You've got to love the girl
Another Punch for Copy Protection 
A political brawl over mandatory copy protection is about to spread to the U.S. House of Representatives. A Democratic legislator from the home of the Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios is drafting a bill to reduce online piracy by implanting strict copy controls in digital devices. On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, California, circulated a letter on Capitol Hill seeking co-sponsors for his legislation, which he said would follow the same approach as the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) in the Senate.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51400,00.html
Howling Mad Over Hollings' Bill
Jim Dinda's apartment is a high-tech entertainment haven, but that could change if a bill that restricts how electronics devices work is passed into law. Dinda's DSL phone line connects his entire home entertainment network. His movies, music and personal files are stored on a Windows 2000 server. He uses his Dell computer for e-mailing and Web surfing. He's teaching himself programming using a Linux server. He built a Pentium 3 with a video card that links his VCR, DVD and TiVo. The final piece is a wireless base station that allows him to roam the house with an IBM ThinkPad laptop.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,51337,00.html
Spammers Slam Anti-Spam Proposals
The Direct Marketing Association admits that spam is a problem. But the group's members don't want Congress to regulate it. A lobbyist for the 4,700-member trade association said Wednesday that laws restricting companies from firing off unsolicited e-mail messages may have unintended consequences that politicians simply can't anticipate. Jerry Cerasale, the DMA's vice president of government affairs, predicted that current anti-spam proposals would send the wrong message to countries outside the United States.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51370,00.html
Linux and Office: What a Concept
A Window has just opened wide for Linux users. With Codeweaver's CrossOver Office, Linux users can install and use Microsoft Office on their PCs without the Windows operating system. CrossOver Office 1.0 worked almost flawlessly in Wired News' tests. Office 98 and 2000 programs installed easily and ran smoothly over Red Hat 7.2 and Mandrake 8.2 Linux OS distributions on five Dell and Compaq PCs.
http://www.wired.com/news/linux/0,1411,51390,00.html
Why Dial Up If You Can Wi-Fi?
Millions of people now carry laptops equipped for wireless Internet access over 802.11b (aka Wi-Fi) networks. But outside of home and office, there's been no place to connect. Most wireless networks are private, and investors are wary of funding Wi-Fi setups in public places. A new company called Joltage wants to change that, by letting the operators of home and business Wi-Fi networks make a little money reselling their spare capacity to passersby.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,51353,00.html
Oxford Online: Will People Pay?¸
The world's largest publisher of scholarly information just got bigger. Oxford University Press (OUP) is publishing its core language and subject reference dictionaries online for the first time, creating what could be the largest general knowledge source on the Web. Now, this centuries-old collection of illustrious reference works will be available to anyone with an Internet connection -- if they can afford the annual subscription fees.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51300,00.html
Filming the Seas' Great Depths
In a top-secret lab in Santa Clarita, California, a team of skilled engineers from the aerospace industry has spent the last two years developing an underwater robot. Dark Matter was originally contracted by a film production company to create a remote-controlled platform that could travel inside the Titanic, 12,600 feet below the surface of the ocean, and maneuver from room to room while it shot high-quality video and illuminated the interior of the ship with powerful light. What the engineers didn't know because of the project's tight security, was that the technology they were developing was years beyond anything previously imagined for undersea exploration.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,51040,00.html
Truce called in Spyware wars
In the latest chapter of Spyware vs. Anti-spyware, the maker of snooping program WinWhatWhere backed away from evasive programming tactics Wednesday. Richard Eaton, president of WinWhatWhere Corp., said his software would no longer insert stray code into Anti-spyware program Who’s Watching Me to break the program. The announcement comes after MSNBC.com revealed WinWhatWhere and competitor SpectorSoft Corp. both intentionally break the anti-Spyware program.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/730650.asp?0si=-&cp1=1
Operation Enduring Valenti 
The United States is engaged in a war against oppressive regimes run by ignorant fanatics barely able to comprehend the intricacies of modern society. Through actions favoring the ruling class, secret midnight deals, and restricting public distribution of information, citizens in these societies are unable to evolve and live as productive members of the international community. In Afghanistan, this was evidenced by the philosophy and practices of the now-defunct Taliban. Unfortunately, this damn-the-consequences Fundamentalist mindset has spread to America in the entertainment industry's war on progress and human evolution.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/24616.html
"Silence machine" zaps unwanted noise
You will soon be able to silence the deafening racket of a road drill or the thumping beat from a nightclub without blocking the sounds you want to hear, according to Selwyn Wright, an engineer at the University of Huddersfield in Yorkshire, UK. He has developed what he calls the Silence Machine. It works by analysing the stream of sound waves from a noise source, and generating sound that is exactly out of phase and neutralises the incoming sound waves.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992094
Google Turns Away Robots From Its Front Door
Citing the need to protect its server resources, Google has prevented competing search engines from indexing much of its own Web site, the company confirmed Wednesday. While Google has amassed an index of over 2 billion Web pages by automatically "spidering" or "crawling" sites all over the Web, the popular search portal has effectively walled off numerous sections of its own site from other search "bots." By placing a special "robots.txt" file on its server, Google has prohibited other crawlers from indexing 19 areas of its site, including one that offers searches of the company's archive of Usenet newsgroup discussions, as well as an area for exploring its index of graphic images on the Web.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175524.html
DVD Wants Calif. Supreme Court To Reverse DeCSS Ruling
The DVD Copy Control Association Tuesday asked the California Supreme Court to reverse a lower court's decision that blocked the publication of the source code for DeCSS technology, which circumvents digital copy protection systems. DECSS is a computer program designed to defeat an encryption-based copy protection system known as the Content Scramble System, or CSS, which is employed to encrypt and protect the copyrighted motion pictures contained on DVDs. The California Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this case early this fall, and a decision is expected by early 2003.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175512.html
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