There's nothing magical about the number 28. But after reading a new report from Earthlink and Webroot software that there is an average of 28 spyware programs running on each PC, I checked that figure against my own computer.

Using Ad-Aware 6.0, I discovered, "yup," that’s how many internal monitoring programs I found alive and well (not necessarily well for me) and beavering away in the background on my hard drive recording who knows what.

Welcome to the next edition of being looked at all the time, everywhere, and anywhere when you venture onto the World Wide Web.

First, what is spyware?

Yankee Group defines it ever so clinically: "Spyware gathers and transmits information from the user's PC without (italics mine) consent." The Boston based high-tech consulting firm continues: "Most information collected by spyware is harmless Web-browser information and is a minor (italics mine again) invasion of privacy. However, the confidentialty of other files stored on the PC can be at risk."

Note the two words italicized above: "Without" as in without consent. And, "minor," like, "we’ll just pick your pocket for change, not bills – this time."

There is nothing minor in my book about deliberate, skillfull, breaking and entering with possible theft as a motive. And that is what spyware can do online and has the potential to do when placed on anyone’s PC without his/her knowledge or approval.

Yankee Group also mentions another type of software in the same breath as spyware – adware.

Again, Yankee Group's definition: "Adware displays pop-up advertisements." Sophisticated software can place these annoying at best, thieving at worst, pop-up ads whether or not the website you visit – voluntarily visit – launches a pop up ad. For example, you might be looking at website on running shoes and wonder how that Viagra ad hoofed it onto your screen. Adware makes it possible.

Here’s the killer app for both the spyware and adware definition from Yankee Group: "The increasing sophistication and complexity of website scripting makes the proliferation of adware and spyware possible. Website scripts can install software, alter browser settings, and create, change, or copy files from a PC. Scripting enables the distribution of viruses from infected websites."

This spyware stuff makes surfing the Web as reassuring as buying a pair of blinds without knowing that they are transparent from the outside looking in.

PC World, in its definition of spyware, adds a little understated beef to the potentially pernicious nature of spyware: "…once installed, they run surreptitiously in the background and can be difficult to detect and remove."

Here are some more findings from the Earthlink and Webroot Software study: In addition to finding 28 spyware programs running on each of the computers that they scanned (and they scanned a little more than 1 million PCs) they also found a Trojan horse on a computer in 30 percent of all the systems they scanned. A Trojan horse is a more clandestine form of monitoring programs on a computer.

For those of you who didn’t study Greek mythology, the new movie "Troy" will make perfectly clear that Trojan horses are not something to feed a lump of sugar. In mythology, the Greek use of one eliminated, repeat, eliminated, the city of Troy and all its inhabitants. A software Trojan horse, used by geek and non-geek alike, at the very least, raises concerns about identify theft, monitoring (and capture) of passwords to banking and financial accounts, replication of your e-mail distribution list so as to send itself and do the same to all of your friends in your personal email address book.

The study, which covers only the first three months of 2004, detected 184,000 Trojan horse programs on the systems scanned and a similar number of system monitoring programs. Both Earthlink and Webroot say this is the first of what will be regular updates in their tracking the prevalence of spyware.

Likewise for this Monitor Scitechblog. We plan to routinely update you on issues of privacy and security related to spyware. More important, we will suggest ways and means to make sure your computer remains free of such stuff unless you authorize its use on your computer. We all need to be fully cognizant of ways to prevent such malicious software from causing harm as a result of using our computers on the Web.

Next: State and federal laws underconsideration to prevent the illegal use of spyware.

Note: This is the first of a three part series. See: Spyware: the need for legislation,
and Spyware protection: Taking some simple steps (by Jim Bencivenga)

Ok, trust me. You really should do this.

Tomorrow night, Wednesday, go to bed early. Set the alarm for 11:30 p.m. Plan on getting up as if you were starting the day.

Am I crazy, you ask?

No, the annual Lyrid meteor shower peaks through the night into Thurs. morning. Wouldn’t it be a shame to sleep while huge fireballs streak across the heavens, some for up to 30 seconds.

Let's hope the clouds cooperate – by being absent. The moon already has. It won’t be visible at all, making for extra dark skies, especially if you live in the country or make the effort to drive to a dark spot far from city lights.

Most years, star gazers can expect to see one or two Lyrid shooting stars every few minutes. But every decade or so there’s a burst of activity and up to 90 meteors in a single hour might flame-out in the sky. Maybe this year will be one of those nights.

