does, in fact, contain spyware:
http://www.download.com/Shareaza/3641-2166_4-9062723.html

UPDATE 2: I managed to find this posting on Shareaza's Wiki:
http://wiki.shareaza.com/static/Troubleshoot.Email
Basically, a computer that Shareaza is trying to connect to is using port 25 as it's "listening" port. This is reserved for SMTP, but when you put Shareaza into "Random Port mode", 25 could occasionally come up. Based on this info, Shareaza does NOT (currently) have spyware.

UPDATE 3: In case you didn't know, the Shareaza domain has been hijacked by scammers, and they have released a version of Shareaza that is loaded with spyware. Do not use Shareaza unless you get it from Sourceforge

http://torrentfreak.com/scammers-move-to-seize-shareaza-trademark-080302/

According to Wikipedia, here is the latest info:

Domain takeover / transfer

On 19 December 2007, the project's domain name, shareaza.com, was redirected to an unrelated site, promoting the download of an spyware client known as ShareazaV4.^[4] As a result, the original project was forced to move their home page to SourceForge.net.

Since 1 January 2008, the new domain takes advantage of Shareaza's built-in automatic update feature to suggest to users that the ShareazaV4 application is an update to Shareaza. This vulnerability was fixed in Shareaza 2.3.1.0.^[5]

The La Societe Des Producteurs De Phonogrammes En France (SPPF), the representative of recording labels in France, has taken legal action against Jonathan Nilson since his name was under the domain shareaza.com at the time.

Attempted trademark takeover

On January 10, 2008, the new owners of Shareaza.com, Discordia Ltd (iMesh Inc.^[6]), filed for trademark registration of the Shareaza name, claiming that the first-ever use of this name was on December 17, 2007.^[7] The Shareaza Development Team urged users of the program to send Letters of Protest to the patent office and set up a legal defense fund.^[8]