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The popular cartoon the Powerpuff Girls, like most mainstream cartoons, has long since branched out into merchandising, with DVDs, games and toys galore. But the most recently released DVD carries a payload that’s rather incongruous with the Powerpuff Girls’ ultra-cute image: a computer virus. The DVD, titled “Meet the Beat Alls,” contains games, a Powerpuff episode and other goodies, but three of those games are infected with “FunLove,” a nasty computer virus that first emerged two years ago. The virus cannot be unleashed upon DVD players but is problematic for PCs that download the accompanying software. Once ensconced on users’ computers, FunLove can spread quickly and cause computers, networks and servers to become unstable. Apparently, one of the machines used to make the DVDs was infected. Warner Home Video has recalled the DVDs and is destroying all copies.
Microsoft catches flack in MSN.com browser flap
A promotional message of MSN.com has generated a wave of criticism of parent Microsoft, and in its wake there's been a increase in downloads of alternative web browsers in protest. The flap stems from an error message and a recommendation to "upgrade" to Internet Explorer that users saw when they tried to view MSN.com last week with competing browsers, including Opera, Mozilla, Amaya and certain versions of Netscape. Among those protesting was Tim Berners-Lee, considered the father of the web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, which sets standards for the internet. A Microsoft executive initially claimed the error was caused by alternative browsers not being in compliance with W3C guidelines. Hours afterwards Microsoft backtracked, confessing that the message was in fact an error on its part. It then attempted to correct the problem but some browsers are still receiving the message, to the further annoyance of Microsoft critics. Downloads and site views for Opera 5, a free browser from a group in Oslo, Norway, hit an all-time high in the company's seven-year history. Microsoft holds 80 percent of the browser market, while Netscape retains 13 percent.
Webcam fixates on depths of Loch Ness
Here, Nessie, Nessie, Nessie: Researchers have sunk a webcam into the depths of Loch Ness, in hopes of catching the reclusive and likely fictional Loch Ness Monster on film. The camera started webcasting on Thursday. To be sure, researchers stress that the murky, 750-foot-deep lake holds many other mysteries, and they’re not necessarily expecting to find any prehistoric, aquatic creatures such as the fabled monster. But they’re not ruling out the possibility of finding ancient animals that live nowhere else on earth. The lake is a geological curiosity and may lie over a major fault line. The webcast can be found at visitlochness.org. The legend of the Loch Ness Monster goes all the way back to 565 A.D., when St. Columba supposedly glimpsed the beast.
Holidays, health and games dominate the web
Halloween, health sites and Xbox.com posted marked gains in traffic for the week ending Oct. 28, according to data from Nielsen//NetRatings. An online costume store, Buycostumes.com, netted 486,000 unique visitors for the week, representing a 129 percent increase over its previous three-week average. Thanks largely to the burgeoning anthrax crisis, traffic to health sites increased significantly as well. Drugstore.com’s traffic grew 67 percent, to 1.1 million unique visitors; traffic to WebRX.com jumped 9 percent, to 328,000; and MerckMedco.com’s traffic spiked 78 percent. Anticipation of Microsoft’s gaming system, the Xbox, is mounting. While the system won’t hit stores until mid-month, traffic shot up 54 percent for the week, to 1.1 million unique visitors.
NY Times blames ‘attack’ on resurgent virus
Last week, the headquarters of The New York Times was thought to be victim of a denial-of-service attack. That turns out not to be the case, however. What really happened is that the newspaper fell prey to a reemergence of a virulent strain of an already-nasty computer worm, Nimda. On Tuesday, the newspaper’s network was disrupted by a “storm of data.” The disturbance mirrored the pattern of a denial-of-service attack, in which attackers bombard a computer network or server with so many requests for information that the site becomes inaccessible to legitimate surfers. The networks were actually infected by the Nimda.E virus, which differed enough from the original Nimda to slip past antiviral software. The paper says it has cleansed its network of the virus.
November 5, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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