But here’s another reason to look skyward. The Lyrids are the oldest recorded meteor shower. According to Chinese records, they were observed in 687 BCE as "stars that fell [like] rain." Just imagine, as you gaze at these stellar fireworks, you bond with fellow humans who have done the same for more than 2600 years.

What is that bond? To see and wonder, perhaps to fear, but always to be conscious of the wider, limitless universe we inhabit.

Nasa’s Science@Nasa website notes that

The Lyrid meteor stream is associated with the periodic comet Thatcher C/1861 G1, whose orbit is tilted nearly 80 degrees with respect to the plane of the solar system. Because the comet spends most of its time well away from the planets, it is nearly immune to significant gravitational perturbations. This is probably the reason why the debris stream has remained stable and the Lyrid shower has been observed for so many centuries.

Thatcher won’t return to our part of the solar system for another 300 years or so.

You want to find a comfortable spot. Dress warmly. Bring a thick blanket or lounge chair to lean back on. Look skyward East-Northeast. Fix on the brightest star in that direction, Vega at 0 magnitude. (If you live along the Atlantic seaboard, it’s well worth the effort to drive to a secluded beach. There won’t be any lights from London or Paris backlighting your view!)

The meteors emanate from the constellation Lyra (the Harp), hence their name – Lyrids. Lyra is the radiant, the point at which the stream of debris left by the comet Thatcher collides with Earth’s atmosphere. It is the area of the sky from which the meteors appear to radiate.

Another sky marker is Cygnus, the swan, also known as the "Northern Cross." The radiant is above and to the right of Cygnus.

Something else makes the Lyrids special, besides their predictability. They collide with Earth's atmosphere nearly head-on. This causes them to appear like a giant fireball coming at you from directly overhead. The angle of contact makes them seem as if "turbo charged," resulting at times in a spectacularly bright, glowing trail of light.

No need for a telescope or binoculars. Meteors can appear in any part of the sky. Their trails, though, tend to point back toward the radiant, or the constellation, Lyra.

Like all meteor showers, the higher the shower's radiant, the wider the field of view and the better the chance of seeing meteors.

Just one more reason why you have to get up so late. The radiant will be highest in the sky after midnight. (by Jim Bencivenga)

Ah, life, liberty and the pursuit of ... a notebook computer battery that last more than a couple of hours, if that.

Oh, there have been promises made in the past, but most of them have proven to be little more than wishful thinking. But there may be hope, dear friends, and in the near future, thanks to methanol.

The IDG News Service reports that Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, has successfully developed a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). These cells mix methanol with air and water to create power. Samsung wants to use the technology to develop "long-lasting" batteries for electronic devices like notebook computers and mobile telephones. Samsung says these new batteries could last up to ten hours without a charge.

So when will this brave new battery world be upon us?

DMFCs for smaller devices like mobile telephones or PDAs are being developed now and are expected sometime within the next one to three years, according to estimates from companies developing the technology.

Meanwhile in Redmond....

TechWeb reports that Microsoft pulled a bit of a shocker this week: it posted source code under the Open Source Initiative's Common Public License. (For my mom, et al., this means Microsoft freely shared 'some' of its proprietary code, which is equivalent to Scrooge McDuck sharing one of his nickels.)

The source code posted to the Internet was for a tool set, dubbed WiX for Windows Installer XML, that targets developers building Windows installation packages from XML source code. These are the same tools that Microsoft uses internally to create installers for its products, including Office, SQLServer, and BizTalk Server. Code for the tool set, which consists of a compiler, linker, a library tool, and a decompiler, has been posted to SourceForge.net, a hosting site for open source projects and code.

A Microsoft employee, Rob Mensching, explained on the SourceForge site that several years ago most people inside Microsoft didn't understand "what the Open Source community was really about," so he "wanted to improve that understanding by providing an example."

Hmm. I think the European Commission's recent decision to fine Microsoft $613 million dollars for breaking EU competition law, and the numerous other lawsuits that the Redmond company still faces in the US (and Japan, and elsewhere), provided a much clearer example to Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer of the benefits of embracing the Open Source movement, even in this relatively mild way. (by Tom Regan)

Last we wrote, excitement was growing at the prospect of two comets appearing in the spring sky. What was still to be determined was just how bright they would appear in the northern hemisphere.

Good news.

