Microsoft has filed suit against a hacker in response to the posting of a
patch that allowed a trial version of Office 97 to be used indefinitely.
Christopher Fazendin, a 23-year-old Minnesotan, became the first hacker
ever to be sued by the giant corporation, a distinction he earned by
posting on his web page a patch that circumvents the timer encoded in a
trial version of Office 97 that was sold by Kinko's stores for $4.95.
The trial versions of the software were designed to time out after 90
days, after which users who wanted to keep using it could go out and buy it
-- or they could visit Fazendin's page and download his patch gratis.
Fazendin's patch became so notorious that Microsoft filed suit without even
asking him to take down his page first; how widely it was distributed is
not yet known, but Microsoft intends to find out who hit the site and what
kind of traffic there was on the newsgroups that spread the word about it.
http://www5.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/pcwo/0318/pcwo0011.html
-------also from Netly News----------------
Siteseeing
Netscape and Yahoo! will announce a partnership tomorrow in which Yahoo!
will manage the Destinations page on Netscape's web site. Netscape had
entertained a lively bidding war for the right to manage Destinations,
which contains links to travel, entertainment, sports and technology sites
and also harbors newsgroups and yellow pages. As one of the most visited
sites on the Internet, Destinations was a hot prospect, and unconfirmed
rumors estimated Yahoo's outlay to be in the neighborhood of $20 million.
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,8935,00.html