ZoneAlarm phones home, Apple throws Intel a bone

Great news for hard-working IT pros. Janco Associates just published its annual salary survey, and average high-tech compensation went up 1/8 of a percent last year -- a whopping $148 annually. Ooh-wee, baby. Time to order that Lexus and put a down payment on an Aspen ski chalet. My editor said he’d give me a similar raise, but he wasn’t carrying anything that small.

A Perfect Spy? It seems that ZoneAlarm Security Suite has been phoning home, even when told not to. Last fall, InfoWorld Senior Contributing Editor James Borck discovered ZA 6.0 was surreptitiously sending encrypted data back to four different servers, despite disabling all of the suite’s communications options. Zone Labs denied the flaw for nearly two months, then eventually chalked it up to a “bug” in the software -- even though instructions to contact the servers were set out in the program’s XML code. A company spokesmodel says a fix for the flaw will be coming soon and worried users can get around the bug by modifying their Host file settings. However, there’s no truth to the rumor that the NSA used ZoneAlarm to spy on U.S. citizens.

A Reading From the Book of Jobs: Apple and Intel -- two great tastes that taste great together. That’s the word from last week’s Macworld Expo, where the Cupertino Crew unveiled the first Macs with Intel Inside -- I mean, Intel Leaping Ahead. I couldn’t help noticing that Jobs wore yet another of his seemingly endless supply of black turtlenecks, while Intel CEO Paul Otellini was forced to wear a dorky white jumpsuit (just to make sure everybody knows who the cool kids are in this crowd).

Drop the Mouse and Put Your Hands in the Air: Along with a CD of Windows XP Service Pack 2, Cringefan Chris D. recently got a letter from the Microsoft Volume Licensing Team saying that if he used MS Office Professional or Access 2003, “installation of SP2 is required for legal reasons.” I understand if he refuses to install the update, he’ll be tied to a chair and forced to watch Bill Gates’ CES keynote speeches until he begs for mercy.

Got hot tips or classified intelligence? Send them to cringe@infoworld.com and you may get an I Spy 4 Cringe bag in return.