Latest word from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is that they are going to be plenty bright for naked-eye observations.

Officially known as C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) and C/2002 T7 (LINEAR), the two visitors from beyond the Oort Cloud (see below) go by the popular names NEAT and LINEAR. Our blog of 3/24/ said: "Because NEAT and LINEAR are 'newcomers' transiting our solar system, it remains to be seen just how visible they will become. Their orbits are not fully known. But in a few weeks astronomers will more accurately predict their paths and their magnitude."

NEAT will be the neatest (sorry, couldn’t resist). It will be high in the western evening sky of the northern hemisphere during the latter part of May. The nights of the 18, 19, and 20th around 10 p.m. should be ideal because there will be no moon.

NEAT will reflect sunlight at a magnitude of 1.1, possibly lower, in the first week in May. (Reminder: Magnitude is of greatest relevance if you don't have a telescope. It is a scale of an object's brightness. The unaided human eye under very dark skies can see an object at 6.5 magnitude. The lower the magnitude, the greater the visibility.)

Because the moon will be full the first few days of May, we won't really get a good look at NEAT's tail until May 6 or later. From Atlanta-Dallas-Los Angeles looking West-Southwest around 9 p.m. it will be 15 degrees elevation. (The further north you live, the lower on the horizon it will be.) The dog star Sirius (a magnitude of –1.47 and the brightest star in the evening sky) will just be setting. It will be just beneath NEAT. Look for Sirius as a pointer to the comet.

Also note that West-Northwest of Sirius, the planets Venus, Mars and Saturn will be in a tight row with Venus the brightest object in the night sky, magnitude –4.5. By May 15 (when there will be little moonlight) NEAT will be clearly visible higher in the sky, above and directly in line with the three planets.

Imagine the omens such a phenomenon might have portended to the ancients, whose lives were ruled by the comings and goings of the night sky and these planet "gods" in a way we post-Copernicans can only imagine.

Hint to parents
If you want to instill a love of geometry in your ten to fifteen year-olds, get out each night around 9 p.m. Observe from the same dark location. Bring graph paper and chart the changing location and elevation of the comet each night relative to the three planets and other prominent stars. You will, if you haven’t already, sown the seeds for a keen interest in solid, not just plane, geometry.

Comet LINEAR will be more challenging to observe because it appears in the early morning hours later in April and early May. It will be quite low in the eastern sky. You will need a flat, open view of the dawn horizon as it barely peaks over the edge of the earth.

LINEAR will never get to a greater magnitude than 2.6 and will quickly fade to 3.7 and then fade below naked-eye visibility by the end of May. It will make a brief evening appearances in early June, but again, low on the western horizon and quite dim.

One positive aspect of LINEAR – in the pre-dawn moments the tail will be visible first. Remember, the visible white tail is on the side of the comet opposite the Sun, so the tail will precede the actual body of the comet on the horizon as the pre-dawn sun rises.

Oort Cloud*
The Oort Cloud is an immense spherical cloud surrounding our solar system. It spreads out about 3 light years, some 20 trillion miles (that's trillion) from the Sun. Its vast distance leaves it at the edge of the Sun's "orb of physical, gravitational, or dynamical influence."

The cloud is made of galactic "debris," including comets. Comets are typically tens of millions of kilometers apart. As SolarViews.com points out, "They are weakly bound to the sun, and passing stars and other forces can readily change their orbits, sending them into the inner solar system or out to interstellar space. This is especially true of comets on the outer edges of the Oort cloud."

As spring turns to summer both NEAT and LINEAR will return to the outer regions of our solar system, never to be seen again. (by Jim Bencivenga)

For as long as I can remember, I have hated bananas. The smell of them, the feel of them and most of all, the taste of them. Thinking about them gives me the willies. (So, naturally, my children are constanty trying to find ways to get me to eat one.)

Now, some scientists believe that they may have discovered a reason. It's my mother's fault. (Wouldn't Freud be happy!)

Allow me to expand on this theory. When I was a youngster, my mother fed me artificial banana products. You know, what companies now call "genuine artificial flavor." I didn't have a REAL banana, apparently, for months. To this day, my mum is convinced that this was the reason for my bananaphobia. And, lo and behold, according to what some scientists are saying, my life-long aversion to bananas may be the direct result of my mother's nefarious action, and not because of some weird genetic thing.

