Micron execs to race video-equipped cars

BOISE, Idaho (AP) _ Top Micron Technology Inc. executives seeking to demonstrate their products' durability will race cars equipped with on-board digital video memory cards in a grueling 1,000 mile off-road race down Mexico's Baja Peninsula.

If the chipmaker is successful, it would be the first time there's been an entire continuous video recording of the SCORE Tecate Baja 1000, the legendary off-road race known as the "roughest run under the sun," race officials said.

"It's the next step to use technology to bring our sport to the masses," said Sal Fish, chief executive of SCORE, the Los Angeles-based sanctioning body of the Baja series.

The largest U.S. manufacturer of DRAM memory chips for personal computers, Micron has expanded its microchip product line to include image sensors such as those for video-enabled mobile phones.

Steve Appleton, Micron's chairman, chief executive and president, will drive one of the four Micron cars in the Nov. 15-18 race. All four will record the entire 1,052-mile race from Ensenada to La Paz on solid-state image sensors and a series of 8-gigabyte Lexar flash memory cards. Sensors on each car will record both a cockpit view and a forward-looking race course view. The video will be recorded for later viewing online.

Appleton, a professional stunt plane pilot and former motocross racer, said Micron officials originally considered equipping professional racers' vehicles, but later decided to drive the Porsche-powered Baja touring cars themselves.

Appleton said he's not worried about putting himself and his executive team behind the wheels of race cars pounding over rough, remote terrain for upwards of 20 hours.

"I don't know what could be worse than being in the memory business for risk-taking," he said. "If we were in some stable, monopolistic business, I'd probably get objections from my executive staff about doing this, but they're all dying to go."

_ Christopher Smith, AP Writer.

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Service taps community to ID mail scams

NEW YORK (AP) _ A new service for fighting e-mail fraud seeks to tap the wisdom of the Internet community: Anyone will be able to submit suspected scams for others to vote up or down.

Freedom Networks LLC's OpenDNS, which provides free directory services necessary to translate a Web site's domain name into its actual numeric Internet address, developed the system to help block its users from so-called phishing sites. Such sites look real, but are actually scams to collect banking passwords and other personal information.

David Ulevitch, the company's chief executive, said the lists of phishing sites he had weren't all that good. He launched PhishTank this week under the belief the community could collectively do better _ at no charge.

Users simply submit to PhishTank.com the messages they believe are scams.

Others then examine the message and the site to which it links and decide whether it is or isn't a scam. When an item gets enough votes and the margin is wide enough, it is either dropped or classified as a phishing message. To prevent scammers from trying to game the system, votes are weighed based on how long, how often and how accurate one has rated other messages.

More than 300 messages have been verified as scams as of Wednesday afternoon.

PhishTank isn't the first to seek the community's input to fight scams, but Ulevitch said that unlike the others, the company is offering access to the database for rivals to use for free.

_ Anick Jesdanun, AP Internet Writer.

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Service equips stolen phones with scream

LONDON (AP) _ An ear-piercing scream awaits would-be mobile phone thieves, and it won't stop unless the battery is removed, rendering the phone inoperable.

Even if the thief replaces the phone's SIM card, which holds the key data enabling mobile service, the handset will not work.

All customers' information is centrally stored, so contacts, ringtones, pictures, texts and other data can be retrieved when a new handset is purchased. The Remote XT service costs about $18 a month.

The goal of the service is to make mobile phones useless to anyone but the rightful owner, said Mark Whiteman, the managing director of Remote XT.

"We'll see the market for stolen handsets stamped out once and for all," he said.