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Weird News For The Wired: Part II

Understandably, there's a move afoot to tax porn. If you want to tax Internet commerce, it certainly makes as much sense to start there as it does to not let that revenue slip away. Sex sells, but it really sizzles online, where I am pretty sure it remains the top or close to it leading producer of revenue. But why stop there? Heck, let's tax spam while we're at it. Other than death, I doubt there are two more surefire sources of tax dollars today: They won't go away, they're available everywhere, and they seem to rake in the dough.

Speaking of revenue, if you like to tinker under the hood of software programs, and you want to supplement your income, make note: Several security vendors are offering cash on the barrel for your bug reports. That's one way to rally the troops to fight for good against evil! It's not just that security vendors want to be the first to know about these things as noted in our story this week. Increasingly, hackers are targeting the very software we buy to protect ourselves. Payments, alleged to range from $100 to as much as $5,000 for serial contributors, may be just the thing to turn the technically astute away from mindlessly surfing the web at work, and onto dissecting software instead of building or maintaining it. Perhaps the really motivated will even create a few of these bugs, just so they can report them.

By the time I saw the story on how crooks have turned to E-greetings to con the unsuspecting into downloading malicious code into their computers, I was already well aware of this latest tricky trend, having received several such E-mails myself. But who hasn't received one of those often fun cards (legitimately) from a friend, co-worker, or loved one? You have to wonder what this is going to mean for the online card sites. My initial thought was to send them a sympathy card. But then I realized they'd just think it was a trick E-mail, and never open it.

From the "unclear on the concept'' file, we have two guys in Oregon who've been charged with stealing $300,000 worth of electronic equipment from Hewlett-Packard and then selling some of it on eBay. Ironically, they were working in the company's Equipment Recovery Program. Sounds like they took that job a little too much to heart.

The latest twist on farming out tech work seems to be a form of reverse outsourcing that is providing an economic bonanza to some savvy Native Americans. The real kink here isn't that Native Americans are finding gainful employment, it's the kind of work they are doing. Talk about your middlemen. Weirdly, Chinese outsourcers have contracted with these American workers to check Chinese translations of lousy English penmanship for accuracy. How circular is that? You'd think it would be cheaper, and a lot less convoluted, to just parcel out the complete job to the Native Americans in the first place, but it's not. The Chinese are way cheaper.

Here's a project that will be closely watched from all sides of the issue. While police cameras and helicopters are watching the public, a computer program will be supplementing home videos when it comes to watching the L.A. Police Department. There's a little bit of what's good for the goose here, but there are also legitimate concerns about how the collected data will be interpreted and used. Be interesting to see how quickly this program is hacked and by whom!

Finally, if any company today should be lawsuit shy, it's Microsoft, right? If an armful of antitrust losses and countless other lawsuits doesn't make you extra careful on the legal end of things, I don't know what will. But apparently, this issue escaped the legal team that must have approved the "Vista" name for Microsoft's latest operating system. It's hardly an uncommon name. And according to The Associated Press, which seems to have done more due diligence than Microsoft, there are 180 software and computer products with that name, all with active trademark records. Legal pads, anyone?

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