Ahhh, news time
!!
RIAA: We'll smother song swappers 
The recording industry is experimenting with new technology it hopes can smother online song swapping by targeting music traders' computers directly. The record, movie and software industries have long pursued a controversial campaign that identifies people trading large numbers of songs though services such as MusicCity, OpenNap or Gnutella. Once the people are identified, the groups attempt to persuade Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down those individuals' Internet connections. But copyright holders, including record labels, are now experimenting with new ways to cut down on copyright infringement.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01
Novell: Microsoft to retract marketing claims
Novell Inc., which makes software for corporate networks, said on Monday that rival Microsoft Corp. had agreed to retract marketing material containing what Novell argued were false claims about its flagship NetWare product. Novell filed a lawsuit against Microsoft on Oct. 1 and had asked a federal judge in Utah to issue a restraining order to prohibit the software giant from claiming that Novell NetWare software would become obsolete and prove costly for companies to maintain.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
SirCam's back? Playing the dating game?
The highly destructive SirCam worm has been programmed to return on its three-month birthday, and Europe will be a prime target for the attacks. The network-aware computer worm will attempt to destroy data on one in every 20 computers that it infects, say experts. "When an infected computer starts up today, there is a 5 percent chance that SirCam will start to delete all files on the C drive, and remove all files in sub-directories," said Andre Post, senior researcher at antivirus firm Symantec. "It will then try to fill up the hard drive with a fake file, and will expand and take up the full hard drive space." But the file-deleting payload is only programmed to infect PCs configured with the D/M/Y date format.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
Report: Internet attacks on the rise
The number of Internet attacks reported by companies looks likely to double in 2001, a government-funded security response group reported Monday. The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) Coordination Center, the group that administers the myriad CERTs around the United States, counted nearly 35,000 attacks and probes in the first nine months of this year. While the increase in such incidents may indicate more intruders attacking, much of the increase is due to the growth of the Internet, said Larry Rogers, a senior member of the technical staff at the CERT Coordination Center.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...098301,00.html
W3C debate invites open-source views
The World Wide Web Consortium has invited representatives from the open-source and free-software communities to join a working group debating the use of patents in industry standards. The W3C is charged with developing industry standards for Web technologies. It's been debating a new policy that would allow the use of patented technologies in those standards and permit the companies that hold the patents to charge royalties for their use. The proposal has met with harsh criticism, particularly from supporters of open-source software development and free software. They say that allowing companies to charge royalties will stymie innovation and create significant legal hurdles for developers.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd
Shareholder denounces HP-Compaq union
A major investor in both Compaq Computer and Hewlett-Packard is urging the companies to scrap their merger because it believes the chances of the two pulling off a successful union are slim. Matrix Asset Advisors, which manages the top-rated Matrix Advisors Value Fund, sent a letter last week to the boards of directors of both Compaq and HP advising them to abort their proposed merger, valued originally at $25 billion but now standing at $19.7 billion. David Katz, chief investment officer at Matrix, said his company is usually a silent investor -- "99 percent of the time" -- but added that the Compaq-HP merger "pushes the envelope for us."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_mh
Microsoft buttresses employee security
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Tuesday that the software giant was boosting security measures after six employees were exposed to a letter that had tested positive for anthrax. "Obviously, like all companies, we are beefing up the various things we do to try and keep our employees as safe as possible," Gates said at a news conference here. Six Microsoft employees were exposed to the anthrax-tainted envelope sent to the Microsoft office in Reno, Nev. from Malaysia. All six have received a clean bill of health, but the United States remains on edge after anthrax-contaminated envelopes were sent to media offices in New York and Florida.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh
Amazon to stream prereleased music
Amazon.com is offering to plug customers into new music before it hits store shelves, according to streaming media company Speedera Networks. The Web superstore is expected to announce this week that it has hired Santa Clara, Calif.-based Speedera to digitally stream the entire contents of prereleased CDs to customers after they order the physical CD from Amazon, Gordon Smith, vice president of marketing for Speedera, told CNET News.com. Amazon said digital streaming will improve the shopping experience.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=cd_pr
AOL unveils 7.0 as competition mounts
Internet giant America Online announced the availability of its AOL 7.0 software Tuesday, an upgrade that comes as competitive pressure from Microsoft heats up. As previously reported by CNET News.com, the changes in the software are mainly cosmetic, including more high-speed Internet features and local content on the welcome screen. Other changes include faster loading of the software, minor tweaks to AOL Instant Messenger's buddy list and a media player that lets members play audio CDs and downloaded music files. The release comes a day after Microsoft announced its own sweeping upgrades, dubbed MSN 7, set to take effect Oct. 25 in conjunction with the release of its new Windows XP operating system.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh
Yahoo sells ring of community sites
Yahoo said Monday that it has closed its sale of community network WebRing and is notifying members to transfer to a new site. The Web portal said it sold WebRing to Tim Killeen, one of the early engineers who created the system. WebRing consists of communities of Web sites featuring related content, allowing people who share interests to reach one another. For instance, a Web site on grizzly bears would provide links to other sites with relevant information. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh
A Room With an Apocalyptic View
Ed Peden is sitting on a gold mine. He's the best known of a small group of people in real estate who specialize in the sale of underground, Cold War-era Titan I and Atlas missile bases. And interest in these properties, built to weather a nuclear attack, has, well, skyrocketed since Sept. 11, attracting attention from anxious families and corporations. So Peden stands to cash in, if he can keep quiet the bases' past -- a legacy of modern crime and atomic age debris.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,47577,00.html
Media Lab: Big Plans, Slow Funds
Ireland is to become the headquarters for a new venture that will launch startup companies emerging from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and its spinoff, Dublin's MediaLabEurope. Research groups at MediaLabEurope (MLE) suggest that areas of commercial development could include computers that respond to touch or are controlled by thought processes rather than mouse and keyboard; always-on communication environments that let people thousands of miles apart interact; computer agents that go to work for computer users in spontaneously created networks; and portable devices that help people achieve physical and mental fitness.
