Leaders in Congress are refusing to commit funds for a federal law that would prevent telemarketers from calling individuals who want to keep their phone numbers off-limits.

[ ... ]

FTC chairman Timothy Muris, testifying before the committee, agreed that funding the project for a couple years is a reasonable option, but unless approval comes soon the agency won't meet its goal of having the registry working by summer.

If approval doesn't come by early February, the program could be pushed back a year, FTC officials said.

Sounds like folks should sign up at the state level till the feds get their act together.

InfoStructure News from Wired News - Hotmail: A Spammer's Paradise?

Anti-spam advocates say spammers have found an effective way to mine new addresses from Hotmail, Microsoft's popular free e-mail service. These "dictionary attacks" are preventable, but only if company officials want to stop them.

Slashdot | Flaw Found iIn Ethernet Device Drivers.

Licensed2Hack writes "Security researchers have discovered a serious vulnerability that may be present in many Ethernet device drivers that is causing the devices to broadcast sensitive information over networks. Seems the device driver writers couldn't be bothered with a memset() call. Eweek has their typical (puffy, low on tech details) take on it here. Since they don't specify the OS, I'm assuming these are drivers for Windows." --- It's actually Linux, *BSD, and Windows.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Interview with EFF's Fred Von Lohmann.

scubacuda writes "Tech Focus has an interview with EFF's Fred Von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Covered in the interview: Kazaa, commercial skipping, DMCA, 802.11b networks, congressmen friendly to the idea of "fair use", and how to "make a difference"." --- Update: 01/08 17:42 GMT by M: Link changed to reduce the load on Techfocus.

techfocus.org - Techfocus interviews EFF's Fred Von Lohmann.

We've conducted an interview with Fred Von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a membership organization that has spearheaded many technology-related causes and legal battles, with civil liberties being on the forefront.  In cases such as the halt of US encryption method publishing, the 2600/DeCSS case, Morpheus, ReplayTV and constant clashes with the Motion Picture Association of America and the "Recording Artists Association of America", the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been one of the most active organizations representing technology.

We fielded questions from visitors along with some of our own, and Fred Von Lohmann took the time to discuss the issues with us.  Some of his work with the EFF includes his work on the MGM vs. Grokster case, which threatens to set legal precedent on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing.  He is also involved in the Newmark vs. Turner Broadcasting case, which involves the use of ReplayTV to skip commercials, record content and share the content with others.