Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

The Federal Trade Commission today launched "Operation Spam Zombies," a campaign to encourage Internet service providers (ISPs) to crack down on compromised computers within their networks that are being used to spew spam onto the Internet These "zombie" computers -- so-called because they're remotely controlled by malicious parties who plant malwa...

Microsoft was awarded a patent this week for a "system and process for allowing a user to treat e-mail addresses as objects" -- a patent called "obvious and trivial" by one critic of the filing "The technique of applying object properties and methods to various data fields in a software product has been standard practice for several decades," softw...

Everyone has heard the expression, "You get what you pay for." It suggests that the functionality of something is directly proportional to its price. But that rule of thumb is being turned on its head by open-source software Open-source software is free, but it differs from "freeware" in some major respects....

Digital voice recorders don't have the flashy visibility of their music-playing brethren, but their utility can't be denied Granted, some digital music players include recording in their repertoire and others can accommodate it with optional add-ons, but for the most part, recording plays second fiddle to playing tunes....

In the comic book series X-Men, Magneto is a supervillain bent on world domination. Microsoft is associating its Magneto with world domination, too -- domination of the global mobile operating system market Magneto, the code name for version five of the Redmond, Wash., software maker's mobile operating system, is expected to be introduced today at ...

Philadelphia might be known as the city of brotherly love but what it's generating with its experiment with government-sponsored wireless broadband access is far from that emotion Last fall, the city aired its intentions to make itself a gigantic WiFi hotspot, a project with a projected price tag of US$10 million. While some municipalities like Cer...

Anyone who has ever bought a car knows that one of first hard choices they must make is how to service it. Do you stick with the dealer who sold it to you, or do you take it to one of the 495,000 businesses providing after-market service to auto owners? However, as vehicles become more and more dependent on computer systems, consumers have found fe...

For a long time, while Apple computer users enjoyed the advantages of an integrated multimedia software suite, Windows users who wished to experience the i-life had to be satisfied with standalone applications or meek integrated products. Then Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 entered the picture EMC 7 is a suite of Windows applications for working with i...

How small can a full-feature consumer camcorder get? Sony is certainly pushing the limits with its latest entry in its digital Handycam family of products The new unit, the DCR-PC55, not only fits in the palm of your hand, but you can practically hide it there. At 1.1-by-4.0-by-2.9 inches, it's smaller than a compact cassette recorder and it weighs...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has responded to criticism that its system for approving patents is flawed That reproof was reportedly leveled at the office last week by IBM Vice President for Intellectual Property and Standards Jim Stallings at a media event in New York City....

An tech industry organization advocating interoperability has asked a European court to allow it to join the European Commission (EC) in defense of its antitrust decision against Microsoft The five-member group, made up of IBM, Nokia, Oracle, RealNetworks and Red Hat, goes by the name European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS). It filed a ...

Laptops are loveable computers Their clamshell design resonates efficiency. Open up a unit and everything's there to fire up a computing session: display, keyboard and trackpad....

The United States appears to be digging in its heels on the deadline for its rules requiring visitors to its shores to have passports containing biometric information The rules, which have already been postponed once, are set to take effect on October 26. They require that after that date, nations in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program issue passports wi...

Fall River, Mass., is an old textile town sprawled along the hillson the banks of the Taunton river, its salad days more than a century behind it. Although located only some 50 miles south of Boston and its high-tech "Golden Horseshoe," Fall River has never been associated with the phrase "state of the art" -- until last week That's because, in a d...

Earlier this year, the new Napster was given a bit of a fright when reports began circulating that its recently introduced subscription service had been "hacked." Those reports stung Napster in two ways They suggested that the service, which in its original incarnation was shut down by the music industry as a rat's nest for tune nicksters, had, how...

More than 1,000 individuals and groups have signed a letter urging the U.N.'s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to open its meetings next month on global patent and copyright policy to more government outsiders The forums to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, are expected to set the tone for future action impacting the economic growth of...

The thinking inside the box for producing a personal computer for users with shallow pockets is to start subtracting features from a more expensive model until you reach the price point you want, then toss the works into the same dull cabinet as the pricier offering Apple has shown over the years that it doesn't have a penchant for such in-the-box ...

When Dell Computer announced last month that it would begin shippingnotebook computers incorporating a chip to make the units more secure, itsent analysts scurrying to their calculators. That's because Dell'sinclusion of "trusted computing" hardware into its machines would be givingthe technology a big boost in the coming year According to the late...

Could the American spy community improve its intelligence activities throughblogging? A captain in the U.S. Army Reserve thinks so and says as much inthe March issue of Wired magazine Capt. Kris Alexander, a millitary intelligence officer, argues in an essay that blogsshould be incorporated into the intelligence community's classified computernetwo...

American companies have always had to worry about their overseas facilitiesbeing red, white and blue bull's-eyes for terrorists, but now their offshoringpartners may be in the crosshairs of subversives, too A reported raid last Saturday by police in Delhi, India, in which three menwere killed and another arrested, uncovered plans to attack software...