According to Monday's Toronto Globe and Mail the flavors that "children, even adults, enjoy is dictated – at least partly – by what they were fed as young infants, according to Julie Mennella and her colleagues at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit research institute based in Philadelphia. The study showed how four-month old infants' could develop preferences for, or aversions to, particular tastes. (Like hating bananas.)

Ms. Mennella comments on some of the implications, "Because we know that flavor preferences established early in life track into later childhood, eating habits in the growing child may begin to be established long before the introduction of solid food." (Like hating bananas.)

Once again, science discovers something that my mother knew four-and-a-half decades ago! (by Tom Regan)

Thanks for the feedback on my original Gmail piece. (That posting is just below this one.) Most of the feedback deals with my comment about the US Department of Justice. Many of you said sure, Justice could ask Google to snoop on Gmail clients, but heck, they could do that now with Yahoo!, MSN, etc. All e-mail, for that matter can be looked at with the right search warrant.

True enough. All e-mail is public in a way ... and yet it isn't. In fact, I always tell people that they should understand that any e-mail they send could end up on the front page of the New York Times (just ask Bill Gates), if the circumstances are right.

But it's the idea of my e-mail being searched regularly that bothers me, and, I believe, most other privacy advocates. Even with the fact that e-mail can be looked at with the right search warrant in a specific situation, most e-mail users have a reasonable expectation that their e-mail is free from intrusion under regular circumstances. And while all e-mail accounts could be searched, the reality is that they aren't. (For instance, I don't believe the Monitor's sysadmin spends his time flipping through our e-mail messages. He's got too much other work to do.)

Which goes to my point about the government letting Google do the heavy lifting. Since the searching of your personal e-mail would literally be happening all the time in order to create ads for you, Google becomes a "kindler, gentler" Carnivore, which raises all kinds of interesting privacy issues.

I just don't like the idea.

As as one reader suggested, if you don't like it, don't use it.

I intend to take his advice. (by Tom Regan)

Now I almost wish it had been an April Fool's joke.

Yesterday, I raved about how Google was going to offer a new e-mail service (called Gmail) that would give users, for free, an e-mail account with an entire gigabyte of storage space. Google would also offer its unique searching technology to allow users to search for a particular e-mail in all that storage space.

Today, I read the fine print.

The San Jose Mercury News notes that Google will also be searching your private e-mails in order to see what ads it might want to push your way. Thursday Google officials tried to calm the firestorm of criticism that arose about the proposed practice, saying the e-mails would be scanned by a machine and not a person, but online users aren't buying it.

"So, not satisfied with indexing all public content, they want to index the private content too and make it searchable?'' one unidentified person posted on the WebmasterWorld website, geared to website operators. "Man, and they wonder why there are conspiracy theories!''

Here's my concern. What's to stop our good ol'buddy John Ashcroft down at the US Justice Department from dropping by Google headquarters with a quiet little Patriot Act subpoena, or something similar, that would instruct Google to add a few extra features to its machine that reads e-mails, creating 'special' searches to "help with the war on terror." No, I am not being paranoid. We all know the FBI would do something like this in a heartbeat.

So while I will continue to use Google for my searches, my brief flirtation with their e-mail service just ended on a very sour note. To quote Charles Cooper at CNet, Gmail give me the "creeps." (by Tom Regan)

Okay, this is cool. CNN/Money is reporting that Google is going to offer a free e-mail product that "should be far superior to Yahoo! and Hotmail." Google announced Thursday it had begun testing the new service, called Gmail.

Google said Gmail would allow users to search through their e-mail in a fashion similar to the way that they would use the Google search engine. What's more, Gmail subscribers will have an e-mail box that can store up to 1,000 megabytes of information...that's 500,000 Web pages worth of e-mail.

Motley Fool thinks it might be an April Fool's joke, but admits it's a pretty cool idea.

While Yahoo!'s service and Microsoft's Hotmail offer four and two megabytes of storage each, with additional charges for extra storage, Google said in its very amusing press announcement that its grandiose plan includes a gigabyte (read: massive amount) of storage space, which it supposedly plans to fund with advertising. It will also add stepped-up search capabilities and targeted advertising to Gmail users.

CNN/Money notes that Google has pulled April Fool's jokes on the tech community before, including jokes about pigeons being the driving force behind Google's search technology and that Google was looking to start a new research center on the moon.

But Google says it is NOT, I repeat NOT, an April Fool's prank.

A gigabyte of storage space ... wow. (by Tom Regan)