New & Noteworthy: Apple retail openings; DVI-Hub; MS set to lure Mac fans; Email anniversary; more

Apple retail store openings set The Germantown, TN store, delayed because of problems with local building approvals, and Albany, NY are both scheduled to open on October 31th, according to MacCentral. As we noted earlier, this Saturday at 10 am the Palo Alto, CA store opens.

ex-tend-it DVI-Hub Gefen's ex-tend-it DVI-Hub is designed to extend two flat panel digital monitors up to 100 feet from the computer. It is priced at $599.00 (US) and is available now.

Microsoft set to woo Mac fans From the Wall Street Journal Online: "In a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign making its debut Monday, the Microsoft unit that makes software for the Macintosh operating system is aiming to get itself seen and heard. Not by the general public, mind you, but by hard-core Apple Computer loyalists, who have long had a love/hate relationship with Microsoft." More.

At Age 30, E-Mail Matures to Adulthood From Reuters: "As great inventions go, e-mail had a rather ho-hum beginning back in 1971. In fact, Ray Tomlinson, the American engineer considered the 'father of e-mail,' can't quite recall when the first message was sent, what it said, or even who the recipient was." More.

Why Excite@Home failed: A postmortem From ZDNet: "Excite@Home's demise bordered on Greek tragedy at times, with a history filled with tense boardroom skirmishes, ill-conceived acquisitions and executives who governed the operations from afar. Once considered one of the pillars of the Net revolution, Excite@Home was largely a victim of its own grandiose ambitions, as well as of a convoluted ownership structure that kept too many cooks in the kitchen." More.

FTC Seeks to Trap a Mousetrapper From Wired: "Suing John Zuccarini is like riding the neighborhood bicycle: Everybody gets a turn. He's already been assailed 63 times by everyone from The Wall Street Journal to Disney, Yahoo and Nicole Kidman. Now the feds, in a lawsuit announced Monday, have become the latest plaintiff to take Zuccarini to court. His alleged offense this time: registering misspellings of popular domain names, then bombarding hapless visitors with a seemingly infinite series of pop-up ads." More.

Eavesdrop Now, Reassess Later? From Wired: "House negotiators have drafted anti-terrorism legislation to grant police unprecedented eavesdropping powers that would automatically expire in two years." More.

Microsoft slammed for software costs From the BBC: "When Microsoft announced a new pricing structure for licensing its software in May, it said the scheme would be less complicated and result in lower costs for most of its corporate users. The new prices took effect on 1 October, and some firms are already lining up to complain that they are now paying substantially more, are forced to buy products they do not need or want." More.

Supreme Court to take up Microsoft appeal on Friday From Computerworld: "The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to enter into conference Friday, when it will begin discussing whether to grant Microsoft Corp.'s request for an appeal in its landmark antitrust case." More.

80,000 Microsoft servers 'disappear' From vnunet.com "The impact of Code Red and related viruses such as Nimda has caused over 150,000 IIS-based websites on around 80,000 different machines to disappear from the internet. It has also resulted in the closure of one of the most visible proponents of Microsoft technology for mass hosting." More.

Web advertisers strike back at ad filters  Printer Friendly Format From ITworld: "The battle of the banner ads has just heated up. With Internet users increasingly implementing filtering software to screen out advertisements, Web site operators will soon have a new tool to block the blockers." More.

NSync CD is copy protection "experiment" From NewScientist: "The music industry is now testing different copy protection systems on mass market chart CDs, with copies of NSync's Celebrity on the Zomba label being sold in at least three different versions. Those available in Germany have draconian protection, a slightly weaker system is used on the US disk and there is no protection on the UK version. The only visible clue is small print on the German release which warns 'this CD is not playable on computers.'" More.