Last updated: Thursday, August 28, 1997, 8:30 a.m.
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Avoid a life of crime -- read GMSV: A pager-news service in New Jersey has been charged with intercepting pager messages sent to top police and fire officials and selling them to the media.

Never mind the rumors, Novell is not for sale, CEO Eric Schmidt says. Novell's biggest problem? It failed to see the future, says John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

RIP dead-tree zines: It never made much sense to us, frankly, that magazines dealing with the Net expected to make it in print. Quite a few have cashed it in lately, although many say they're not dead, just "resting."

You knew it was coming: Matt Drudge of the Net's "Drudge Report" and America Online have been sued for defamation by a Clinton aide. The erroneous report may cost Drudge $30 million.

Government is good at urging web sites to protect privacy and disclose how it will use information it collects from visitors. But it's not so good at putting its own words into action, a private watchdog group says.

Hollywood is pressing Congress for extension of copyright laws on the Internet. Of course, this being a global medium, it's a bit more complicated than that.

Developer release: Netscape posts an update to its Communicator package, and the newest version of the Java Development Kit.

Don't Cray for me: That allegation by Silicon Graphics that the Japanese are dumping supercomputers in the U.S. may have a weak link: the computing director of the national weather research laboratory that touched off the complaint said Cray couldn't deliver the goods, and that's why the lab went overseas (New York Times story, registration required).

Fastest chip: Those Motorola mobile chips are mega-fast; the 300 MHz 750 PowerPC chip ran on a laptop yesterday at a demonstration. That's way fast, faster than the Intel processors, Apple aficionados say.

Chip envy: You've been salivating over those Pentium II chips for months now, but who can afford them? Price cuts may be on the way that put those chips within reach of home PC users.

Chips recalled: If you're using a Cyrix 6x86MX chip, here's some news: 10,000 have been recalled because there's a higher-than-normal failure rate. The company says it suffered no negative feedback from customers after the June recall.

An individual can make a difference: Those scare stories about the web amuse netizens, shock the unwired and cause e-entrepreneurs to break into a cold sweat. But there's a sign that the most influential news organ in the U.S. is starting to get wise to what's really going on out here.

Encrypt that decision: The Justice Department wants an emergency stay of the recent encryption decision that allowed a college professor to export his encryption software.

E-mailers, unite: A new standard in email, IMAP4, is ready, but it's unlikely corporate users will sign on, preferring to stick, for now, with their LAN-based mail.

John Henry as an electronics engineer: The wonders of technology never cease to amaze us. Using knowledge made available by the end of the Cold War, U.S. railroads are learning how to prevent rail accidents.

More than cow chips: Computer technology must be everywhere. It's even at the Minnesota State Fair.

Apple CEO wannabes
Intel deal interests FTC



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