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Below is the final list of issues for the TUESDAY, 24 October 2006, NEW NET (Northeast Wisconsin Network for Economy and Technology) 6:50 pm weekly gathering upstairs at Tom's Drive In, 501 N Westhill Blvd, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA. We're meeting at Tom's because Mister Churro may be closed for painting. Tom's has free wireless, good food and a nice upstairs area where the manager said NEW NET can meet. See you there!

1. Spammer kills coffee shop's connection http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061022-8046.html Having access to free wifi seems like an important component of NEW NET meetings, although not having ‘net access during those meetings might enable higher quality conversation. Two questions for NEW NET this week – 1) do you prefer to have free wifi at NEW NET gatherings and why?; 2) Should any changes be made to Mister Churro’s WRT54G to minimize abuse and security problems?
2. Firefox 2.0 or IE7? http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/firefox-20-or-ie7/ IE7 will probably perform like Win XP SP2 when it was released, with 80+% of installers having no problems. Everyone reading this should install IE7 to see how the install goes, but don’t do it on your main machine for a while. Just know what you’ll do if the install of IE7 (or any other program) causes problems. Good option is to have Firefox installed before IE7 install. That way, if the OS doesn’t break you can still browse the web for info about whatever problem the IE7 install caused. Let’s do the about:config comment by Lars at NEW NET.
3. Hating Microsoft After Update Breaks My Computer With svchost.exe Error http://daggle.com/061016-142021.html Anecdotal caution about loading in IE7. This post explains what Danny Sullivan had to do to fix his computer after installing the new Internet Explorer. Here there be dragons…
4. Final Version of Mozilla Firefox 2 Will Be Released Oct. 24 http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20061020/tc_pcworld/127603 As of October 24 you’ll have a choice of updated browsers – Firefox 2 or Internet Explorer 7. I know which one I’ll use most...
5. Dodgeball goes Gauth, reveals GOOG’s masterplan to p0wn your butt http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2006/10/17/dodgeball-goes-gauth-reveals-googs-masterplan-to-p0wn-your-ass/ This post addresses identity management, a concept particularly important in the Web 2.0 world. Chris Messina points out that Google appears to be leading its SkyNet Kool-Aid drinkers down a primrose path to the Walled Ggarden. He advocates use of OpenID. Since he was a catalyst in the BarCamp movement, maybe he can initiate an OpenID campaign combining the BarCamp success with the Adopt Firefox success.
6. 1,000,000 residents = Happy! Crushing Signup Load = Sad! http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/10/18/1000000-residents-happy-crushing-signup-load-sad/ Once again, Second Life mirrors Real Life. SL now has a million residents, has been adding new accounts at 10,000 per day, has been in the news a lot, and is predicting some days with 50,000+ new resident registrations. Their scale-up problems are causing poor user experience for new users, and you can be sure their tech people are having lots of 20+ hour days. Reuters recently opened an SL news agency, many corporations are investing time and money into SL (I want one of those jobs…), and a “…U.S. congressional committee is investigating how virtual assets and incomes should be taxed.” When Luke and I joined second life in May, there were only 200,000 residents. If SL scales up effectively, the metaverse may have more residents than World of Warcraft in a couple years.
7. Second Life Uses Drupal http://buytaert.net/second-life-uses-drupal Drupal was one of the topics of discussion at BarCampMilwaukee, so it was interesting to see that Second Life uses Drupal.
8. FBI Director, Police Chiefs Support Record Retention For Internet http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20061019/tc_cmp/193400408 Have you read 1984 recently?
9. AT&T Builds WiFi Network For California City http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20061019/tc_cmp/193400391
10. Putting A Little Lipstick On Muni WiFi http://news.techdirt.com/news/wireless/article/6717
11. Creative Commons + Flickr = 22 Million Sharable Photos http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/10/digging_deepercreative_commons.html Creative Commons license benefits are explained a little in this post. Exceptionally well-worded was the comment, “…So without going to photography school, and just networking with other photographers, and giving my stuff away with attribution, I’ve got my name out there, I’ve got a lot of incoming links to my website…I didn’t realize that I could make money on photography by giving away as much as I could, that I could build up a portfolio and reputation so I could get paid work...”
12. Lunar Lander Rocket Flies But Fails In Bid For Prize Dollars http://space.com/news/061020_xprize_armadillo.html John Carmack was piloting the Armadillo Aerospace lunar lander with a joystick! All those hours of writing and playing video games may come in handy at some point in your future…
13. High-Tech Uniforms Finally Heading to War http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002872.html Here’s one for Luke and other MechWarrior fans. The comments were as interesting as the post.
14. PopTech, day 1 wrap-up http://www.kottke.org/06/10/poptech-day-1-wrapup PopTech sounds like as much fun as a BarCamp, although with up to 500 people, it’s a bit larger than I’d consider ideal. The $2500 registration fee is another difference from BarCamps… Powerful ideas, though.
15. Costs up as UAE regulators ban Net phone http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_hi_te/no_more_skype Would you be upset if your government took away VoIP options like Skype?
16. MS chides Apple for passing iPod worm blame http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/10/19/microsoft.chides.apple/
17. Flapjax on the griddle for Web apps http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20061013/tc_infoworld/82808
18. Flash 9 beta for Linux is available http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2006/10/beta_is_live.html
19. Mac Mini becomes Linux-based IP PBX http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8680369796.html
20. Microsoft Eyes Future of Teleconferencing with RoundTable http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/oct06/10-20officeroundtable.mspx Justin – one of these would be nice for the Milwaukee Media Lab…
21. It’s Not the People You Know. It’s Where You Are. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/business/yourmoney/22digi.html?ex=1319169600&en=fc0cc8346b8b9382&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
22. Scrybe: New Standard In Office Apps? http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/21/scrybe-could-set-a-new-standard-in-office-apps/
23. Sony battery recall to hit 9.6 million http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_hi_te/japan_sony_battery_recalls
24. Bugs and Fixes: Drive-By Downloads Cruise Through IE http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20061023/tc_pcworld/127492
25. HP passes Dell in world PC shipments http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_hi_te/pc_shipments
26. Palm Launches Treo 680, Touts Multimedia Capabilities http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20061013/tc_cmp/193300469 When they add wifi to the Treo 680 and I can use it on my Verizon plan, I’m buying one of these…
27. Beauties and beasts predicted http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20596076-661,00.html
28. 10 Biggest Computer Flops of all time http://www.miguelcarrasco.net/miguelcarrasco/2006/10/10_biggest_comp.html
29. Roomba rival looks to clean up http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-6127955.html
30. Cheated? Get clicking http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061020.gtdwyer21/BNStory/Technology/

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