http://www.wired.com/news/exec/0,1370,47565,00.html
Speaking of Voice Recognition
If companies like Microsoft, Intel and Cisco have their way, future cellular phones, PDAs and television sets won't come with any buttons. Instead, people will navigate using their own voices --twangs, impediments, accents and all. "Speech will become the primary interface, especially in mobile computing," said Intel VP Howard Bubb, at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View. "The (computer's) processors are becoming tailored to human interaction." Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Comverse, Philips and SpeechWorks are working together to develop speech-enabled software that will let users call up any website on any device without having to click a button.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,47545,00.html
Lots of Genes, Lots of Theories
Researchers from all over the world are reporting their findings on HIV-resistant gene mutations, language ancestry, gene patenting and more this week at the American Society of Human Genetics' 51st annual meeting in San Diego. Among the findings: A genetic mutation that provides complete resistance to HIV infection may have also protected individuals from the plague 700 years ago, said a researcher at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Individuals who inherit the mutation -- called the "CCR5-delta 32 deletion" -- from both parents are completely resistant to HIV infection. Onset of the disease is delayed by an average of three years in those who receive it from just one parent.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,47586,00.html
EU 'threat' over download sites 
The European Union could block major record labels from setting up their planned music download services, according to reports. Some politicians fear that the two services, Pressplay and MusicNet, would be anti-competitive and unfairly dominate the market, The Sunday Times says. Concerns that the two services would restrict opportunities for independent download sites were voiced at a conference to discuss EU policies on music in Brussels on Saturday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/ent...00/1600064.stm
Humans Doomed Without Space Colonies, Says Hawking
The human race is likely to be wiped out by a doomsday virus before this millennium is out unless it starts to colonize space, top British scientist Stephen Hawking warned on Tuesday. Hawking's comments came as the United States teetered on the brink of panic over possible germ warfare after anthrax-laced letters were delivered in the capital Washington and the states of New York, Nevada and Florida. "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet," Hawking told Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/SciTech/r...0011016_9.html
Russians put advert on space station
The two cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have placed an advert for photographic company Kodak on the outside of the orbiting platform. It is not the first time that the Russian space agency has ventured into advertising. "Pizza Hut had their advert on the side of a rocket which carried one of the components of the space station into orbit," David Wade, senior lecturer in space technology, satellite systems engineering and engineering design at Kingston University, UK, told BBC Radio Five Live.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1602075.stm
How the terror trail went unseen
Investigations into how the terror attackers managed to evade detection are producing the unusual situation that statements from the FBI have become more trustworthy than those in the press. In two successive briefings, senior FBI officials have stated that the agency has as yet found no evidence that the hijackers who attacked America used electronic encryption methods to communicate on the internet. But this has not prevented politicians and journalists repeating lurid rumours that the coded orders for the attack were secretly hidden inside pornographic web images, or from making claiming that the hijacks could have been prevented if only western governments had been given the power to prevent internet users from using secret codes.
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/9751/1.html
Inside.com and Brill's Content to Close -- This Time They Really Mean It 
Not them too !
Brill’s Content and Inside.com, the church lady and swinging single of the myopic media world who got hitched in April, have been closed, victims of terrible publishing and Web economies and a strained relationship between Steven Brill and his major backer, Primedia. The moves come as part of an announcement that Brill Media Holdings and Primedia, which owns 49 percent of the former, were unwinding their complicated relationship. Brill’s Content will cease publication immediately. Inside.com, which Brill Media Holdings has sold to Primedia, will live on in name only, becoming a portal for the Media Central publications like Folio:, Cable World and Inside Book Publishing Report.
http://www.inside.com/product/produc...B-4D91DCB3EB38
Darwinian Selection of Satellite Orbits for Military Use
Charles Darwin could not have known he might one day improve cell phone communications and help win wars. But a new computer-based "genetic algorithm" based on Darwin's ideas about how the fit survive may do just that. The algorithm, created by researchers at Purdue University, created ideal satellite orbits with the help of hours and hours of computer processing time. The orbits were designed to help overcome a basic conundrum in satellite communications: The highest flying satellites, at some 22,000 miles, can see half the Earth and, while orbiting at the same speed as Earth, be in constant touch with a ground station.
http://www.space.com/news/darwin_satellites_011016.html
Saintly identity of holy relic supported by DNA analysis
DNA analysis of an ancient skeleton held in the Basilica of St Justina in Padua, Italy, supports claims that it may indeed be that of St Luke, as traditionally believed. According to historical texts, Luke was born in Antioch, Syria and died in Greece in about 150 AD. His body was moved first to Constantinople, now Istanbul. Then, some time before 1177, it was moved to Padua. But some historians suspected that the body could have been switched for another while in Greece or Turkey. Guido Barbujani of the University of Ferrara and his team isolated DNA from two teeth taken from the skeleton when it was exhumed in 1998.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991434
US Net user saves Brit trapped in shed
Police rescued a Blackburn man locked in a shed after receiving a tip-off from a Net user in the US. The man - who has a PC and Net connection in his shed but no phone - posted a message on an user group early Friday morning claiming a gang of yobs had locked him in. In a short posting he said: "This is not a hoax. I am trapped in my shed with no phone. Help please." An unnamed Net user from the US read the posting and contacted police in Blackburn. They went round to the man's house and let him out. A number of the postings on the newsgroup appear to cast doubt on the validity of the cry for help.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/22230.html
More news later on
